Off the Beaten Path

Chapter 2-3

“Whose bright idea was this to start with?” Hugh muttered on Wednesday morning. He’d collected all the fallen boards and straightened bent nails by using the pliers on his multi-tool. Of course, when he was ready to figure out what was basically a jigsaw puzzle in terms of putting them back where they’d come from, he realized he didn’t have a hammer. As a result, he spent several minutes searching for a rock, or rocks which might suffice. When he had, he put on his gloves in an attempt to keep from raising blisters and began hammering the boards back in place, changing out the rocks when they became too chipped to use. It took most of the morning, but finally there was only a small area of the side wall which was still open to the elements.

“Better than it was before,” he commented, stepping away to admire his handiwork. “Lunch, then the roof.”

He had a packet of two ready-to-eat Italian sausage sandwiches. It wasn’t exactly a banquet, but it worked. Orion got dry food, which he scarfed down as if he’d been working as hard as Hugh, instead of supervising from a distance or chasing butterflies around the field.

The first thing Hugh did, after finishing his meal, was get the piece of plastic from his backpack. Spreading it out, he glanced from it to the hole in the roof. “God willing, and the creek don’t rise, it should be large enough,” he said under his breath. Getting up on the roof wouldn’t be too difficult. He could stand on the window sill and pull himself up—which he did once he’d tossed up the plastic. Securing it was another thing, however. It more than covered the hole but…

“Yeah, that might work.” The roof was shingled, meaning he could pry up the ones around the hole, put the edges of the plastic under them, and nail them down again on three sides. The bottom would have to hang free, since the hole was at the edge of the roof. “Still, it will work for now, barring a wind storm. Unless, maybe…”

With Orion at his heels, Hugh went into the trees, looking for a long branch. It took a while, but he finally found one he thought would work. It came, he figured from the thinness of it, from one of the aspen trees intermingled with the pines and oaks.

Now all I need is a few nails. Lots of luck with that.

Deciding to put it off for the time being, he set to work cleaning the interior of the cabin. The camp shovel came in handy, since he didn’t have a broom. To start with, he dug a large hole a few yards from the side of the cabin. Then he began shoveling everything into a pile, planning on carrying the mess, one shovelful at a time to dump in the hole. As he worked, he heard the shovel click against something metal, then again. Damn, luck is with me. The clicks came from rusty nails scattered in one corner of the room. Not many, but enough to do what was needed, he hoped. He carefully picked them out of the detritus, putting them in his pocket.

He’d barely finished putting the mess from the floor into the hole he’d dug when Orion came dashing over. He had a bone in his mouth, covered with dirt. If Hugh were to guess, it came from a large animal—perhaps a deer. He wrestled it away from Orion long enough to wash it off in the stream. When he finished, Orion settled down to chew on his new toy.

With the cabin floor relatively clean—relatively being the operative word—Hugh was ready to call it a day. One look at his filthy hands and arms, and clothes, told him it was time for a bath in the stream. The water was cooler than the air, but bearable. He found a deep spot and washed himself and his clothes, using one of his bars of ecology-friendly soap.

“I feel like a new man,” he said when he’d gotten out and dried off. He set the wet clothes over the top of the tent, hoping they’d be dry by morning. Not that it mattered if they weren’t. He wasn’t going anywhere, so he wouldn’t have to pack them up. Then he refilled his water bottles from the stream, adding purifying tablets. While he doubted he needed to, since the stream was so high in the mountains, he wasn’t about to take chances. Once the cabin was ready to be lived in, and he knew for certain that the fireplace chimney would draw properly, he’d boil any water he planned on using for drinking purposes.

After putting on a fresh pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, in deference to the rapidly dropping temperature as the sun went down, he took the cook stove into the cabin. Setting it in the fireplace, he made a mental note to check the chimney in the morning. He put a pan of water on the stove, waited for it to boil, then added the contents of a packet of stew. A couple more days and I’ll have to start hunting for dinner if I don’t want to starve.

After he and Orion had eaten, Hugh took the pan and bowls to the stream to wash them. It was still early if already dark, so when he got back to the tent, Hugh dug out the book on edible wild plants. After changing into his sleep sweats and crawling into the sleeping bag, he began reading by the light on his multi-tool, until he fell asleep.