Weeping Willie

                                      WEEPING WILLIE
                                      By Dahn Batchelor

    Billy Jones was only six years old in 1955 when he was first called Weeping Willie. It happened when he was brought to kindergarten at the Willows Elementary School on Victoria Street near the center of Victoria, a city at the southern part of Vancouver Island in B.C., comprising of a population of 78,000. Willie was a mommy’s boy; no doubt brought about because his mother, Grace, mothered him too much.
    When she took him to the school for the first time, they were late and all the students were already in their classes. Some of them later remarked that when Willie (he liked being called that) arrived, his wailing was not unlike an air raid siren and it could be heard throughout the two-story structure. When he was taken into his kindergarten class, he was weeping and continued to do so even when his mother sat with him for the first five days, hence his nom de plume, ‘Weeping Willie’.
    By the time he was ten-years old, his weeping wasn’t as prevalent as it was when he first went to school but he would cry when he was teased and that was  often, especially if the teacher chastised him for some wrongdoing or other. He would wail non- stop if he had to walk to and from school by himself so his mother  walked him to school and picked him up after school even though their home was
only four blocks away.
    Willie’s father, Robert was a chief petty officer in the Canadian navy and was stationed at the Canadian Forces Base in Esquimalt, the Canadian military’s main Pacific naval base that is located at the western part of Victoria. He was a rugged man who liked hiking in the forests of Vancouver Island with other petty officers. He once went overnight camping with his wife and child but Willie made such a scene of it, he never took them camping again. He was not impressed with his son. He wanted him to be a man, not a baby. He gave up trying to make a man out of Willie and left the care of his child to his wife. He realized that was a mistake. She would continue mothering him and that would simply prolong his childhood even when physically, he would eventually be turning into an adult.
      Willie’s parents decided to take him to a child psychologist who would give him various tests and interview him over a period of six or seven hours. When his report was complete, he asked Willies’ parents to meet with him for a consultation several days later.
      The psychologist began the meeting by saying, “I think I know how you can stop his incessant crying. Crybabies are whiners who lose control. It is not pleasant to watch, and it is damaging to their role in society. There are two strong reasons for not whining: First, it is not pretty, and second, whining shows that your child doesn’t really understand what is going on around him. Every one of us has our own triggers when it comes to dealing with difficult situations. Those triggers stem from our backgrounds, perspectives, and from our goals in the situation at hand. But there is good news. There are ways to deal with even the most difficult children that can bring out their best.”
         Robert smiled and said, “I’m pleased to hear that.”
        The psychologist continued, “The first step is to get to know your son—to know what needs he may be trying to fulfill that causes this problematic behavior which triggers his constantly whining.”          He looked at his notes and then continued. “Generally, people in any given situation are task oriented or people oriented. Their concerns center on one of four goals: getting the task done, getting the task done right, getting along with people, and being appreciated by people. When they perceive that one of those concerns is threatened—the task is not getting done, it is being done incorrectly, people are becoming angry in the process, or they feel unappreciated for their contributions—difficult people resort to certain knee-jerk responses. Responses range from being passive, such as withdrawal, to minor aggressive behavior or actually exploding into a tantrum. The difficult person often does not recognize that his behavior contributes to the very problems that he is attempting to address.”
Grace quickly responded with, “He doesn’t generally go into tantrums.”                                                                 
      “Well,” responded the psychologist, “whining is a reduced form of having a tantrum.”He continued. “You have said that your son is sometimes aggressive and angry. He probably feels paralyzed, as though he’s been pinned to the wall. Avoid rude remarks and the rolling of your eyes. It makes your son look and feel foolish. Children who are whiners tend to explode into uncontrolled ranting that has little, if anything, to do with what has actually happened.”
        Grace added, “But he often just stares at me when I tell him to do something. He gives no verbal or even nonverbal signals that I can interpret. He
spreads gloom, doom, and despair whenever he comes home from school.”
      The psychologist replied, “That is because he feels helpless most of the time and becomes overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all. He wants things to be perfect, but nothing seems to go right for him and he is too embarrassed to tell you and subsequently, he unintentionally shares his misery with you.”           The psychologist looked out the window for a moment and turned to the couple and said, “Everyone has the potential to be difficult given the right, or wrong, circumstances. To understand why, consider the concept of the basic orientation people have towards other people and the task at hand. Couple that with the typical way your son responds under pressure on a continuous basis from aggressive to assertive to passive. Then add in the goals your son strives for under different circumstances when they occur.”
