Free Surviving Bear Island by Paul Greci Page B

didn’t really need to deal with the weather unless you lived in it.
    You only needed to pay attention to the things that were threatening you. I mean sure, you paid attention to other things, but you didn’t have to.
    Out here, I needed to pay attention to everything. Like where I put my feet so I didn’t fall. Was the hook secure on my gaff? Was a bear following me? Did I have enough firewood to at least last the night? Little mistakes could turn into big mistakes. Like my dad said, when you’re alone in the wilderness, everything is magnified.
    I headed for the creek, ready to try my new gaff. At my kitchen, the coals from my cook fire had been scooped out and scattered. A pile of bear scat dotted with blueberries crowded the tree I’d slept under that first night.
    We are all potentially food for something else.
    Okay, okay, I thought. All part of the cycle. Everything is made of recycled nutrients. Berries, bears, people. And once you’re dead, you’re just a pile of nutrients.
    Like, if I died out here, what happened to my body wouldn’t matter. Bears would chew on me. Gulls would peck my eyes out. Bugs wouldgnaw on me. Flies would lay their eggs. They’d hatch, and the maggots would feed.
    I kicked the bear scat out from under the tree. This was still my kitchen. I wouldn’t turn into bear food—not without a fight.
    I stopped to look and listen, then stepped out of the forest, squatted by the stream channel and drank.
    I forded the first two channels, then walked across the gravel bar to the main channel, anxious to pull a struggling salmon from the stream. I scanned the water for signs of movement. For swaying dorsal fins.
    But all I saw was empty water. I squinted at the channel, like if I looked hard enough, they’d magically appear.
    â€œWhere are they?” I said.
    I glanced upstream. I wanted to fish out in the open. Where I could see. I didn’t want to go up the creek, and be closed in by trees and brush. But there had to be some fish up there. That’s where they spawn. But there had to be bears, too.
    A cramp ran through my abdomen. I took a step upstream. My chest felt raw. Like I was breathing in tiny fragments of glass. The next couple lines of my mom’s song about leaving the yard ran through my head.
    It might be scary, especially at the start.
    You’ve gotta take that step. You’ve gotta have some heart.
    Where the gravel bar ended and the channels came together, the water ran deep. I backtracked a ways, crossed the side channel and followed it up to the same spot on the stream bank. In the beach grass I saw the rotting remains of bear-killed salmon.
    Make noise to let the bears know you are there, especially if you can’t see very far. The last thing you want to do is surprise a bear in a tight spot.
    â€œHey bear! Hey bear!” I called as I continued upstream, using the same phrase my dad used.
    The beach grass ended and I entered the forest. The rush of the water seemed louder, echoing off the trees. My mom’s lyrics about having heart kept popping into my head.
    I’d taken like ten steps up the creek and was ducking under a fallen tree, when I heard a big splash. I jumped backwards, the back of my headslammed into the tree and I fell on my face. My teeth dug into the wounds in my mouth, and I tasted blood.
    I rose to my knees.
    â€œHey bear! Hey bear!”
    I stood up and rubbed the back of my head and spit bloody saliva. If a dead tree could take me out, I really didn’t stand a chance against a bear.
    There were no bears to be seen, but I made out the shape of a fish at the bottom of a deep pool. I raised the gaff and slammed it into the water but missed the fish, which moved but stayed in the pool. I nosed the gaff into the water and tried to ease the hook under the fish and pull, but the fish kept evading me.
    A steady ache settled into the back of my head. I spit more bloody saliva, rinsed my mouth