Camping

The Huntress
         Lacey and her grandfather had been traveling for a few days before they found a suitable campsite. They had spent their days hiking and foraging for wild nuts, berries and mushrooms, and once, Lacey had managed to shoot a squirrel with her bow and arrow. The nights had been spent huddled up underneath a makeshift cover fashioned out of leaves and branches designed to keep them mostly dry.
         They had a very limited amount of equipment with them. Lacey had a knife and her bow and arrows, one change of clothes in case what she had got wet, a waterproof bag filled with matches, a map and a compass, and a water purifier and canteen. Her grandfather carried the same, except he had a gun for hunting, a few bottles of booze, a flare, and a small, very basic first aid kit.
         Lacey had protested at first when her grandfather wanted to bring the gun. “Pops, it’s too unnatural. The whole point of a survival trip like this is to get by without any modern day amenities. A gun is a modern day amenity and it will make hunting too easy.”
         This trip was her grandfather’s birthday present to her. Ever since her grandmother died, Lacey and her grandfather had become very close and they went camping or hunting several times a year. Before that, Lacey had hated going to see her grandparents because her grandmother had been obsessed with the idea of making her into a proper lady. She had been forced to go to etiquette classes and tea parties and balls and a whole host of other stuffy events that bored her senseless. About a month after her grandmother had died, Lacey’s grandfather had called her mother with a suggestion.
         “Haruka, my dear. I think it’s about time that Lacey learned to hunt and survive outdoors. The martial arts training you have put her through has sharpened her senses and I am sure she would make an excellent outdoorsman...uh…woman. What do I need to do to convince you to let me start teaching Lacey outdoor survival skills?”
         It hadn’t taken much. Haruka assumed her daughter would hate the whole thing and never want to go back. She didn’t know why the old man had called her instead of his own son to get permission to take Lacey hunting, but she didn’t ponder that too much. She felt bad for the old man, he had been a drunken wreck since his wife died and she thought a camping trip with his granddaughter might pull him out of his depression. She said okay under two conditions. The first was that her daughter was not to be trained to hunt with a gun. Haruka hated guns and she passed this on to her daughter. Knives, swords, arrows, slingshots; all of these were acceptable weapons in her mind but a gun was out of the question. The second condition was that the old man had to stay sober if he took her daughter out in the woods. No alcohol. Period.
         Lacey’s grandfather found himself much more capable of fulfilling the first requirement than the second, but he quickly found a way around that. Lacey was 15 years old at the time and much more like her grandfather than anyone really wanted to admit. He packed alcohol on their first trip and told Lacey that she was free to help herself as long as her mother never found out. Problem solved.
         And Lacey loved camping. She loved hunting. And she absolutely loved getting drunk with her grandfather at night while they sat around the campfire and he told her stories from his past. He had been a navy seal and had gotten to go on a lot of really incredible missions in countries all around the world. The old man had a giant scar on the left side of his face which he said was from when they went to Pakistan to raid Osama Bin Laden’s camp and kill him. Her mother told Lacey that story was a lie, that Osama Bin Laden was never actually killed and that her grandfather got his scar from a hunting accident. But when he told the story it was so improbably fantastical that Lacey couldn’t help but believe it. Her mother had a distrust of the American government anyway, and her grandfather’s story corroborated with what she learned in school so Lacey chose to believe the old man.
         About a month before Lacey’s 18th birthday, her grandfather called her up to tell her what her birthday present from him was going to be.
         “Hey kiddo, I don’t want you to be disappointed when I show up at your party empty handed. I’ve spoken to your parents and convinced them that you are ready to go on a survival trip. A real survival trip where we only bring the most basic supplies and live off of the land while navigating our way through the wilderness. This is going to be my birthday present to you. We need to start planning now, however, because I want to leave a few days after you birthday and I’m planning for the trip to last about a month. What do you think, kiddo, you want to go?”
         “Pops! You’re serious? You’re the best! Of course I want to go, are you kidding!” Lacey was ecstatic. She had told her grandfather often of how she wanted to learn to live off of the land completely, and he had been teaching her skills to do so, but she never could have imagined she would get to actually do it. Especially with her grandfather, and for a whole month!
