Okay, Raven’s been watching Tasha out at her shack. Guess what happened? One day she’s over there chopping away at a corner of the cabin, when all of a sudden she stops and heads into the woods with the axe. A while later, she comes out and has a couple of nice straight branches you might use to fashion into a walking stick, or in Tasha’s case, a couple of spears. She gets them all sharp how she wants them, practices a few lunges, and heads back into the woods with the spears.

Of course Raven followed, and from the trees above, watched her as she slowly made her way through the forest, crouched in an attack position and listening. Suddenly she stops. She’s heard something. Her head rises slightly to maximize her hearing. She sniffs the air, and out of a thicket wanders a wild boar, unaware of her presence.

These boars are all over the island. There was a craze going on about 30 years ago, and everyone was buying and raising wild boar for resale or to throw on the barbecue as a novelty. It was kind of, ‘Hey wouldn’t it be cool to eat a wild boar?’ For a short while you couldn’t go anywhere without people serving wild boar. The problem was, the boar were much more aggressive than domesticated pigs. They soon broke out of their pens and ran to freedom. By then everyone had figured out they were such a pain in the ass to raise, no-one wanted them back. Now the boar are all over the island, wild, mean and ornery.

Out wanders this boar and he’s a big one. Quick as a flash, Tasha throws one of her spears, but didn’t do much damage. The boar turned and it glanced off its rear flank. It hadn’t even noticed Tasha until she hit it with the spear. Then it squealed and turned on her with piss red eyes and charged.

Did Tasha bring the second spear to use defensively if need be? Not at all. It was to be used for close combat and as the boar charged, so did she. There’s no telling you how dangerous this was. Only a few weeks ago, three of our dogs ran into a boar, and that fight ended in a stalemate. A couple of the dogs were limping when it was over, and we don’t keep lapdogs around the commune either.

Without hesitation, Tasha charged the boar. Raven swept down from his perch to get a closer look, and be nearby if need be. Tasha got the first strike in, and she lodged the spear deep enough into the boar's rib-cage to draw blood. Not deep enough to be fatal though. Quickly she pulled out the spear and struck again, this time right at the boar’s neck, but the spear ended up glancing off the top of its head. The beast was enraged, and a frenzied scuffle broke out, both maneuvering to find an opening and strike.

Raven said the battle was violent. The two combatants tore up the earth in the process. Dirt and debris were flying in all directions. All the while the boar squealed, only to be matched by Tasha’s own primitive and eerie war cries. Then as if in agreement, they stopped, and there was stillness. Not three feet away from each other, both stood panting, and watching the other warily. It was the boar who blinked first. In a final gesture, it squealed and faked a charge, only to change course abruptly and dash for the brush. Tasha moved in to finish the kill, but the boar was fast and she only managed to pierce it in the butt. It didn’t even acknowledge the sting, as it ran into the thicket. The fight was over.

Who does that? You know what I’m saying? Who goes out alone and hunts a wild boar with a spear? When Raven told the story, you could hear a whole new level of respect for Tasha in his voice. Personally, I think she's nuts and she scares the shit out of me.

‘I bet she’s the perfect fuck,’ Jason said. ‘You’d probably be dead by the time she was done with you’.

Everyone looked at Jason without comment, which is our way whenever he says anything.

‘It is starting to look like she has her violent moments,’ Bubba said. ‘But most of the time, she’s fine. I wonder if it has something to do with a chemical imbalance’.

‘Yeah, maybe, she’s on her period,’ Andy suggested.

‘Her period?’ Bubba repeated.

‘It seems to happen about once a month, and when it does, them bitches be crazy’.

‘Well, I’ll agree it does seem to occur about once a month, and let’s leave it at that,’ Bubba who is the most politically correct of our group replied.

‘Well, whatever it is seems to happen right around the full moon, so we’ll have a little more heads up next time,’ Raven said. ‘Last night was a full moon. We just have to watch the moon, and we’ll know when it’s time to keep a closer eye on her.’

