The Great Empty North

Canadians grow up on survival fiction. While I can't say for sure that the same isn't true for Americans, there are a number of books, songs, stories, and movies that circulate in the blood stream of Canadian schoolchildren about the glory and danger of nature, the big empty thing that occupies most of our country. Trappers who live out in the woods killing mounties and beavers, kids who live for months at a time with no one around off their own instincts, stuffy, arrogant British explorers poisoning themselves and their crew on polar bear meat, that kind of thing. I wrote this, which I tentatively peg as the first chapter in a larger, ill-defined work in my head, thinking about my cottage, about nature, about the whole idea of the "outdoor adventure" lifestyle which was, when I last lived in Calgary, the source of a nice paycheck. I like the idea of a group writing blog, and I also like the idea of criticism from you guys, especially those of you who write more and better.

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1.
Daniel looked out over the stream, the wreckage of the plane, and the smooth stones and pebbles that made up the creek bed. There was some question in his mind as to how long he had been there; he was conscious for sunrise, watching the last flames of the planes engine flicker away, but he could not remember anything before that.

Was I on this plane?

At first, it didn't look like he had been. His clothes, hastily purchased at the Mountain Equipment Co-op only days before, were completely unscathed. Earlier, as he crouched over and stared incredulously at the burning wreckage of the Cessna, he remarked to myself that, stripped of its more traumatic elements, the image could be appropriated quite easily to an outdoor clothing catalogue. Get Back to Nature, it might say, in thick confident lettering, focusing the reader's attention on the serene, focused expression Daniel's face. The implication: Look how human this human is. Why aren't you this human? Of course, this human wasn't serenely focused at all. If anything, his face was two or three steps behind his brain, which was slowly piecing together the what, why, how, when, and where of his present situation.

His brain was also notably behind. It would be well after lunch (he guessed by looking at the sun) before he felt the ache of his broken ribs, and the long, superficial gash that stretched down the back of his arm surprised him almost two days later.

Daniel had often thought of living out in the woods on his own. "Survivalism", he always joked, was something of a hobby in his family. First, it was an occupation, as generations upon generations of individuals who contributed the necessary genetic data to make Daniel hunted, and traveled, and lived, as we would now put it, "close to nature". Now, drowning in material comfort, the Millers occasionally felt the need to head away from the cities and towns they occupied, heeding a call they say they hear and say they can not ignore. Thus, a hobby, like model train building or pederasty.

After a period of time that had no obvious beginning, Daniel stood up and took a look around. In every direction, mountains, each one jutting a fair ways above the tree line. To the north, across the stream from him, there was a clearing stretching about 20 metres in to a dense wall of pine trees. The grass was a greenish-yellow, broken in places by shocks of orange lichen and grey-black rock, and it stood in strong contrast to the dark, impenetrable green behind it. Flying bugs of various shapes and sizes darted around the grass. From where Daniel stood, they all looked like fuzzy golden specks, shifting around randomly in the sun.

There, Daniel thought dumbly, is where I will set up camp.

I can't rush this. These things take time. Daniel stood at the edge of the river bed, trying to prioritize. Well, I probably need food, and some kind of shelter. Even in his thoughts, Daniel's delivery was underwhelming. He thought of all the survival stories he'd read and watched, and of how the antagonist was always very careful and deliberative. Even children (The Hatchet, Brian's Winter, The River), it seemed, were able to tap into some long dormant voice in their head. They just had to listen, and someone (themselves) would tell them what to do. But for Brian, that wasn't happening. He couldn't pick out a single place that would offer him good shelter, nor could he think of a good food source.

If I had a gun, Daniel mused, I could go find a moose, shoot it, and then cook it over a fire. I can definitely start a fire, I just need a good enough reason.

This certainly wasn't the dumbest idea Daniel had ever come up with, but it ranked competitively, somewhere alongside agreeing to travel north into the Rockies in the first place. For a man in his 20s, Daniel had accumulated an impressive collection of bad decisions; more impressive, still, that he had learned very little from them. If pressed on it, Daniel would describe the trajectory of his life, from childhood in Calgary, to university in Kingston, and then back West to a comfortable and meaningless career in the mining industry, as wholly inexorable. He was dragged (but not kicking and screaming) from institution to institution to occupation, led forward in life by something that he couldn't quite describe. That something was upper middle class wealth and privilege, but he preferred the notion that destiny had made a place for him at some grand dinner table in the future. Beyond that, the gentle, steady force that he imagined guiding him provided Daniel the ability to avoid painful, deep introspection. He was a man of faith, but he wasn't spiritual.

Clouds began to gather in the morning sky. A less absorbed individual would have worked this observation into a hypothesis: it's going to rain. Daniel, however, just kept thinking about a gun.

Would the pilot have kept one? At that, Daniel turned and faced the quietly burning wreckage. He hadn't thought about the pilot at all until now. Guilt and horror washed over him. He ran over to the plane and peered into the front.

It was a small float plane, with no more room than was necessary for the pilot (Dave) to fly Daniel up to the mine for a week's visit. Daniel peered through the charred frame of what must have been the cockpit window; everything was cooked black, beyond recognition. If Dave's body was still in there, Daniel reasoned, there's no way I would know it. He must be dead. He thought about a burial, or some kind of service. Daniel knew from their conversation in the plane that Dave was Cree, born and raised on the Tsuu T'ina reservation just outside of Calgary, but he wasn't sure how that should factor in.

Another blanket of hot shame enveloped Daniel. He had left a man to die, and he couldn't even remember it. Almost instinctively, he knelt down, and began to weep. Not far from him, two gray jays fought it out in a tree. Clouds continued to gather: within the hour, it would start to rain. On his elbows and knees, on the smoothed out pebbles in front of the burning metal bird, Daniel tried to make what he was experiencing seem real, but he couldn't.