         They planned the trip carefully, argued for about a week over what supplies would be acceptable, Lacey didn’t want to bring anything other than a map and a knife, she argued that a true survival trip meant that they would need to make what they needed once they got there and use the sun to gauge their direction, but her grandfather had insisted on a few fundamentals. Ultimately they had to be safe, he said, it was foolish to go into the wilderness with absolutely nothing. It didn’t take much to convince Lacey to allow him to add alcohol and a flare to the list (for recreation and rescue), the first aid kit and the water filtrator took a little more work, and Lacey stubbornly refused to allow the gun and the compass for weeks. They finally came to a compromise a few short days before they were scheduled to leave.
         Lacey was to bring her bow and arrow and that would be their primary weapon. Her grandfather brought his gun but he was only allowed to use it in an emergency situation where the bow and arrow wouldn’t work to protect them from danger. Any hunting was to be done with traps and weapons they made while they were there. And the compass was only to be used if they became lost. Lacey had taught herself to tell direction without a compass and she was eager to test out her new skills. Her mother had insisted on the change of clothing and her grandfather snuck in the matches and the canteen when Lacey wasn’t looking.
         In the end, Lacey was so glad to be there that once they got started, all of her objections to their choice of supplies had completely disappeared. She was on a survival mission and that was all that really mattered. They arrived at the main river three days into their hike and about halfway through the fourth day they found a suitable camping spot. It was a small clearing about 50 feet from the river’s edge, right next to the tree line. The clearing was just big enough for them to build a small, temporary shelter; a fire; and space to move around or set up anything else they might need.
         They immediately set to work at making the campsite more suitable to their needs. Lacey scanned the tree line for branches that could fall in inclement weather and climbed a few trees to knock them down. Better now than in the middle of the night while they were sleeping. Her grandfather called these branches widow makers, because if they fell on you while you were asleep they could kill you, making your ‘wife’ a widow. Lacey hated the term though and refused to use it.
         Lacey grandfather went into the woods to gather foliage, firewood, kindling, and branches that they could use to make a shelter and set up their campsite. They both set off on their respective missions without saying a word to each other, because they didn’t need to. Years of camping together had given them the ability to set up camp and divide up responsibilities based on the needs of each campsite and each of their respective abilities without needing to speak.
Once Lacey finished with the trees, she went to the river and started gathering rocks. Some of these she used to begin setting up a trap for fish so they could eat something other than nuts and berries for dinner. The others she hauled back to the campsite to use for cooking and to surround the fire. She finished with the stone and went into the woods to find some sticks and branches to finish off her fish trap. Lacey found two that were perfect for spearing and put those to the side. The rest she used for the back or her fish trap where the water was too deep for rocks. When it was complete, she had fashioned a large circle of rocks and sticks in the water with an opening in one end. Then she had placed a large log through the middle of the opening that reached to the edge of the river. It was set up to basically funnel any fish that swam along into the circle. Once she had a decent number of fish in there, she could close off the trap and spear away.
She sat on a nearby boulder and started hacking away at the spear sticks to make them nice and sharp. She was excited to have found two good sticks so quickly, good, straight, solid branches that were good for spears were sometimes difficult to find. In Lacey’s opinion, it was essential to survival to find and make a few good spears as quickly as possible. They were great for fish and often better than a bow and arrow when hunting small game. Since she and her grandfather were so far away from civilization and not returning home for quite some time, they would not be going after any large game since there was no way to save or transport the meat.
After about an hour, Lacey’s trap had work and her spears were ready. She quickly turned the log to block the entrance of the trap and stood along the edges waiting for her opportunity. She speared two fish and then opened up the trap to release the rest. Then she brought the fish back to the campsite where she knew her grandfather had already started a good fire, because he was as hungry for real food as she was. She gutted the fish, set them up for cooking and then started setting up the sleep area. Her grandfather was putting a shelter together, fashioned out of sticks and leaves, to protect them from the rain and she was responsible for making their beds. She scanned the ground for rocks, sticks and roots jutting out of the ground and started clearing everything from the areas most suited to sleeping.
She then dug out small holes in the ground for their behinds to lay in to make the ground less flat and more comfortable for sleeping and then used leaves and sand to make ‘beds’ on the ground. The fish was finished at about the same time she was, and she and her grandfather ate ravenously. Then he broke out one of his bottles.
“I think it’s about time we gave ourselves a treat, don’t you? The campsite is basically set up and we’ve been hoofing it for almost four days now. How about we take a break?”