        “What goals are you speaking of?” asked Robert.                              
        “Any goal, be it small or overwhelming. When the goal is to “get it right,” people under pressure who still have a task orientation but a more passive personality such as your son, become helpless, hopeless, and/or a perfectionist. They become whiners and will stare blankly in your face rather than face up to the task you give them because they don’t believe that they can reach your expectations. When that happens, they complain endlessly that nothing is right, exacerbating the situation by annoying everyone around them with their constant whining. Your son’s lack of follow-through can have disastrous consequences to him for which he does not feel responsible. When the people he wants to get along with become furious because of his blank states or his whining, he may offer to do even more than he can do, building his life on what other people want but when he fails, and he more often that not, does fail, it builds within him a deep well of resentment.” 
      “What can we do to correct this problem?” asked Robert who by now was really concerned at what he was hearing from the professional sitting in front of him and his wife.                                                  
        The psychologist smiled and replied, “Your son is avoiding conflict by avoiding having to make any choice at all. Making a choice probably upsets him and yet, when anyone makes the choice for him and he doesn’t like it, he gets upset and goes into his whining mode and then blame will be heaped on the person who made the decision for him. Your son delays choosing until the choice is made for him by someone else or by the circumstances that occurs at that moment. When your son gives you a blank stare, he wants to avoid hurting your feelings. The old saying, ‘If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all’ gets carried to the ultimate extreme in his case. Because of that, your son avoids sharing a genuine and honest opinion about himself and therefore he never really achieves the feeling of getting along with everyone. He must be given tasks that he is able to fufil and when he fufils them, he must be made to feel good about his accomplishments.”                                                            Grace asked, “What kind of tasks do you have in mind?”                              
        “Send the boy to a children’s camp. It is there that he will be given various tasks and when he accomplishes them, his tasks will get harder but he will know by then that the harder tasks are given to him because the staff believe that he is capable of doing them. Staff who are properly trained will know how to increase the intensity of each task as he progresses through them.”                                                             
        The couple thanked the psychologist for his advice and as they drove home, Robert turned to his wife and said, “I know just the camp to send him to.”He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it earlier. He would send him to Camp Thunderbird, the YMCA-operated camp just east of Sooke, a town that is sixteen and a half miles west from the center of  Victoria as the crow flies.The camp is on Glinz Lake Road and the camp property comprises of 1200 acres of wilderness and has a small lake called Glinz Lake covering an area of four square city blocks right at the edge of the camp. The camp has 150 campers and 55 staff and learning camp craft and hiking in the woods that surround the camp and going on overnight camping trips was just what his son needed to get him out of his babyhood. He would send his son to that camp for a 27-day period. It made a man out of him when he camped at Thunderbird when he was a boy so if that didn’t make a man out of his son, then nothing else would.
      As an incentive, Willie’s father lent him his large Bowie knife, a sheath knive that had an eight-inch blade.  Willie’s response was “WOW!” His mother’s response was,      “Robert! You can’t be serious.”
      Although Willie’s siren-like wailing was non-stop while his father was driving his son to camp, by the time they arrived, it had been reduced to mere whimpering.      When they got out of the car and headed towards the director’s office, several boys were standing nearby and one of them who recognized Willie, cried out, “It’s Weeping Willie!”  That turned on a flow of more tears; he hated being called Weeping Willie.
      Jack Thompson was the camp director and the Boys Work Secretary of the Victoria YMCA. He and Willie’s father were old friends. There were cabin mates at Thunderbird when they were boys and their friendship continued when they became adults. When they met at the Y just before the 1954 camping season began, Robert explained to Jack as to the reason why he wanted his son in camp.
      “Teach him as much camp craft as you can and make sure that he goes on hikes and especially on overnight camping trips.” said Robert firmly. “I want his damn weeping to end this summer. Make a man out of him!”
      Jack thought for a minute and then said, “I doubt that I can turn a ten-year-old boy into a man but I will try my best to stop his constant crying.”
