Surviving 72 Hours in the Forest Alone (CHALLENGE & EXPERIMENT) (2)
who didn't pack on as many pounds and were desperately trying to add weight.
These bears are far more dangerous than they normally would be- and this fact would come
into play very soon.
I decided I'd use the knife to make a spear, and hunted around for a long, decently thick
branch I could use.
It took a bit of time but I managed to find a nice hardwood branch with good length on
it, but instead of sharpening the tip into a point, I decided that the branch was stiff
enough to simply split the top of it in a cross-shape.
In an emergency, I could jam the open knife into the tip deep enough to stay firmly secure
and I would have myself a pretty efficient and deadly spear- far deadlier than a sharpened
stick.
It would probably only last a few jabs into a big animal, but that should be more than
enough to drive it back.
Next I set about working on a way to contain and transport water.
Notice again that I'm more worried about water than food, I really can't stress enough how
important water is.
This being a pacific northwest rain forest, I knew I couldn't rely on the poncho forever
as I would eventually need it to stay dry myself.
I tried finding discarded tree bark hoping I could fashion a few pieces of bark into
a rough bowl shape, but I actually got even luckier than that- I found a white plastic
bag.
Normally I hate people who litter, but in this case it ended up being exactly what I
needed.
Though you still shouldn't litter.
Water is good, but water safety is also very important, so next I worked on a way to help
make the water from the creek safe to drink.
I found tree bark which I could rip off, and I managed to get a large, curved piece which
I could bend just slightly into a very shallow bowl shape.
It wouldn't hold much water, and I'd be reduced to basically taking sips at a time, but it
was the best I could do.
I'd need fire to make the water safe though, and this proved far more difficult than anything
before.
It actually took me until just a few hours before nightfall to get a fire going.
Starting a fire with no tools has always been one of my weak areas, and it didn't help that
most of the wood I could find was pretty humid thanks to how wet the pacific northwest tends
to be.
Without tools the best way to start a fire is to gather some kindling, dry pine needles
work like a charm, and a piece of large, soft wood.
You can typically find soft wood in the large branches of living trees, or just split a
very young tree in half.
The wood from dead trees is hard, and no good for this- but it is good for the second thing
you need, a stick of very hard wood.
Basically, you create a channel down the middle of the soft wood and put your kindling at
the bottom of it.
Then with your hard wood stick, you rub it up and down the channel over and over again.
Repeatedly.
For hours.
Until you finally cause enough friction to actually light the kindling.
Now I've seen people do this in just fifteen minutes, but it took me hours to get it going.
Like I said, not my strong suit in the survival game.
Eventually though I had a small fire just outside my lean-to, and I gathered up some
large flat rocks so that I could eventually cook on them.
For now though I had spent my entire day setting up shelter, building tools, and finding water,
so there wouldn't be much food to eat.
Instead I heated up one of the large flat rocks in the middle of the fire, and then
pulled it out with sticks.
I immediately placed my make-shift bowl on the hot rock and filled it with as much water
as I could manage- which wasn't very much, tree bark makes for terrible bowls.
Boiling water was going to be out of the question without metal tools, but if you can heat water
up enough it can destroy harmful bacteria.
It is an imperfect solution, but like I said before, survival comes with risks and your
job is to simply mitigate, not negate, those risks.
With a decent little camp set up, I returned to the creek as the sun started to set, hoping
I could score some water critters for dinner.
I didn't want to be away from camp when night fell so I wouldn't accidentally get lost,
so I didn't spend much time looking.
Sadly the only thing I managed to score was some edible lichens, which wouldn't do much
to curve my hunger after not eating all day.
That's alright though, because I had water to drink and that was far more important.
Dealing with hunger is easy as long as you're hydrated.
That night I planned my strategy out for day two.
I had dried my clothing over the fire, and dried my feet off by holding them close to
the fire.
Water was nearby and plentiful, and I figured with only three days out here I could risk
getting sick by drinking without treating the water, because trying to sterilize sips
of water at a time just wasn't going to work out long-term.
I knew I was only a few miles from the coast, so I planned on following the creek to the
beach to find mussels and other edibles- the coast can be a bonanza of stuff to eat if
you don't mind the gross taste.
All in all, my situation was looking pretty good- I even managed to keep embers going
in a small pit inside my lean-to when it started to rain outside.
Then, things took a turn for the weird, and the very dangerous.
I don't know at what time of night it was, but I woke up to the sound of, I don't know.
