Season 1 Episode 9: A Distant Rumble

Trekking deeper into the wilderness, Will and Hope settle into a serene location overlooking Mill Creek. Before long, their peace is shattered first by distant bombs and planes, then by the intrusion of two haggard refugees. Just passing through?

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Transcript

After the Virus Season 1 Episode 9

Cave Spring – the site of episode 8 is a very real place along the Lassen trail on the ridge high above Mill Creek. When I hiked the Lassen trail from the Nevada border to Vina, California in 2006, my partner and I found ourselves out of water at this point in our journey with 25 miles left to go before we reached The Valley. Seeing Cave Spring noted on our map we searched the area for it without finding it, much to our disappointment. Then as we headed down trail dejectedly we looked back and could see a small trickle of water coming from a North facing cliff that we had not been able to see from above. Making our way back to the cliff wall we hugged the rock faced and thirstily gulped down the stream of water. Then filled our canteens, thus enabling us to make the final stretch of the trek in relative comfort. 

When we left Will and Hope they had built a bonfire…

Tonight we celebrated the Fourth of July by building a large fire among the rocks against the rock face and watching the shadows dance against the cliff.

July 5

I woke after fretting all night about the carelessness of my action last night. The large fire could have easily been seen by anyone to the west of us. I told Hope that we should pack up and look for a more permanent dwelling.

Hope was uncharacteristically resistant and argued that this spot had plenty of game and a water supply, and she liked the feel of it.

I explained my concerns to her and she relented grudgingly - her personality and confidence in herself is growing!

Our packs are heavier than when we arrived, from the addition of the meat and the partially cured deer hide, but the extra weight is worth the peace of mind of having a food supply!

We stop to devour blackberries on our way down toward Mill Creek. The canyon is tall and steep and the footing is often treacherous. By mid-afternoon we are only halfway to the creek when we find a cool, north-facing, fern-filled draw. We come upon an abandoned turkey nest and collect the feathers all around it to use later for arrow making. We lay down in the tiny waterway to cool off and decide to spend the night here and continue to the bottom of the canyon tomorrow.

July 6

Slept poorly because of mosquitoes, poor choice of a campsite. Started early - the walking was more pleasant in the cool of the morning on the shady canyonside.

Hope turned her ankle and fell, cutting her hands and knee but not badly. We arrived at Mill Creek midday - the water felt great as the day had heated considerably. We found a slow spot with cattails and consumed them along with some blackberries.

The creek bank had many rocks appropriate for point making, so we passed the afternoon alternating between shade and sun - making arrowheads, staying close to cover in case anyone else is using this canyon. 

Tomorrow we will start looking for a better dwelling, tonight we are sleeping under the oaks on a grassy curve in the creek.

July 7

We explore the creek in either direction for a mile, foraging and looking for a likely sheltering spot. Finding nothing to our liking we spend the night under the stars on a flat stretch of shoreline along the creek.

July 8

Pemmican and tea with lots of honey for breakfast. We organize our packs then work our way upstream with an eye out for overhangs, caves or other places of shelter.

At a hairpin curve in the creek Hope spots a promising seam under a long rock palisade just a couple hundred yards up the opposite slope. We take off our boots and ford the creek - Hope is now quite adept at it. There is a pleasant grass and oak bench along this side of the creek, with an abrupt grassy upslope to the formation.

There is indeed a cave, perfect for sleeping and storing things. Just 3 feet high, the opening is approximately 20 feet long and extends 10 feet back into the hill, with a 4’ wide sandstone-like bench in front of the opening. The mouth faces just north of east for a little morning sun and then a cool shady afternoon. It is tall enough to easily crawl around in but not to stand up in. The floor has a soft layer of dirt with a number of rocks that have fallen from the roof, and lots of animal tracks. It will work just fine for us until we have had time to re-provision ourselves - then we will likely head for the cooler climes nearer the mountain.

We leveled all of the dirt floors and removed all of the rocks, finding many obsidian chips in the process and a couple of broken arrowheads near the entrance, where apparently the ancients chose to do their knapping. 

We then inventoried what we have and what we need.

HAVE

FOOD

30 lbs. of pemmican and jerky

12 oz. of honey

6 cans of unmarked food

CLOTHING

WILL

1 undershorts

1 pants

1 long sleeve shirt

1 hood zipper sweatshirt 1 belt

1 pair boots

1 cap

HOPE

1 underpants, 1 bra

1 pants

1 long sleeve shirt

1 heavy shirt

1 pair boots

1 bandana

1 deerskin poncho

TOOLS

I large backpack

2 daypacks

1 30-30 rifle with 4 bullets

1 .270 rifle barrel and action - no stock

1 .38 pistol with six bullets

1 compound bow, no arrows, 20 arrowheads

1 knife, multi-tool Swiss army type

1 knife large skinner type

1 knife large Bowie type no handle

1 hatchet small

1 shovel round head no handle

1 pot, small no handle

3 cans 14 oz. for cooking, boiling water

1 bow drill kit for making fires

1 rope app 20’

1 fishing line and hooks app. 50’

1 paracord app 10’

1 baling wire app 10’

1 roll duct tape

1 sleeping bag

NEED

New clothing

Heavy coats for winter

New Boots!!!