      When Robert took his son into the camp director’s office, the director was waiting for him. Standing beside him was Mathew, an eighteen-year-old college student who was to be Willie’s cabin counselor. When he saw Willie enter the office, he walked over to him and put an arm around his shoulders and said, “Willie. Why don’t you sit by me and I will tell you something about our camp.”
      Mathew told Willie about the games they play, about the campfires they have every evening, the weiner roasts, the swimming and about the delicious meals they eat.
      By then, the tears had stopped flowing. That is probably because whenever Willie was being told stories of adventures, he was all ears instead of all tears.
      The tears and crying started up again however when his father said that he was leaving but after his car was out of sight, Mathew put his arm around Willie again and said, “Willie. I am going to be your best friend and now I will take you to our cabin where you will meet seven new friends.
      The director made sure that none of the boys in that cabin went to the same school that Willie went to. If he could refrain from crying, they wouldn’t call him Weeping Willie like the kids at his school did.  The director also decided that his cabin wouldn’t go on the two-day overnight camping trip until the last week of his 27-day stay at the camp. All the boys in his cabin were there at the camp for the full 27-day period. That would give Willie and the others enough time to learn camp craft and go on all-day hikes in the forests surrounding the camp.
      Each day, except on Sundays, the boys had to spend two hours every morning learning campcraft. They learned how to build campfires, how to start a fire without matches or a lighter, how to make and cook bannock, (It tastes like pancakes) how to use an axe, how to put up a tent, how to tell direction from looking at the moss on the base of the trees, how to read a compass and a map, how to make a lean-to out of the branches of trees and many other things.                                                             
         Willie was an astute student. He remembered everything he was taught and more importantly, he enjoyed learning camp craft. He also enjoyed being taught swimming although he balked at first. He laughed at the skits performed in the evening at the campfire sessions and even played a role in one of the skits his cabin performed for the camp.
      More importantly, the few boys that called him Weeping Willie were spoken to by the director and from then on, he was simply called Willie. He was pleased with that. It was the first time in four years that kids called him Willie without the prefix ‘Weeping’ placed ahead of his name. 
         Then after a week at the camp, his cabin was going to go on a four-hour hike into the woods. He was tensed up when he heard that piece of news. Up to now, he hadn’t left the immediate area of the camp. He hadn’t even walked around the small lake on the well-beaten track on the other side of the lake because there was a deep forest along side of the track. He hadn’t even ventured into the forest behind his cabin. To him, the woods were dark places where only dangerous, wild animals wandered. It was true that bears were in the forests but they kept well away from the camp. The screaming kids were enough to keep the most ferocious of all animals away from the immediate area of the camp. However, he and his cabin mates were going to go beyond the immediate area of the camp and into forests that extended for many miles in every direction beyond the camp property. 
         Temperate rainforests comprising of coniferous and/or broadleaf forests occur in the mid-latitudes in areas of high rainfall. Most of these occur in oceanic-moist climates in Northwestern North America The mountainous area on Vancouver Island is covered with a lush maze of ancient coastal rainforests with huge trees more than 2,000 years old stretching higher than 30-story buildings. With circumferences exceeding 9.4m (31 ft), it would take at least five tall adults to completely embrace these giant trees. The main big tree species include Sitka Spruce, Western Red Cedar and Douglas Fir. These are the kind of trees that encompassed Camp Thunderbird. It was these kinds of forests that Willie and his cabin mates were going to venture into. It was these kinds of forests that terrified Willie.
      “Don’t worry, Willie.” said one of his cabin mates.  “The trees won’t hurt you unless they fall on you and crush you flat as a pancake.”
      Another boy chipped in, “It’s the big Grizzly bears you have to worry about. Some of them are as big as our cabin. When they catch you, they will bite you in half with one bite.”
      Of course, the boys were exaggerating. First of all, large trees don’t fall on their own and although Vancouver Island is home to a healthy population of Black Bears, as of yet, there are no Grizzly bears on Vancouver Island.
      His counselor told him that the back bears are smaller than a cow. He told Willie that male bears on average are about about 500 pounds and female bears weigh about 300 pounds. When walking on all fours, they are approximately five feet in height. He added that they generally keep away from people as much as they can. His assurances didn’t really alleviate Willies’ fear of going into the unknown but he knew that if he started crying as a means of getting out of going on the hike, the moniker, ‘Weeping Willie’ would resurface and stick on him like crazy glue. That being as it was, the next afternoon, he would join his cabin mates for the ‘long trek into the woods’.  He would also wear his Bowie knife like gunslingers wore their pistols. He would be ready for any wild animal that had the temerity to attack him. 
