Free Surviving Bear Island by Paul Greci

just to look at those drawings. Everything was there, behind that chain with the sign that said, No Trespassing.
    But out here, you take a good look around. Eat for a few minutes. Take another look around.
    Eat.
    Look.
    Eat.
    Look.
    And listen.
    Always listen.
    And while I ate and looked and listened, my mind pounded with one word: Shelter.
    Shelter.
    Shelter.
    Shelter.
    I worked my way through more berry bushes that had been stripped by bears, searching for another patch they’d missed. I was dodging more mounds of bear scat when I noticed a pile that was smashed in the middle. My mind flashed to the bear scat I’d stepped in my second night stranded on the island. I found an undisturbed pile, stepped in it and studied the result. It looked just like the smashed down pile. It was a print. A boot print.
    â€œDad!” I yelled. “Dad.” I kept moving through the bushes calling for him. I mean, who else could’ve made that track. And he’d be looking for berries just like me.
    I didn’t see any more tracks and no one answered my calls. Maybe he was just out of shouting distance. And, he would come to the stream because the fish were there.
    I returned to my sorry excuse of a camp.
    Don’t sleep where you eat. Keep your kitchen separate from your bedroom. Keep a clean camp. Don’t give a bear a reason to be interested in where you sleep.
    I stood next to the smoldering fire. I knew I couldn’t build my shelter here—with the fish-smell. Didn’t want to be easy prey or I’d never reach the Sentinels.
    But I also knew that I needed to stay here for a little while. I mean, acreek full of fish. If I could stuff my face for few days, build up my strength, then I could make a push for the Sentinels. Plus, this is exactly the kind of place my dad would search for, too. Where there was a food source. That print just had to be his.
    Just above the highest strand line, shielded by a band of alders, I discovered an earthen bank about eight feet high. It was kind of dark beneath it because the alders were so thick, but it was a solid wall.
    I studied the bank, trying to imagine a shelter.
    BEFORE THE ACCIDENT
    â€œDad, there’s a rock straight ahead. Go right.”
    â€œThanks, Tom.”
    The boat swerved and we glided by the pale green rock peeking out from the trough of a wave. We hadn’t seen a sea lion in over an hour.
    We rounded a point and the wind hit us straight on. I pulled harder and kept licking the salty spray from the waves off my lips while keeping an eye out for more rocks poking through the surface, and for more sea lions and whales.

CHAPTER 12
    I DRAGGED five large deadfalls to the edge of the bank and slid them over, about two feet apart from each other. I gathered sticks and branches, and placed them every-which-way across the deadfalls to make a roof. Something to get me out of this constant rain.
    I hauled a bunch of rocks from the beach and built fire rings half-in and half-out of the shelter on the two open-ended sides.
    Then I sat inside and tested it out.
    Yeah, it was damp and dark. Cold, too.
    Just a triangular cave—dirt wall, stick roof, moss-and-mud floor. I hoped it’d feel different with a couple of fires blazing. And I knew I could make it better. Water was already dripping through the roof. But if I spent all my time on the shelter, it’d just turn into a tomb.
    I wasn’t Mr. Skinny when I started this trip, but I was now.
    My clothes hadn’t magically gotten bigger, but they hung on me.
    And my face? I’d seen my reflection in a puddle yesterday. It looked like it’d been stretched, the way it’d appear in one of those fun-house mirrors.
    I scavenged for more berries between my shelter and my kitchen, but they were play food compared to the fish.
    At my kitchen I grabbed my gaff, and life vests, and headed back to my sleep shelter.
    Energy. It takes energy to make things happen. Sometimes it takes a big