Arrow shafts

Spears

New handles for tools

More rope

Containers e.g. baskets

We will set about trying to make as many of these things as we can in the coming weeks.

Spent the afternoon searching for mock orange for arrow shafts - harvested a large bundle.

July 9

Spent our first night in the new cave, kept awake much of the night by a ring-tailed cat trying to reclaim his cave! Worked on arrows in the morning then about 10:00 am we were jarred by a series of distant explosions. We could see nothing from our location in the canyon, so we climbed to a shelf above us. From there we could see large plumes of smoke rising from the valley, the nearest being perhaps 30 miles distant. This is the first sign we’ve had of other life in many weeks, ominous though it was.

Returned to our arrow making, binding the arrowheads to the shafts with fine strips of deer intestine. Then using turkey feathers that we had found in our hike down the canyon, we fletched each arrow.

The arrows are much lighter than the arrows I had been using with my modern bow, so I had to adjust the tension on the bowstring significantly to get the arrows to shoot correctly. After repeated tweaking and lots of practice I could repeatedly hit a tree at 20 yards - good enough for now!

Then Hope tried. The bow is too large for her and she couldn’t adequately draw back on it, so tomorrow we will begin working on a bow for her.

In the quiet of the evening we could hear the bass rumble of large airplanes far away.

July 12

We have spent the last few days on survival skills, plant ID and foraging.

We have been sleeping poorly listening for planes in the night and being harassed by the ring-tailed cat.

Hiked up the canyon looking for a suitable sapling for Hope’s bow. Found a young bay tree with a long straight 2” diameter trunk. Cutting it at top and bottom, we worked for an hour shaving down one side of it to get the proper amount of bend. Used my parachute cord for the bowstring for now.

It is the perfect size for Hope and shoots nicely. After a short while, Hope is also consistently sticking her arrows into a tree at 20 yards.

Proud of her accomplishment, we return to the cave to make arrows.

July 14

More explosions last evening - sounded further away. We put out a box trap for the ring-tailed cat and in the middle of the night, the cat tripped the trap, then proceeded to go wild inside. We managed to get the whole thing outside - I took the trap, cat and all about a hundred yards from the cave, behind a rock where I couldn’t hear it, figuring we’d make a meal out of it tomorrow. An hour later there was a huge commotion, then silence…finally I got some sleep!

When I checked the trap this morning it had been destroyed and only bits of fur remained of the cat - it looks like a coyote or coyotes broke into the fairly light-weight trap and consumed the critter. At least we should start sleeping better.

Finished fletching the arrows, we have about twenty total - no more shooting into trees which generally ruins these mock orange arrows, or at the very least destroys the arrowheads we’ve worked so hard to make.

We are anxious for some food variety and it was warm so we decided to try for some fish. I made a poor spear and was unable to spear any of the salmon languishing in the deep holes, so instead dug up some soaproot, diced the corm into small pieces then ground them into a wet powder and built a rock dam across a small slow-moving side channel of the creek. Starting upstream we herded some small fish into the side channel, where they were more or less trapped by the rock dam across the outlet. Then we mixed the ground soaproot into the water at the top of the channel and waited. Sure enough within minutes many small and several pan-sized fish floated to the surface, stunned by the saponin in the soaproot. We collected the fish, bled them and rolled them in my shirt. We skewered them over a small fire for dinner.

JULY 21

After a glorious week of bow-hunting daily far and wide, our serenity is suddenly spoiled by the presence of interlopers.

We heard human voices in the night - yelling, calling. With no lights to give away our location we had little to fear for now but had our guns ready just in case.

We stayed in the cave after it got light - watching the surrounding canyon. Then we saw them on the opposite side of the creek moving quickly. Two men - from our vantage point 200 yards away they appeared haggard, with torn clothing, dirty, disheveled...maybe even bloody. They each carried a pack and a weapon (of sorts)…one had a baseball bat, the other a hoe.

They appeared to be searching, apparently for shelter. We watched them check out boulder piles and the base of a rock face. Finding nothing they liked they crossed over to our side and began again. It became clear that they would eventually come upon our cave. There was no time to get our stuff out but I had Hope take the rifle and sneak up onto the shelf above us and I would stay and confront them.

When they got about 20 feet away, still not seeing the cave, I shouted for them to stop. The startled men took off running as fast as they could downhill, trying to stay behind cover as much as possible, apparently convinced that they were about to be shot at. They leapt into the creek, falling into the water in their haste to get away. When they got to the other side they continued running upstream until I could no longer see them. Despite the seriousness of this development, I couldn’t help but laugh hysterically at the comical sight of their panicked departure.

Hope made her way back down to me. She had watched the men run upstream for a while then slow to a walk, all the while looking over their shoulders.

I decided that the best thing to do was to follow them for a while to make sure they wouldn’t be coming back to ambush us. I left Hope in the cave with the rifle and bows and I took off after the men with only my pistol and daypack.

It took me an hour to catch up to them. From the top of the high bank on my side of the creek I could just make out one of the men washing himself at the water's edge. I was creeping closer to get a view of the man, when I was surprised from behind. The second man had snuck up behind me and wrapped his arm around my neck as he grasped at the pistol tucked in my belt. I struggled for a moment then realized it was too late - he had my gun and told me to keep still. He backed up a few paces with the gun trained on me and my hands went up.