      The next day, from two in the afternoon until five, the cabin counselor took his campers along the trails that led them deep into the forest that began on the other side of the lake. Fifteen minutes into the trek, the trail ended and from then on, the counselor hacked his way through the underbrush with a large machete until they got to a stream. After resting at the stream for half an hour, he led them back to camp and they arrived exactly at five, just in time for supper.
      Willie wasn’t afraid for two reasons. The first reason being was that he was walking so close to his counselor all the time, his counselor was worried that he might accidentally hit him with the machete.  The second reason was that he was so fascinated by the size of the trees, he forgot all about any wild animals he might encounter.
      It was during the middle of the fourth week that he became worried. Wednesday was the day in which the entire camp was going to play Capture the Flag. The camp was divided into two teams and each boy on one team had a red balloon fastened to his belt and the boys on the other team had a bright blue balloon fastened to their belts. Two of the counselors of the red team hid their red flag in the forest on the other side of the lake and two counselors from the blue team hid the blue flag in the forest on the other side of the camp. Half of each team would protect their flag and the other half would search for the other team’s flag. If their balloons were broken by members of the other side, they would become their prisoners. It sounded like fun but what worried Willie was that each boy would be paired up with another boy and as it turned out, the boy that Willie was to be paired up with was partially blind and they (and other paired teams) were given the task of  searching for the red team’s flag.  He realized that to some degree, he would be on his own because the other boy had to rely on his judgment as to where they were to go in the forest.
         For an hour, they wandered aimlessly in hopes that they would find the other team’s flag when suddenly they were pounced on by four campers from the red team. He told his partner to run but the other boy stumbled and the four boys from the red team pounced on him and broke his balloon. Now he was their prisoner.
      Meanwhile, Willie fled deeper into the forest until he could no longer hear the voices of any of the campers following him. He stopped to catch his breath and rested while sitting on the ground with his back against a stump. He was tired and after taking a swig of water from his canteen, he gradually drifted off to sleep.
    He awoke at five in the afternoon. The sun was behind the mountain to the west and storm clouds were overhead. Within minutes, he saw a flash of lightening that was followed a second later by a loud clap of thunder. He had no idea how far he was from the camp and worse yet, he had no idea where he really was. All he knew was that he was deep inside a large forest with only the shiny Bowie knife to protect him from the ferocious animals he suspected were just waiting for him to fall asleep again.
    He began to cry and was glad that no one saw or heard him wailing in the semi-darkness that was gradually enveloping him. He realized that it was pointless for him to to try walking around the forest while searching for the camp so he pulled his jacket around himself tightly and turned his cap backwards on this head  so that the peak of the cap would prevent the rain water from running down his back. His back was the only part of him that was not soaked as his back was pressed hard against the stump. By the time it was dark, Willie was asleep again.          
         It was at eight in the evening when Willie’s parents got the phone call.  Grace picked up the phone and ten seconds later, she dropped the phone on the floor and screamed out to Robert. “Willie’s missing! He’s lost in the forest!”
         Robert grabbed the phone off the floor and asked, “Who’s this?”
         “It’s Jack, Robert.”
         “What happened?”
         “The campers were playing Capture the Flag and Willie was with one of the other boys and they got separated when the other boy was captured.” Jack paused for a few seconds and then continued,  “Your son ran further into the forest to hide and he didn’t  return to the camp when the bell was rung to signal everyone that the game was over.”
         Robert said angrily, “My wife and I are driving to your camp.”
         Jack said in reply, “We will put you both in the guest room in the administration building.”
         Forty-five minutes later, they left Highway 14 and began driving up the winding logging road leading to the camp.  It was completely dark by then.
         When they walked into the administration building, they saw a reporter and photographer from the Victoria Times talking to the director. One of the boys in the camp had called his parents who in turned, called the Victoria Times.
         Jack walked to Robert and Grace and said, “We had the counselors searching for your son until it got too dark to continue.”
         Grace began crying. “My poor boy. He’s all alone in the forest in all this rain.”
         Jack said, “He’s been taught campcraft and he has a knife. Hopefully, he has built himself a shelter.”
