Tim peered out of the underbrush at his deadfalls. They were still in place, and the pine nut bait had not been touched, even though the mud at the edge of the water was a mass of tracks. He did not approach them. If he left them alone long enough, he hoped the man-smell might leave them.

Working backwards on hands and knees, he emerged out of sight of the pool. There he recovered his crutch and started upstream in search of another pine he could harvest. As he went, he searched the floor of the dry creek until he found a rock about twice the size of his fist. It glistened black in the dim morning light. It was obsidian, washed down from some volcanic deposit higher in the mountains, and more precious than gold to Tim.

He found a small sugar pine a hundred feet back from the stream growing up beside a broken boulder. Climbing the boulder, he harvested the cones. The were huge, but most of the nuts were gone from them. He piled them by the creek bank and continued his explorations.

Now that he felt stronger, he was hungrier than ever.

At the edge of the bank he found a willow that had died when its roots were exposed. From this he cut a slightly curved branch about six feet long and as thick as his wrist, along with thinner, straight branches of about the same length and a bundle of shorter branches. It took several trips to return all his finds to the campsite.

Tim spent an hour shucking the remaining pine nuts from the sugar pine cones. As he worked, he tried to remember all that his grandfather had taught him. Tim’s grandfather had always taken him along when he had harvested Digger Pine cones in the spring, and again when he harvested acorns in the autumn. Nowadays, Tim’s grandfather ground his acorns in a commercial flour mill and leached them in the kitchen sink, but he still knew the old Miwuk ways and had taught them to Tim.

Unfortunately, the Miwuks had lived at lower elevations. Where Tim was now there were neither Digger pines nor oaks.

Tim fed his fire and set to work. He checked over the curved willow shaft he had chosen for a bow, then cut it back to about five feet. That was the maximum his two boot laces, knotted together, would string. He whittled away the the lower part of the limb until it matched the upper in size and shape. When it was roughly bow shaped, he hung it on a tripod of saplings near the fire to dry further.

The daylight was fading, so Tim laid his work aside and went off to check his deadfalls. Three of them were untouched, but the fourth held the body of a Douglas squirrel.

Back at camp, Tim skinned and gutted it carefully. He saved the intestines for cord, split the carcass, and dropped half of it into one of his bark cooking basket to boil.

Tim took the obsidian he had found and studied it like a diamond cutter. His Miwuk ancestors had traded with other tribes to get their obsidian. They had treated it with respect because it had been so hard to get. Tim was in exactly the same position.

He decided to make his spear points first. He knocked the head off the obsidian with a glancing blow from another stone, then struck off several long flakes from it’s length. These were irregular, but once he had the obsidian trimmed he was able to strike off two decent flakes before the remaining stone snapped in two crossways. more next week

In the evening of the fifth day, Tim sat in the mouth of his shelter, grinding more of the pine nuts for another meal. He had set the deadfall, but he didn’t have any real faith in it. He felt stronger now, and his ankle hurt less than it had. He had reworked his crutch, padding the crosspiece with lichen and wrapping it with willow bark.

He was trying to think through his situation. Unless someone found his bicycle at the campground – and he had hidden it with great care so that it would not be stolen – no one would know that he was lost in the forest. There would be no rescue parties.

He could try to walk out, but he did not know which way to go. He did not know where he was because of the time he had wandered after hitting his head in the stream. He did not know east from west. Heavy clouds had covered the sun for days, and it is a myth that moss only grows on the north side of trees.

If he had been uninjured and well fed, he could simply have followed the dry wash to a creek, and that creek to a river, and that river to a road. But he did not know how many twisting miles that might take. He might walk to a road within an hour, or it might take more days than his weakened condition would allow.

He couldn’t take his shelter with him, and another night of exposure in the rain might kill him. It seemed best to stay with his shelter and live on pine nuts until his ankle had another day or two to get better.

It was a sensible plan, but events were taking place in another part of the forest that would change everything.

* * *

Wherever Man moves in, the wild creatures move back. In California, the grizzly bear, the state animal, has been extinct for nearly a century. The foothill towns rarely see even a relatively mild mannered black bear.

