First Night

It was decided by chance: You will stay here.

“Right, thank you my trusty companion.”, I tell my stone, taking a small bow, giving thanks for having taken the burden of choice from me. To anyone else looking on it might have been quite the weird display.

“Well, if I am to stay here, I should probably get to some basic tasks. I’m guessing water is covered. SO is heat, as I doubt there will be no usable wood in that forest. Food is…” My voice trails off as I look around. I might have looked at a couple survival videos in my time, but usually the people know where they are and what plants they can find there. I take a good look around, at the vegetation surrounding me. Not a single plant I could identify in sight.

“Food might be difficult. But I should be able to put it off for the start. Next would be shelter, again, that should be easy with such a forest around.” I slap my face “Come on focus. You got this.” Even though I say that to myself, there’s no knowing if I’ll survive the night, hell even the next couple of hours, depending what kind of animals live in the woods. But just standing here would probably not give me any advantage.

I look up to the sky to try and find the sun, hoping to make some kind of inference to the time of day. However I see the horizon already turning red, seemingly not leaving me with a lot of light until the night comes. Since I also don’t know where I am, I need to get going quickly, as nightfall could be here sooner than I expect.

But that is exactly the problem: How do you get going in a place you don’t know, with plants that could have all kinds of effects on you, where animals might be out to get you and all of that on top of not knowing how much light you’ll have. This executive dysfunction grabs hold of me, worrying about too many things at once, not being able to focus.

“Maybe the easiest way out would be to just lie down again and hope that dreaming about home will bring me back.” Only the wind blowing through the meadow hears my words. “Whatever…thing? Entity? Event? Brought me here could surely take me back, right?” The wind moves the leaves in the forest, leaving me to interpret its murmuring as an answer. I clench my teeth “God damnit. Why- Why do I have to be so bad at everything.” Tears well up. “It’s unfair. I want to leave everything behind. I get just that. And now, I want to go back. But that won’t solve anything. I’ll be at square one. Still me. Still bad.” My vision is getting blurry. I once again fall to my knees, the grass staining my blue jeans. “What…What do I do?!” I cry out.

No. This can’t go on. Crying is not the solution. It was not the solution at home, and it will not be the solution here. Something inside me swells up. Maybe it’s an instinct to survive. Maybe it’s the wish not to disappoint my mom again. I wouldn’t count out my dad giving me some guidance from wherever he is right now. There is a time to lament yourself. It is not now. Right now I need to focus on myself, so I can be sad some other day.

I pick myself up, wiping the tears from my face. Whatever I will do, it has to start with the forest. I take one shaky step. Then another. Then another. Slowly, through a haze of tears, my own doubts and anxiety I make it to the edge of the forest. It is dark. Scarily so, stopping me once again in my tracks. “I… I can’t” I mutter to myself, not being able to muster up the courage to enter it. I take a look around. There are some sticks and leaves scattered from the woodland into the grassy field. A couple of vines peek out between the trees, fruiting with striking red berries.

I gather up the last bit of courage I have, making my way over to one of the vines, picking up larger sticks along the way. Luckily, near the root of the vine plant, there is a younger tree with a low hanging branch. Perfect for layering sticks on top of and fashioning a crude shelter for surviving a night.

I scrambled around the edge of the forest looking for broken branches and other plant stuff that I can use to support a roof. The dwindling daylight further limited my range, as the lit up edge of the dark woods became smaller and smaller. But after some time I had finally collected all the supports needed and tried to return to my low branch, which itself was not easy, with the trees being all similar and the darkness encroaching further.

Yet even on my manic search for wood I did not come across a single plant I recognized. Even the sounds of animals all sounded like nothing I’ve ever heard, neither at home, nor in documentaries of other climates. “This must be a really remote place”, I thought to myself, trying to rationalize all of the unknown things around me.

After having returned I hastily laid out my collected beams, forming a slope from the branch down to the ground. The slope was quite steep as the branches were mostly broken and short, thus the shelter wouldn’t provide much space, but it was better than nothing. To not further decrease the length and subsequently my dry space underneath, I didn’t bury the sticks deep in the earth. Rather I tried to use the vines which had led me into the forest in the first place

“AHH” DAMN IT”, were my first words after touching the vine, as some of its hundreds of little spines dug into my hand. Blood was drawn almost immediately, staining the vivid green of the vine a crimson red, not dissimilar to the berries it carried. Still, I had to keep moving before the daylight was completely gone.

I carefully examined the plant, making sure to only touch it between the spines. Slowly and cautiously I managed to use the lanky fiber to weave and tie my shelter together. With the basic structure built and mostly secured, I started to pile leaf litter and dirt on top of it, hoping it would break the wind and soak up rain, if any fell that night. I took care to not use my injured hand, making progress painfully sluggish. However I did not want to risk an infection, opting for a slow and steady pace, instead of having to amputate my hand later down the road. Not that I’d be able to do it, much less decide that I needed to do it.

As the last of the scarlet color left the sky, leaving it to be claimed by the coming darkness, I completed my shelter. The bleeding had thankfully subsided but the pain was still there. Still, there was some pride in what I accomplished, even if it could probably not be trumped in shoddyness and caused me an injury. I stood before it, proudly taking in its sight, wishing I could show someone that “Hey! I got motivated enough to do something by myself!” But alas only the chirping of insects and the call of birds were with me.

Still, the work was not done. As the daylight drew away, the temperature started to fall quickly. While the shelter provided protection from any winds that might descend the mountain, a fire was needed to actually keep me warm throughout the night. The only problem: Everything around me was sodden. There had to have been a strong rainstorm maybe the day before, leaving everything wet as can be. Most of the twigs I found that could have been used for kindling would probably not work. But now, having achieved building a shelter, I felt as if getting a fire going was the next step for a successful survival. After all, it would allow me to boil and safely drink the riverwater.

After gathering up a couple of sticks, twigs, pieces of bark and what seemed the driest leaves around I gave it my best shot. I started off by breaking one of the sticks apart, so it had a point. Then I tried the method to turn one of the sticks with the palms of my hand, as I had read somewhere this was the easiest technique for a novice. Don’t know if that is true, but I sadly didn’t have a lighter with me.

I started turning and hoping. Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn… nothing. Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn… again nothing. My palms started to hurt. Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn…

Nothing.

Between the pain of my injured hand, the slightly bloody streaks along the stick and the exhaustion in my tendons I was close to giving up.

Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn… A glimmer of hope… And nothing. The pain was getting excruciating, the bleeding worse.

Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn… Until… A bit of smoke appeared! So I continued a bit further, in hopes of getting enough of a spark to ignite the moist kindling I had.

Placing the kindling atop the heated sticks and blowing gently…

Nothing.

It was getting darker and hard to see what I was doing. I was close to giving up. But I didn’t.

Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn…

Tears. My vision started to cloud.

Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn…

A splash. A tear had rolled down my cheek and the spot I was trying to heat up with friction. It was over. Even if it did start to smoke, it was too dark to tell. I wouldn’t know if it was hot enough to ignite the kindling. My first night started cold, fearful and crying.