         Robert responded, “I doubt it. By the time he realized that he was truly lost, it was probably too dark for him to build himself a leanto.”
         Jack then said, “We have been in touch with a number of the local people in Sooke, the police and the forest rangers and they will be here at five in the morning to begin searching for your son.”
         “How many searchers are you talking about?” asked Robert.
         Jack replied, “I estimate around fifty.”
          Robert nodded his head in approval.
         Grace cried out. “Why can’t they be here now searching for Willie?”
         Robert replied soothingly, “It’s too dark, dear. When it is light, they will begin searching for him.”
         The next morning, at around five, the searchers began pouring into the camp.   
        The person in charge of the searchers was Sergeant Davis of the British Columbia Provincial Police. As a child, he spent many summers in Camp Thunderbird and was familiar with the surrounding forests.          
        He divided the searchers into four groups. The groups were named, North, South, East and West. Each group would be headed by men who lived in the area. Each of the four groups would search in the directions their names implied. The largest group would be the West group since Willie was last seen in the forest west of the camp. Each group had loud hailers in which Willie’s name would be called out and every searcher had a photocopy of the map of the area and each team had a two-way radio. The camp cook had made sandwiches for all of the searchers so they could remain in the forests all day. When they would return by seven at night, there would be a hot meal waiting for them at the camp.
         At six in the morning, the searchers began heading out of the camp in search of Willie. Robert went with the West group and Grace, who had helped the cook make the sandwiches, remained in the camp.
         It wasn’t until seven in the morning when Willie awoke. The rain had stopped but the sky was overcast. His clothes were soggy and he knew that he would sicken if he didn’t get out of them. He also remembered his camp craft instructor telling him and the other boys in his camp craft group that when you are soaked through and through, take off your clothes and swing them repeatedly around the air until they dry. Normally he wouldn’t strip off his clothes if people were watching him as he was extremely bashful but it really didn’t matter now that he was alone in the forest. Within minutes, he was swinging his clothes around his head. It took an hour for them to be dry enough for him to get back into them again.
         Willie wasn’t sure which way the camp was because he didn’t have a compass with him and he forgot the lesson he was taught with respect to the moss growing on the south side of the trees. If he remembered that part of the lesson, he would face the moss and then go in the direction of his outstretched right hand since he was west of the camp. As it turned out, he headed north thinking he was heading east.
         Willie’s father and the group he was in initially spread out so that they were approximately a hundred yards from each other. They tried to keep in a straight line but that was impossible. Each man had a different terrain to cross. Some walked along gullies, others climbed small hills and others stomped through thick brush. Within an hour, many were out of touch with one another. They did however call out Willie’s name every few minutes so if Willie was in their immediate area, and he was conscious, he would hear their voices and respond accordingly.
         Unfortunately, Willie was nowhere in the area the men from the West team were heading. In fact, he was at least a mile north of them and moving further away from them. The searchers who were heading north were at least a mile to the east of Willie who was to their left. Of course, the two search teams who were heading south and east respectively were moving even further away so their searches were fruitless.
         By the time sundown had arrived, the men were all back in camp and Willie had made himself a small leanto and was sleeping inside of it in hopes that the rain, if it were to come, would not penetrate the branches from the small cedar trees he had cut them from.
         Willie’s mother was becoming frantic and was for the most part, in tears when she wasn’t crying. Her husband tried to soothe her as did the female cook  but it was too no avail. Willie was their only child and they couldn’t have another and if their son died in the woods, they would never recover from the loss of their only child.
        The next morning was just as cold as the day before and the sky was still overcast. It hadn’t rained overnight so Willie was dry when he awoke. He was hungry since he hadn’t eaten for at least thirty-six hours but since he had nothing in which to trap animals and no matches to build a fire to cook them, and since he chose not to eat grubs and other insects (as he was taught how to eat them in camp craft) and he was afraid to the eat red berries in the bushes as they were poisonous, the pangs of hunger gnawed at him. Thinking of pancakes and roast beef and dessert merely intensified his misery.
        As he continued to walk north, he saw small cliffs on both side of him and decided to walk in the gullies between them. All the time he was doing this, he was slowly coming to the realization that he must have been walking in another direction other than east. After all, he couldn’t have been that far west of the camp when he got lost. It was about then that he finally realized that he should have looked at the moss at the bottom of the trees. When he finally did, he realized that he had been walking northwest of the camp and was probably miles from the camp by then. He sat down to think and after a while, he concluded that if he headed east, he would eventually reach the road that continued for miles north of the camp. Once on the road, he could simply walk southward back to the camp.
