The wind saved Avery's life. At the far end of the stand of pines, where the largest and oldest trees sheltered the rest from the worst of the wind off the mountain, a small branch, just a fan of pine needles really, was torn loose. It catapulted through the trees, bouncing off the rough and wind twisted trunks until it hit the sleeping stranger directly in the face. Avery jerked immediately into alertness at the stinging slap, swearing loudly as he threw the branch off, to be carried away in the severe wind again.
He felt numb and sluggish despite the surprise awakening. He could barely feel the cold and he was experienced enough to know that was a very bad sign. The sleeping bag he'd hung up to block the wind had fallen, prevented from flying away only because one of the tears had snagged on a branch. He dragged himself slowly out of his own bag, staying off his frost bitten foot, and with stiff, uncooperative fingers he quickly hung it back up. He had to get this wind off of him. He was already feeling the effects of hypothermia. If he didn't get it under control soon...
He was down to three chemical heat packs, plus the two reusable ones if he could manage to boil water. Fearing he was making a mistake that might kill him, he cracked two to replace the spent ones in his gloves. The two in his boot were going as well. How long had he been unconscious? He'd put those pads in his boot right before passing out so, around ten hours? Less? He was lucky he wasn't dead. On the upside, when he tried to wiggle his toes he thought he could feel movement.
He needed to stay off that foot. Walking on it could damage the tissue more, and thawing severe frost bite tended to result in blisters that would be rubbing against the inside of his boots. Not fun. But if it refroze he'd be in a world of trouble. Getting better shelter and a fire going was the number one priority, one worth risking some possible permanent damage to his foot. Luckily, the trees were pretty closely spaced here. In addition to blocking some of the wind, it meant he could limp along primarily leaning on the tree trunks without using that foot too much.
The wind was ferocious, whipping stinging ice and howling through the trees. It was difficult to even stand. Avery knew he wouldn't get a fire going in this. Shelter had to come first.
He began dragging pine branches back toward his den, glad there was a relative abundance of them. He didn't have the strength or the tools to start stripping the green from the trees. He built them into a lean-to, lined with the torn sleeping bag, and built the snow up around the edges to insulate it and help hold the admittedly shoddy structure together in the ferocious wind.
He wasn't sure how long it took, hauling branches back and forth, trying to stay off his leg, resting when he started to shake, but by the time he was done he was exhausted. At least when he fell into his new shelter the wind was, at last, finally off his back. He took a break, ate one of his granola bars and drank the rest of his water. Then it was back to work, this time building a fire.
The lighter and the little bit of fire-starting fuel he'd brought with him was, without a doubt, the most precious of his supplies, the only thing he couldn't replace. He'd never mastered the art of the 'fire drill' method for starting a fire with just sticks. As he held the tiny metal square of the Zippo in his hand he couldn't help thinking about how literally his life depended on it. He tugged at the collar of his coat with a shiver of discomfort and tried to focus on building his fire. He dug a shallow pit for it with his hands a few feet from his shelter, carefully shielding it with a wall of snow to protect it from the wind and reflect the heat toward him. Having it so close was dangerous, but freezing was a bigger danger right now.
As he carefully lit the fire starter fuel and pushed it under the tinder, he hoped the resin-filled wood would produce enough smoke to help someone find him.
He watched the fire for a while, keeping his injured foot close to it, until the snow-wet wood had dried and begun to burn properly. His mind wandered as he tended the little flame upon which his life so thoroughly depended. Dan and the others had to be looking for him by now. He might be stuck out here another night, but it wouldn't be long. He could manage. He told himself this as many times as he needed in order to begin to believe it.
He replayed the moment he'd seen Hays go sliding past him over and over, wondering why he hadn't reached out, why he'd cut the line, what Avery could have done differently. And Dan, unclipping his line and disappearing into the snow. Why hadn't he stopped him? He'd known it was a stupid idea. If he'd just convinced Dan to stay put...
He knew it was useless to torture himself this way, imagining what might have been done differently, but there was precious little else to think about out here. Just the past, and how he was going to survive.
He let his mind drift, watching the fire, back to the camping trips of his childhood. He remembered a night as cold as this, a long ago fishing trip with his father. His father had been a big, imposing man, gone eight years ago now to lung cancer. Avery could see him in his memory, looking carved from stone and smoking like a chimney, the glow of the fire casting shards of gold on his weathered cheeks. He’d placed a lot of importance on self-sufficiency, on knowing how to hunt and fish and build your own shelter. He’d taken Avery up to Colorado or Montana at least once a summer for long camping trips to teach him how to fend for himself.