Nevertheless, three days after Tim went hunting, a black bear came down from the forest. It was an old male, shaggy with years, and hungry. He wandered around the outskirts of town, remembering vaguely that he had found plentiful food here in his youth. He could not know that that food source had been a garbage dump, nor could he know that garbage was now stored in bear-proof steel containers.

In his wanderings at the edge of the town, the bear found the sweet smell of rotting grain and followed it to a pig pen. Perhaps he would have eaten the mash, or perhaps the pigs. Or both, for he was very hungry. Instead, the farmer heard the squealing of his pigs when the bear attacked and came running out of the house with a shotgun in his hands. He fired at the bear and hit him in the face, then fired the other barrel at the bear as he ran toward the forest and safety.

The buckshot lodged in the black bear’s face and right hind leg. One shot split his muzzle and traveled four inches under the hide to lodge beneath his right eye. The most serious damage was done by a single pellet which ripped away a section of the bear’s fleshy nose, and cost him most of his sense of smell.

Sight is not very important to a black bear; a pellet in the eye would have done less damage. This old male had been finding it increasingly hard to catch his prey. Without his sense of smell, he was truly crippled.

He ran for several miles before going to earth. He growled and rolled and ripped down saplings in his fury, but the pain persisted. more tomorrow

Once in the crotch of the tree, he rested for a while, then climbed about the lower limbs, pulling off cones and dropping them to the ground. After half an hour he had taken all that he could reach. Then he looped his belt over the lowest limb and swung down to hang at arm’s length. The ground seemed a long way down, but there was no avoiding it. He drew up his injured ankle and let go.

It was surprisingly easy. He managed to roll toward his good side and his ankle was only jarred. Painfully jarred, yes; but not with the searing pain Tim had expected.

Tim made a sack of his shirt and filled it with cones. When he returned to this shelter, he was tempted to shuck them immediately. Instead, he forced himself to make four more trips back to the tree until he had gathered in every cone. He did not want to share a single one with the squirrels.

He used a rock to break up the cones and sifted through the dust and scales to get the nuts. It was mid-afternoon when he finished, and he had only enough to fill one of his bark baskets. He ground a handful of flour, mixed it to a thick gruel in one of the baskets, then heated it by dropping in hot rocks from his fire.

As he ate, Tim remembered all the times he had started projects that had seemed too big for him to finish. His father had always listened to his complaints, and had always given him advice, or shown him a different way of working, or given him some tool he did not know existed. No matter how impossible they had seemed at the time, Tim had always finished those projects somehow.

Looking back, Tim could not remember a single time when his father had actually helped him. But he had always seen to it that Tim got what he needed to finish without help. He had taught Tim that he could do anything he really wanted to.

Halfway up that tree and exhausted, Tim had felt his father at his side, urging him on.

Now, with his first meal in many days calming his growling stomach, Tim felt new strength flowing through his limbs. He returned to making his deadfall trap.

Chapter 5

On October twelfth Tim had set out from home on his bicycle to spend the day with his grandfather. His mother didn’t get home until past midnight. The house was empty, so she assumed that Tim’s grandfather had kept him because she had to work late. She went to bed without calling.

Tim’s grandfather had not known that Tim was coming, so it was late Sunday morning before either of them knew that Tim was gone. They drove over the roads Tim might have taken between their two houses without finding any sign of him. Then they searched around the house, and found his bicycle gone. No one noticed that his rifle was also gone.

When the police were called, they treated it as if Tim were a runaway, or had been kidnapped. The police in three counties looked for him, but no one looked in the great forest that bordered the foothill town where Tim lived, for no one had any reason to think Tim had gone that direction. more tomorrow

His grandfather had shown him how to take Digger pine cones when they were ripe but still tight and roast them over a fire. As the scales opened in the heat, a bounty of bean sized nuts would fall out to be shelled and eaten on the spot.

These cones had opened naturally. The nuts were mostly gone, but a few had failed to fall out, especially those near the top of the cone and he soon had a handful. He popped a few into his mouth – and almost broke his teeth. These nuts had grown to full maturity. They were as hard as pebbles.

Tim felt like cursing and he felt like crying, but he was too weak and hungry to do either. It took half an hour to return to his shelter, revive the fire, get two more baskets of water, crush the nuts to flour between two rocks, and cook up a thin pine nut soup. But when he was finished, nothing had ever tasted so good.