Lacey smiled at her grandfather. “Definitely Pops! I was hoping you would say that!”
The two of them proceeded to get smashed by the fire and talk about life. They discussed Lacey’s first year in college, and her plans for the future. Then he got her to tell the story of how she had been kicked out of boarding school for hunting on the property at night and on the weekends. Her grandfather loved to hear every detail of that story, from how she went about hiding her bow and arrow and snuck the meat into the cafeteria, to the part where she got caught. His favorite part was hearing about the look of shock on people’s faces when they learned that they had been unknowingly eating squirrels and other rodents for the past year.
Then Lacey’s grandfather started telling her war stories. At this point he had begun to get fairly drunk, and he was talking about a time he had been engaged in hand to hand combat with somebody.
“What types of training did they give you Pops? I heard they used to teach Krav Maga to the troops back then, is this true?”
“Yes ma’am, it was the best kind of training to disarm a man and get him under your control fast. Which was important back then, because you never knew if the man coming at you had a bomb strapped to his chest, so we always had to immobilize them as quickly as possible.”
“But Pops,” Lacey replied, “I don’t understand why they taught Krav Maga. There are so many types of martial arts out there that are so much better than that for immobilizing the enemy. Most of these types are fluid and gentle. Krav Maga is so barbaric, really.”
         “What are you saying girlie? Are you trying to insult my training? The choices of my country?”
         The only thing Lacey and her grandfather ever fought on had to do with his level of patriotism. Lacey’s mother had instilled feelings of doubt and mistrust in her regarding the government and its purpose, and those feelings had stuck. She didn’t believe that politicians had everyone’s best interests at heart and that most of them were primarily after their own selfish means. Her grandfather, on the other hand, was devoutly patriotic. And right now, really drunk and slightly irrational.
         “No Pops, that’s not what I am saying at all. I’m just saying that I don’t understand why the government chose to train the troops in that method in particular. I have Krav Maga training, but I have found some of my training in other forms of martial arts to have advantages over that one.” She was trying to calm him down, but she wasn’t willing to back away from her point. She had always found Krav Maga and other western adaptations of martial arts to be rather distasteful.
         “Oh really!” Pops was angry now, and when he was drunk and angry it wasn’t a good combination. “Why don’t we test that theory out, huh?” He picked up the bottle of booze they had been drinking and finished it off. “Let’s try out a little hand to hand sparring session. I will be the enemy, coming at you with a weapon.” He smashed the glass bottle onto a nearby rock, shattering the bottom off and pointed the broken end at her menacingly. “You will be the patriotic citizen that you are and you will keep me from injuring or killing either you or the rest of your team.”
         He got up, lost his balance for a second, and then lunged at Lacey wildly. Stunned at the fact that her grandfather was actually attacking her, Lacey didn’t move until it was too late. He jabbed the broken bottle at her face and sliced her cheek open. Lacey gasped and reached up to touch the wound. Once she pulled her hand away and saw blood, her training kicked in and she snapped into action. One of her feet swung out and she kicked her grandfather’s legs out from under him. As he fell, she jumped up and grabbed him, quickly wrapping his arms behind his back and softening his fall in a move so quick he didn’t realize it was happening until it was over.
         She sat on his back for a few minutes, pinning his arms and waiting for his breathing to slow and his grunting to stop. She wasn’t letting him back up until he calmed down. He struggled a bit at first but she had him in a position where he couldn’t get up from underneath her, even though he weighed about 80 pounds more than she did. Finally he relaxed underneath her and she got off of him.
         She jumped back out of his reach before he could get up. Once he was up he went back to where he had been sitting before and sat down. Lacey reached back up to her face. “You cut me.”
         He looked sad. “I’m sorry kiddo. You ok? I got out of control there a little, didn’t I?”
         They didn’t say anything else to each other for a while. Lacey cleaned her wound and dressed it, using her survival knowledge to do so without using the first aid kit. She couldn’t decide if she was mad at her grandfather, or just shocked. Her grandfather got the fire settled down to embers for the night and then crawled into his bed. As Lacey was turning in herself, she saw him reach up to his head where he touched his scar. “Guess you have a battle mark like me now, huh kid? Your mom is going to kill me.”
         “No worries Pops, I’m not going to tell her what happened. It was a hunting accident, okay? Go to sleep, we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”