It almost sounded like human screaming, but more high pitched.
The sounds were coming from a few miles away, and I have to admit- it had me really spooked.
I'm pretty familiar with the sounds of the American wilderness, and this was no screeching
owl or bellowing elk or wounded animal of any kind.
The sounds changed between short, high-pitched screams, and then long, very deep howls.
Sometimes they would come from one direction, and there would be a reply from a completely
different direction.
I've never been around wolves in the wild, so it might have been a wolf pack for all
I know, only I'm pretty sure there are no known wild wolves in the pacific northwest.
The howls and screams came pretty intermittently, maybe once or twice every ten minutes or so,
but it lasted for a long while.
I wasn't going to risk going to sleep with an unknown animal out there so close by- maybe
it was one or two weird, or wounded elk, they can actually bellow pretty loud.
I've just never heard them scream in this style before.
Either way, wounded animals are dangerous.
It was lucky that I stayed awake, because at some point- again, hard to tell time without
a watch- after the howls and screams settled down, I heard heavy breathing, grunting, and
shuffling in the woods very nearby.
I already had my knife wedged into my makeshift spear shaft, and I honestly felt my blood
go ice cold, because I was pretty sure I knew exactly what was lumbering my way.
These were sounds I recognized.
A black bear lumbered through the trees, just a few dozen feet away.
I held perfectly still hoping it wouldn't decide to investigate my makeshift camp, but
it probably spotted my lean-to and though the same thing I was thinking when I built
it: dry shelter in the rain.
Sure enough, it started slowly sniffing and plodding towards me.
I had no fire going, just some smoldering embers in a dirt pit, so trying to scare it
away with fire was out of the question.
Anybody who's served in the military is probably familiar with the OUDA cycle.
It stands for Observe, Understand, Decide, and Act, and it is typically referred to in
terms of how to psychologically defeat an opponent by interrupting their OUDA cycle.
Knock one of those steps out of the cycle and you can cause an enemy to mentally freeze
up.
It is also however a handy mnemonic device for dangerous emergency situations, and everyone
from pilots to special forces operators typically train themselves to kickstart their own OUDA
cycle in an emergency.
The first thing I did was carefully observe the bear.
It was definitely not full-grown, and was a fair bit on the lean side of things.
This meant two things: an inexperienced juvenile that had not done a very good job of fattening
up for winter.
On one hand, it could make the bear desperate for food, and humans make good eating.
On the other hand, it was likely weak, and if it had been so outcompeted for food then
it was likely a bit of a pushover.
I also tapped into what I know about predatory animals.
They prefer to ambush prey or launch hunts on their terms- predators are notoriously
shy animals and can have very low confidence when confronted.
This is because if a hunt goes awry, they can suffer an injury, and this could impact
their ability to hunt and possibly lead to starvation.
This is why you never run away from a predatory animal, it's usually better to simply back
away confidently.
Running triggers the hunt instinct, because you confirm to the predator that you are weaker
than it and scared.
I decided to take a huge gamble, and I ran out of my lean-to straight at the bear shouting
and yelling, thrusting with my spear.
All things considered, I was basically trapped inside the lean-to, and a bear can easily
outrun you.
It was a risk, but remember what I said about wilderness survival being risky?
The bear immediately reared up on its paws, which was bad news bears- pun intended- because
it meant that it might try to fight back.
Luckily for me, yelling and stabbing at the air in front of it like a wild man did the
trick, and the bear lost its nerve and scampered back.
I've been in close calls before with wild animals, but I have definitely never faced
off a bear standing on its two hind legs.
It is not something I care to ever repeat again unless I'm packing a .45 on my hip at
minimum.
The bear lumbered off, but I knew it wasn't safe to stay where I was.
Any minute the bear could change its mind, so I packed up what few things I had and immediately
took off into the pitch black, rainy woods.
Normally you never want to move at night time, as it's really easy to lose your bearings.
If you have to, use stars above you to pinpoint a single direction of travel and to stay in
a straight line.
That way in daylight you can retrace your steps and reorient yourself from more familiar
ground.
I walked for about fifteen minutes, and had to wait out the rainy night under a thick
pine.
Luckily the rain abetted after a few hours, but I didn't get a lick of sleep that whole
night.
The next morning I made my way back to my old camp and sure enough, the bear had returned
and trashed the place.
I made the right call.
Luckily, days two and three were far less eventful.
I relocated my shelter to the other side of the creek, and it didn't rain for nights two
and three.