         It was about two in the afternoon when he was walking eastward when he first heard a faint noise ahead of him. He stopped in his tracks and cocked his ears in an effort to pick up the sound again.
         Suddenly the bushes ahead of him parted and a large black bear began running towards him. Willie turned abruptly and began running westward, crashing through the bushes and ducking the branches of small trees all the while.
        He didn’t stop running for fifteen minutes and when he finally did, he was totally exhausted. Again he cocked his ears but all he heard was the wind blowing among the trees and bushes surrounding him. He decided to sit down and rest. What he didn’t know was that the bear was a female bear that had a small cub and for this reason, it stopped chasing Willie in the first minute and had returned to its cub.
         At the camp, the director was on the phone with the commander of the armed forces base at Esquimalt. Arrangements had been made to have a helicopter fly over the surrounding area of the camp with a heat detection device in hopes that the crew in the helicopter would spot Willie below them. Also, a loudspeaker was attached to the outside of the helicopter so that the crew could give Willie instructions to remain where he was. The helicopter would begin flying over the area in less than an hour and after refueling, would continue flying over the area until dark.          
         Meanwhile, Willie looked up towards the sky to see if there was any signs of rain heading his way. For the previous hour, the sun had been out and the day had been getting warmer but when Willie looked up into the sky, he became distressed. Dark cumulus clouds were heading towards him from the west. They were well over 7,000 feet above him and the top of the largest one was anvil-shaped which told Willie that a cold front was approaching him. This also meant (according to what he had been taught during one of the campcraft sessions he attended) that there would be lots of lightening and thunder (which he hated even when he was safe indoors) and heavy rain. He knew he had to find shelter and find it as soon as possible since it was too late to build a leanto. 
         At four-thirty, the helicopter was flying past the camp and heading northwest when minutes later the crew  spotted on the screen of the heat detection device movement in the forest below. The crew member with the binoculars looked down through the trees and yelled, “It’s a bear!”
         The pilot responded, “Oh God! We don’t want that bear around while that boy is roaming around in the forest. Contact the forest warden and ask him to bring in a hunter with him to hunt down the bear and kill it.”
         Minutes later, the warden was on the radio talking with the pilot. “Kill the bear? Are you mad? We don’t shoot bears. We trap them.”
         “You had better shoot this one because if you don’t and it sees the boy, it may chase the boy and kill him.” responded the pilot.
         The warden phoned one of his hunter friends. “John. This is Barry. Do you still have your 303?”
         The warden told his friend why he was needed. Within minutes, John Davis was on his way towards Camp Thunderbird with his Remington 303 rifle.
         Meanwhile, unknown to Willie, he was only a quarter of a mile east of  Sooke River Road which at its southernmost end was just east of Sooke at Highway 14. To the immediate north of him were some cliffs and he figured that he might find a hollow at the base of one of them. Within an hour, he found what he was looking for. The hollow wasn’t large but it was large enough for him to stand in and it was six feet deep.  He knew he was going to have to spend the night in the shelter so he began plucking up ferns and laying them on the ground in the cave so that he could at least sleep more comfortably than he did the previous night. He also picked up small twigs and dried leaves because he realized that although he didn’t have any matches or a lighter with him, he might be able to start a fire with friction, the way he had been taught during his campcraft sessions. The fire would keep him warm and hopefully keep the bear away from him.
         Starting a fire with friction is no easy task. Willie had been taught the bow and drill method of fire making. He undid the leather shoelaces of one of his boots and attached one end around a small branch which he had found lying on the ground and after looping it once around a straight stick, he tied the other end of the boot lace to the other end of the small branch after bending it slightly so it was like a bow. He found a small rock which had a small hollow in it so he placed it above the stick so that he could hold the stick firmly as it turned backwards and forwards as he drew the bow back and forth. The point of the stick was in a small hole he previously created in another piece of wood lying about and as it turned, the point and the wood it was in began to heat up. It took him ten minutes drawing the bow back and forth before a flame suddenly appeared and lit the dry leaves which in turn began burning the small twigs. He ran out of the cave and began gathering up dry twigs and returning with them to the cave. All the time he was warming his hands over the fire, he was thinking about bannock in a pan being baked. A week earlier, he was taught how to bake bannock in a pan and he was surprised how good it tasted when eaten with butter. Thinking about it just increased his pangs of hunger. Within minutes, it began to rain heavily and ten minutes later, the area lit up with lightening flashes and moments later, they were followed by thunder.