The cold night in his memory, his father looming over the fire as craggy and unreachable as the faces of Mt. Rushmore, he’d been allowed to bring a friend along. Calder was lying wrapped in his sleeping bag next to Avery, already asleep. His hair had been a brighter red then, copper in the fire light. They were both thirteen or so. Goofing off, they’d overturned the boat earlier today and Avery’s father hadn’t spoken to him since. They’d returned to the camp in silence, set out their salvaged soaked equipment to dry, eaten dinner and laid down, all without a word from the old man. Calder had barely noticed. He was used to his father never speaking to him. Even in those days Calder had spent more time with Avery’s family than his own, and it would still be a few years before the real unpleasantness began, shortly before his parents finally threw him out.
Avery would be there for all of that, the screaming fights and the crying, the bruises he’d photographed and showed his parents, begging them to do something. But in those days, there wasn’t much you couldn’t do in the name of ‘disciplining’ your child. Avery’s parents were as helpless as Calder himself. But they’d given him a couch to sleep on for a while after it all reached a head, reassuring both the boys that they didn’t believe the ugly names Calder’s parents had called him. At least until the day they caught Calder making out with their son on that same couch. Then all those ugly names were suddenly true, and justified, and Calder had been on his own. Avery, realizing his parents would only do the same to him eventually, had left shortly after. He and Calder had managed on their own through a hard few years. But that was all years from this moment, this cold night when they lay innocently next to one another in a tent.
Avery watched his father sitting by the fire, smoke drifting up from the cigarette in his hand, contemplating God only knew what.
“Dad?” Avery had tried, his voice quiet in the still, cold night. “I’m sorry about the boat.”
His father hadn’t answered, just continuing to stare into the fire. Avery had lowered his head to his sleeping bag, resigning himself to a future where his father would never speak to him again. Instead, after a long silence, his father finally spoke.
“Do you know why I bring you out here?” he asked.
A thousand answers had sprung to Avery’s mind, none of them the right one. Because it’s fun, because you like camping, because you want to spend time with me?
“It’s because I want you to be prepared.” It was not an answer that ever would have occurred to Avery. “There’s a lot of hard things in this world. You never know what’s going to happen. But if you have the skills, then you know at least you can always find food, shelter. You can survive.”
Avery had looked away, not understanding or believing. He lived in a world where those needs were always and had always been met and would, as far as he knew, continue to always be met in the future. The furthest he had ever thought into his future was still the simple, sketched out shape of the future his parents hoped for him. College, work, family. There was no room in that future for struggling to find food and shelter in the wilderness. These were challenges only taken voluntarily now, on summer weekends. His father’s concern that he would need to survive out here seemed nonsensical and paranoid.
“Nothing is guaranteed in this life,” his father had said. “We’re lucky to have a comfortable life right now, but it wasn’t always so. And there will come a day in the future when hard times will come again. Not the same kind I faced, or grandfather, or your ancestors before them. But struggles always come all the same. These are the only tools I can give you. I’m not angry about the boat. I am afraid that you’re not listening.”
Despite Avery’s not quite believing in the threat his father promised, the words, delivered so somberly, ringing in the quiet night, had stuck with him. He’d taken those camping trips a little more seriously for a while after. And some of the skills he’d learned had helped when he and Calder were homeless that little while. His father had been right. Struggles always come. Avery wondered if his father had ever guessed that he would be the source of some of those struggles.
Night was coming. The wind was still howling powerfully, and getting colder. His stomach growled, unsatisfied with the single protein bar he'd eaten today. He ignored it and instead unscrewed his thermos. He'd drunk the last of the water earlier. He packed the metal cylinder with snow instead and set it in the coals to melt with a water treatment tab. The image of Dan's face just before he'd vanished played behind Avery's eyes. He shook it off and retreated into his sleeping bag again, hiding in his crude little shelter. The air smelled of pine sap and the bitter bite of cold. He had shelter and water. The fire was smoking nicely. When this wind let up it would be a good signal. Someone would find him. He heard something move in the trees and told himself it was a squirrel, pulling his sleeping bag closer. He hoped there would be something here for them to find when they arrived...