|
[ Return to Contents
| Post a Reply
| Post a new message
]
twice
Posted by twodux on Feb 13 2006
I've done it twice, once when I was young enough to think I was bulletproof, and another time more recently when you'd think I knew better. The two times in question tie for the longest nights of my life.
The first time, was in the early 70's and I was probably 18 or 19 and I wanted to go deer hunting really bad, but didn't have much money for gas for my boat. So I decided I had enough to head straight over to Hawkins Is. from Cordova. I hiked towards Salmo point and wasn't seeing much sign, then along towards evening I got to a spot where I was seeing lots of fresh sign. I decided I didn't want to hike all the way back to my boat, then back out where the deer were the next day, so I'd just spend the night in the woods. I had on an old pair of insulated coveralls that passed for a snow machine suit then and figured I'd be OK. I even found a hollowed out stump that most of me fit under. Unfortunately, my feet didn't and they were slightly damp. It didn't matter because it started raining and they ended up soaked. Then it started getting cold and actually snowed about an inch. I had to keep getting up to jog in place to warm my feet up. I thought morning would never come. Never knew a night could last sooooo long. First trace of daylight and I was on the move, just to warm up. And within 15 minutes of daylight, I shot a spike that I jumped out of his bed. I was never so glad to get back to town and take a hot shower.
The second time was about 7 or 8 years ago. I was gillnetting down at Bering River and decided to do a little moose hunting on the closure. One of the guys on the tender I delivered to wanted to go with me so we ran my boat up the Nichiwak River and anchored it in a safe place. Then we took my folbot and paddled it until we couldn't go any farther. We'd stop every so often and climb trees trying to spot something and saw a few cows and calves but no bulls. We decided the area we were in looked promising for the morning so we'd just Siwash for the night so we'd be on the spot at daylight. We climbed a little hill that gave us a good vantage point and had some timber on it and tried to set things up to be somewhat comfortable. We picked a nice dip in the ground that would break the wind and gathered quite a bit of wood and got a pretty good fire going as it got dark. We even had some snacks we brought along. Well the ground was damp and so were our feet and a good wind started blowing and we didn't have as much protection as we thought we did. We laid as close to the fire as we could and one side would get hot, but the other side was freezing. The temp dipped to below freezing that night. I finally took off my boots and laid my socks close to the fire to attempt to dry them. At least they were warm when I put them back on. We did manage to sleep a little that night, but it wasn't much and again I was reminded how long a night can be and we smelled like a smokehouse in the morning. Unfortunately, this time the misery didn't pay off. All we saw the next day were more cows and calves.
Previous: My siwash experiences Michael Strahan Feb 14 2006
Next: "Siwash" by Jack London bushrat Feb 12 2006
 Message Thread:
|