         At five-thirty in the afternoon, he heard a  sharp sound followed by the echo. It was the sound of a rifle being fired. He had never heard one before other than what he heard when rifles were shot in movies. What he didn’t know was that the hunter who was a kilometer east of him had shot the bear cub accidentally and was now searching for the cub’s mother.
        When it began getting dark, the hunter went to where he had shot the cub and later brought the dead cub back to the camp. Everyone was shocked. The head of the forest rangers said angrily, “Do you know what you have done? Now the female bear will wander all over the area looking for its cub which will increase the likelihood that the paths of the bear and the boy will meet.”
      The next morning, Willie began walking past the cliffs in hopes that he could find a easier way to get to the top of them. By noon, he discovered a way to get to the top of the highest cliff. He figured that if he could reach the open area of the surface of the highest cliff, the helicopter flying overhead would spot him. The forest went up a steep hill running eastward and once he got to the top of the hill, he could see that the top of the cliff was half a mile to his right at the bottom of a gentle slope.  The forested area between him and the clearing at the top of the cliff was covered with underbrush but there appeared to be a deer path leading down the slope.
        Willie began to run towards the open area of the top of the cliff when suddenly he tripped over a root sticking out of the ground. He tried to regain his balance before falling and in doing so, he twisted his left ankle and as he began to fall forward, he stuck out his right arm to break the fall and in the process, broke the bone in his upper right arm. He screamed in pain as he fell down onto the ground. He immediately passed out.
        It was dark when Willie came to. The pain in his ankle and right arm was excruciating so he chose to remain absolutely still as the slightest movement of any part of his body increased the intensity of the pain.
        Back at the camp, his parents were extremely fearful. They knew that the bear was still on the loose and the hunter hadn’t returned to the camp. Everyone at the camp knew the hunter was familiar with the area so he couldn’t have gotten lost. Many suspected that the bear got him.
        The next morning before the sun rose over the horizon, Willie woke up. He was drenched from the rain that had fallen earlier. He rolled over onto his stomach and tried to get up. It was impossible as the pain from his foot and arm was unbearable.     
        He realized that if he was to be found, he had to get to the clearing at the top of the cliff. Fortunately, from where he was, there was a slight decline to the clearing but he was at least a quarter of a mile from it. Walking towards it wouldn’t have taken him more than five minutes but crawling to it would take him much longer.
          By eleven in the morning, he reached a small clearing in the forest about the size of a dinning room table. As he crawled through it, he realized that there was fresh blood on the ground. What he didn’t know was that the blood was at the spot where the bear cub that had been shot the previous day.
          It wasn’t until four in the afternoon when he finally reached the clearing at the top of the cliff. As he pulled himself closer to the edge of the cliff, he saw the camp down below, approximately a mile from him. He could see cars and the buildings in the camp but couldn’t make out the people moving about.
If the helicopter flew overhead, with luck, it would spot him. Unfortunately, the helicopter wasn’t flying over his area. It was circling an area several miles south of him.
          He remembered watching a movie in which a signal was sent to others on a different mountain. The signaler used a mirror that reflected the sun’s rays to the people on the other mountain. He also remembered that when he was being taught camp craft, the signal for assistance was three shots or three flashes. The problem was that he had neither a rifle or a flashlight. Then he remembered his Bowie knife. The blade being eight inches in length and an inch and a half at its widest part  and the blade’s surface being shiny as a mirror might just do the trick.
        He pulled it out and turned it back and forth. He was concerned however that the reflected sunlight might not be aimed towards the camp so he placed a small stick in the ground which was between him and the camp and when the reflected sunlight shone on the stick, he knew that anyone in the camp who happened to be looking towards the cliff, would see the flashes. He kept it up until the sun slipped behind some clouds.
        That night, he saw all kinds of flashes in the camp and at first he thought that it was the people in the camp letting him know that they knew that he was on the top of the cliff. But soon he realized that what he was seeing was simply the boys moving about with their flashlights.