* * *

Tim rested and warmed himself by the fire. Soon he began to feel some strength returning. He took the time to drag up firewood, then returned to the Jeffrey pine.

His weakness had scared him, and he was determined to get the rest of the cones that hung so tantalizingly out of reach. He would have to climb now while he still had the energy.

First he checked his ankle. Some of the swelling had left it, so he removed the splint, boot, and sock.  Other than the white, wrinkled skin which came from not removing his boot for several days, the foot looked normal enough. He replaced the boot, lacing it even tighter, and bound the splint back in place. He still couldn’t walk without a crutch, but at least he didn’t think he would pass out if he hit his ankle.

Certainly, he had better not.

He took off his belt and left his knife, canteen, and cased firestone at the base of the tree. There was about ten feet of smooth trunk before the growth went wild where the lighting had split the tree. If he could get that far, he would be able to range about the middle area of the tree in search of cones.

Flipping the belt around the tree trunk, he grasped it with both hands and raised it high. He hoisted himself up by hanging from the belt, and gripped the tree trunk with his thighs. Then he quickly shifted the belt upward several inches.

He wasn’t going to make it. Already his head was swimming.

He gripped the tree with his legs and flipped the belt higher. Tears squeezed from his eyes and sweat beaded his face. He heaved the belt up again. His breath came in gasps. He flipped the belt higher again, but it slipped when he put his weight on it.

Here he was with his feet barely three feet above the ground, and anyone could see that he was already played out. Only there wasn’t anyone there to see it. He was alone. He had to live or die right here, right now, without anyone’s help.

He flipped the belt upward again.

How he made it to the lightning formed crotch, Tim never knew. The same determination which had carried him this far simply would not let him give up. more tomorrow

When he woke, the dream of his father would not leave him. He clung to it as he lay burrowed in the pile of pine needles that lined the floor of his shelter. Finally, Tim roused himself to put more wood on the fire. It was pitch black beyond the small circle of firelight. He had no idea whether it was early or late in the night.

He very carefully drew his splinted foot up and crossed it over the other so he could sit cross legged in the mouth of his shelter. He did not want to sleep again now. He nudged the remaining bark box of water and juniper berries onto the fire. Soon the smell of it swirled around him, setting his stomach to growling again. He sipped it as he worked.

Tim has saved some of the wood he had dragged up, setting aside those pieces best suited to the making of a deadfall. He was very hungry, and it might be days before his foot got well enough for him to walk out, so it was time to get food. He had seen squirrels about, and there were certainly many small rodents he had not seen, so he would make traps.

As he worked, he searched through his memory for other ways to find food. If he had been at a lower elevation, it would have been relatively easy. There he could have lived on the bounty of acorns and digger pine nuts, as his Miwuk ancestors had done.

Miwuks had not lived this high in the mountains. They had stayed down where the oaks were, since acorns were their major source of food. Tim would have to adapt his knowledge.

Tim caught his head nodding and realized that his thoughts had trailed off into a half dream. He laid the deadfall aside, and burrowed back into his pine needle bed.

* * *

Tim awoke confused. It took him a long time to sort out where he was. It was full daylight outside and his fire was down to embers. He sat up, then had to brace his hands against the ground until a wave of dizziness passed.

He dragged himself upright on his crutch and counted up the days. The total shocked him. Four days had passed since he had ridden away from home to spend the day with his grandfather, and he had not eaten in all that time.

The deadfall would have to wait. Tim needed food now!

Tim limped down to the ponderosa pine with the driftwood pile at its base, and found nothing but old, open, empty cones on the ground. There were a dozen pines in the immediate area, all ponderosas and Jefferies. He circled each one without finding anything edible. Above him he could see the cones, but they were mature and their scales were all flared open. Most of the seeds would have fallen out or have been harvested by squirrels.

One Jeffrey pine had been lightning struck. It had regrown twisted and dwarfed compared to its tall, slender mates. The remaining cones hung lower, but still well out of reach. Tim found a piece of down wood the right size for a throwing stick and tossed it up toward the cones. It was hard to be accurate while balancing against his crutch, but he managed to knock down five cones in about twenty throws. By that time, he was exhausted, so he gathered his cones and sat down against the bole of the tree to search them for nuts. more next week