part of a book

Well my name is Glenn J Clark I am 23 years old. I am from a small town in the south east corner of Iowa called Keokuk. I spent a lot of my time in the woods around my house since I was a kid. There was not much else to do in my small town.

You can say it was kind of dangerous looking back now. Not that I could get lost just we use to play with water moccasins and kill some of them. We use to play on this big hill that was made out of clay and lose rock it was really steep it was called clay mountain. There was suppose to be a kid that fell off back in my dad's time that broke his arm and leg falling. If you busted your head open I am sure you could die but it was a lot of fun back then. We spent a lot of time trying to catch small fish that we found in the deep pools of soap creek and trying to catch the minnows that were all over. We used rocks to hit them and kill them or we used rocks to set up a trap to keep them in one place so we could grab them with or hands. Back then there was some frogs not a lot. There was not many Leeches back then. That was because the waste that some stupid guy that worked on cars would let the gas and oil run in to the creek. Last time I was back there for every 5 rocks you flipped over the was like 3 Leeches. So the environment has to be getting better. It was right behind my house across the rail road tracks. That I live in at the time my dad still lives there now.

I spent a lot of time learning about animal tracks from the books I read to the Internet pictures that I could find I went back there and followed them around and tried to figure out why they went certain places and what they were doing and if they were running or walking any thing I could learn for years I did a lot of this and i took cast of them.

I trapped a lot of animals back then too. I think all that work of reading tracks helped a lot. I mostly caught possums because my dad did not like them destroying the garden, wine grapes, and fruit trees. I got 3 ground hogs out from under the wood pile. We use that wood to heat our house. I got some coons but let them go a lot because I wanted to see the population go up since they only have 1 to 3 baby's. Possums has more and pushes the population of the coons down. It seemed that every time I trapped a coon was when the bait was fresh like that night I would get a big healthy coon. But when the meat or what ever I was using at the time was old and had gone bad there would be a possum there waiting for me. I guess coons don't like stuff that has gone bad. I am sure they do in the city since there ain't much fresh stuff but not here they seem to dang picky. Well just growing up by the woods it is kind of like your cave man ways kicked in and you learn a lot when u are a kid own how to catch stuff and some survival ways. When I got older I still spent a lot of times in those woods.

Once we were a little to old to play hide and go seek but we still did for the heck of it and I hid in a ditch full of snow with my army pants on and my car heart coat and a stump to the left of me and the creek to my right. I sat there waiting for them to get close to me they got closer I riped a big piece of bark off of the stump next to me and sat it in the snow to hide my face and keep my hands behind it and they got really close about 6 feet away looking right at me I thought they had caught me but no they did not see me and the woods had a lot of shadows so I guess my black coat blended in good and my army pants looked like the woods and I sat there then they left to look in different spots then a while later my mom was yelling for us to come home I sat in that snow in army pants for over a hour. I was kind of surprised that I sat there that long. There was always some strange reason we got drawn to those woods. One cold night with out a coat with a lot of blankets we decided to spend the night back there I don't know why we did it we sat up are little camp right there on the rocks it was hard and every one stole the covers I was laying there shivering a lot and so cold with no coat or cover because every one else took them so I lay there and feel a sleep. I woke up to 2 coons fighting by my head wakening me up they were like 4 feet a way. I woke some of the others. They thought it was cool after the coons left I feel back a sleep. Then one day me and a friend decide it would be really cool to have a shelter or under ground place to go so we dug all day the ground was really hard we dug about 4 foot deep and about 3 foot wide and we all decide that night we would sleep in that hole we got candles for light and covered it with this strange metal boat thing we found in the woods as the night went on it got colder and colder both of them went in before the night was over with I decide that I was going to stay by my self in that hole in the woods and I made it all though the night. I have not been in those woods for some time now. I was thanking about all those times in the wood and me setting the traps all the time. It got me to thank could I real survive out there in the woods if I had to. I know how to catch a poisonous snakes and kill them with out getting bite I know how to catch minnows and that would be my food too. What about water what about heat like a fire or fresh water since that water had some nasty stuff pulled in to it time after time. Could I make a shelter to keep me a live. So I studied a lot of this.