      With his left hand, he drove the knife in a small piece of wood beside him and slowly turned on his left side and went to sleep.
        Sometime after midnight, he woke up. He heard what sounded like someone or something moving through the underbrush  behind him. He couldn’t see anything. He was about to shout “I’m here!” when suddenly he realized that if it was his rescuers, the immediate area they were in would light up from the light of their flashlights.     
        Minutes later, whatever it was, had stopped moving. All he could hear was the wind in the trees. Then he heard the rustling of underbrush again. Whatever it was, it was on the move again. It was coming closer to him. He realized by then that it was probably the bear.
        He was right. It was the bear. Bears have a keen sense of smell. It had returned to the clearing where its cub had been killed and after sniffing about, it picked up the scent of the cub’s blood that was on Willies’ clothes. Thinking that its cub was alive, the bear began following the scent.
        Suddenly he heard the bear’s breathing. It was up close. He expected to hear the bear growling but bears don’t growl. They grunt when they are relaxed but this bear wasn’t grunting either.
        Within seconds, the bear nudged Willie’s back with its snout. Willie almost let out a scream but be kept his mouth shut lest his screaming alarm the bear. 
Willie prayed to God that his death be quick. Never in his life had he been so scared as he was now.
        One of the greatest misconceptions is that mother black bears are likely to defend their cubs against people.  They usually do not.  No human deaths are known to be from black bear mothers defending their cubs. That being as it is, the bear that was next to Willie apparently had no intentions of harming him. Unfortunately for Willie, he didn’t know this.
      He tried reaching for his knife but because he was laying on his left side, he was unable to reach for his knife with his right hand as his upper arm was broken.
      The bear laid down against Willie’s back and didn’t move but its heavy breathing kept Willie awake for hours, keeping him in a state of fear.
Willie finally drifted off to sleep and when he awoke at seven in the morning, the bear was gone.
      A young boy in the camp had previously been looking across the lake a half hour before Willie woke up when he suddenly became aware that there was a small bright, white light at the top of the cliff. He approached a man nearby who had some binoculars around his neck and asked, “Mister, can I look through your binoculars for a minute?” The man handed the boy his binoculars.
      The boy looked at the cliff again but he still couldn’t figure out what was causing the glare. “Mister?” he asked, “Can you tell me what that light on the top of the cliff is?”
      The man took his binoculars back and put them to his eyes and looked for himself. “Jesus!” he said to himself. It was either the hunter or the missing boy.
      Within minutes, the entire camp was looking at the cliff and staring at the glaring light. Gradually the light faded and then it wasn’t seen anymore. What they didn’t know then, nor did Willie know until later, was that when he stuck the knife into the nearby piece of wood the night before, the next morning’s rising sun’s rays glanced off of the mirror-like blade and reflected the sun’s rays into the camp while Willie was still asleep.
      It took a rescue team an hour to get to the clearing on top of the cliff. What they saw was Willie, lying on his side motionless with his Bowie knife stuck in a small piece of wood a foot from him with one side of the blade facing the sun. When Willie heard voices behind him and realized that it wasn’t the bear that was moving through the underbrush, he called out, “I’m here!”
      Two hours later, he was brought into the camp on a makeshift stretcher. As his parents ran towards him, Willie asked if he could be helped to his feet. The men lowered the stretcher to the ground and helped him to his feet. It was apparent to the men that his left foot was badly swollen so two of the men supported him.
      The campers went wild when they saw Willie trying to walk towards the administration building with his parents running towards him. A chair was brought out for him to sit on. The reporter asked Willie to tell him what had happened to him while he was lost in the forest.
      When he had finished telling his story, his mother said in a loud voice, “I sent my child to camp as a baby and he has returned to me as a man”
Willie smiled throughout all the applause and then he asked his mother, “Does this mean that I can stay up late at night?”
      His mother leaned towards one of the reporters and whispered, “He has every right to hope.” Willie heard that remark.
      “DAD!” cried out Willing in a pleading voice.
      His dad looked at him with a big smile and replied, “It’s negotiable, my son. It’s negotiable.”
      Willie smiled again and then he mused to himself. ‘No more Weeping Willie anymore. The next kid that calls me that is going to get a punch in the nose.”