She laughed, bent down, and picked up a handful of snow. “Because this is only water there is.”
“Yeah, but we could melt it – ”
“What would we melt snow in?” she asked. “What would we soak hide in?”
She had a point. We didn’t exactly have any metal cauldrons sitting around.
We needed a container… something large…
A pit in the ground?
No… once we melted the snow, the water would just seep through, not to mention it would be muddy as hell…
An already-treated, waterproof hide?
No, it wouldn’t be large enough to hold the water we needed.
I looked around in despair… and then saw a fallen tree about 70 feet away.
That’s it!
“Come with me,” I said.
She frowned, not knowing what I had in mind, but she put on her snowshoes along with me and accompanied me into the forest.
We searched a long time until I found what I was looking for: a massive hardwood tree that had snapped in two close to the ground, leaving behind a stump.
Pines often snapped in two because they were far more fragile than oaks or other hardwoods – but their trunks were far too small in diameter for what I had in mind.
Most hardwoods that fell over were blown over by a storm and completely uprooted. I didn’t need an uprooted tree, I needed a stump – preferably one with a diameter of five feet or more. And what was essential was that the stump had been around long enough for the center to rot out, leaving a deep depression – almost a natural bowl. And the wood around it would need to be intact and seasoned, meaning that it could hold water.
Needless to say, it took a while to find what I wanted – more than two hours, since a lot of our likely candidates were buried under several feet of snow. But when we found it, it was perfect: a stump about three feet tall and six feet wide, which had rotted out in the center to create a hollow I could fit most of my body into.
“Help me clear this out,” I said to Lelia, and we used stones to hack away at as much of the rotting wood in the center as we could.
Then I created a fire just a few feet away, using one of my matches to light some tinder and kindling. Within ten minutes we had a raging bonfire.
Then I began finding rocks that weighed around five pounds and placing them amongst the logs.
While the rocks heated up, I packed the interior of the stump with snow.
Then I rolled out the rocks and, using sticks as tongs, dumped them into the snow-packed stump.
They went right through the snow like a blowtorch through butter.
We kept rotating more stones into the fire, and taking out the ones inside the stump once they had cooled down.
Once all the snow had melted, it filled up less than half the stump – which was to be expected, because snow takes up a lot more space than water. So we dumped more snow in, which immediately melted and added to the volume.
We now had a lot of very cold water. But that wasn’t what I had in mind.
We kept throwing in stones, waiting for the heat to transfer, and then fishing them out and putting them back in the fire.
We were fighting the cold air, but we managed to get the water up to well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Go get the hide,” I told Lelia, and she took off for camp.
I stayed and kept the cycle of rock-warming and heat transfer going.
Part of me wanted to jump in and use the water as my own private Jacuzzi. I hadn’t had a bath since I’d arrived here, and was sure I was past the point of ripe. Funny, though – when you’re out in freezing temperatures fighting for your survival, the little things like smelling good went by the wayside.
Lelia hadn’t complained. I was lucky in that she didn’t smell bad at all – in fact, if anything, her body gave off a slightly sweet scent of musk. All the women’s bodies did.
I thought about stripping down and waiting in the water until Lelia got back. I smiled to myself, imagining her surprise.
Only problem was, it would be a bitch and a half getting out.
We had no cloth to dry with, so the water would immediately start freezing on my body as soon as I exited the makeshift tub.
Being soaking wet and getting into my clothing had absolutely no appeal. If anything, I would probably die of hypothermia from the water freezing.
Plus there was the little matter of what would happen if wolves or skiris attacked while I was in the tub.
I figured it was unlikely, but Murphy’s Law was all about the unlikely becoming the unavoidable.
I imagined myself lounging in the tub, bow in hand, firing arrows casually out at skiris and wolves alike.
Can’t get the bow in the water, though, I thought to myself in amusement. If the wood absorbed the water, it would become too pliable –
I stopped, my eyes wide.
‘Too pliable’ –
That was it!
When I selected an ash sapling for a bow, I was looking for ones that were strong enough to keep their shape, but juuuust flexible enough to bend when you strung them. After all, they needed to be able to keep a lot of tension on the string in order to powerfully fire an arrow.
As I was looking for saplings that were the right size, I came across plenty that were far too pliable. They would bend too much to be useful.
But the saplings that would be bad for a bow would be perfect for what I had in mind now.
I raced around and found a hardwood sapling that was too small and flexible for a bow. I cut it down with my saw, then stripped off the bark. When it was finished, I had a very green, flexible stick about an