‘From a distance,’ I added

‘Let’s go with that,’ Bubba agreed. ‘We’ll work under the assumption that whatever’s going on, is influenced by the phase of the moon’.

‘Yeah, maybe she’s a werewolf,’ Jason said. ‘Now that we know it happens on a full moon, we can’t rule out werewolves. That’s a possibility too’.

‘Why don’t you hang out with her tonight and find out?’ Raven suggested, and everyone started encouraging Jason to hang out with her, because we all know he’s chicken shit when it comes to anything to do with werewolves. We knew we could get him shitting bricks if we made it look like we were all expecting him to hang out with Tasha. We spent most of the rest of the day talking up how brave he was to volunteer to watch Tasha on the night she might turn into a werewolf. He spent most of the rest of the day denying he volunteered to do so, but that fell on deaf ears.

That night at supper, you’d never know Tasha had gone through a life and death ordeal, only a few hours before. She didn’t have a mark on her, and if anything, she was in better spirits than I’ve seen her for awhile. She was loose and relaxed, talking and laughing. As far as I could tell, it was the end of a perfect day.

As promised the band is really starting to take off. What’s happening is, we have to wait until the bus is already going into a larger community before we can buy our equipment. This is something we only do every month or two, and there’s no special trips, as even though we run the bus on biodiesel, it still produces pollutants.

In the meantime I’ve been checking out instruments and whatnot online, and what happened was, I started thinking about what kinds of gigs we’d be playing, and the problem is, there’s no-one to play for out here in the sticks. We’d mostly be playing for ourselves, and that could get boring fast. We need an audience, so how do we fix that?

What I did was I started looking at all the outdoor festivals being held every summer in BC. There’s a lot of them. You get an outdoor experience like nowhere else in the wilderness of BC, and people love coming here. Summer festivals, now I’m talking worldwide here, are a huge happening during the summer months. Some people plan an entire summer vacation around them. They book off a couple of months and chase festivals for the summer. They might start with Coachella, swing over to Summerfest, and then a lot of them hit Shambhala up here in Canada. Shambhala is not all that far from where we are, and I started wondering what would happen if we held a festival here right between Summerfest and Shambhala? There’s basically a whole month between the two events, and this would give the festival chasers something while they waited for Shambhala.

What I did was, I started connecting with people on Reddit, to see what they’d think about coming out this way. You know, hanging in the wilds of the BC, smoking our fine herb and dancing with so much base, you feel your soul leave and come back again with every beat. They’re all, ‘Yeah, we want to do that’. I’m mostly talking with Europeans right now, and this sounds like it would really fit in with their summer plans.

So now they’re making arrangements to come here even though there is no official festival at this point in time. They’re saying, ‘Well, why don’t we just do it anyway? It sounds like a good place to see, and we’ll have a place to camp. If there’s no festival, we’ll just hang out and party anyway’. They especially like the idea since I’ve been bragging on the fine herb and mushrooms we have out here.

‘These people are my friends now, right, so I told them, ‘Yeah come on out’.

What I’m planning is to put up a big stage where we, meaning the band, can play, and then we’ll get some DJ’s and electronic dance for when we’re not up there playing. It’ll be like ‘Tomorrowland’, only with a headlining band. That’s what I’ve been promoting, and I bet we get maybe even a thousand people. I can say this because I already have a lot of commitments, and these people talk with each other, so more will probably come. It might become something. So far, everyone’s agreed to send me $50.00 to kind of give me an idea of the scale of this thing, and it will serve as proof of purchase for whatever happens. Maybe just camping fees if things don’t work out.

So I told the guys about the festival when we were finally going into town to get our instruments.

‘Are you fucking crazy?’ were the first words Bubba said when I told them the big news. ‘How are we going to put on a festival? Do you have any idea what it takes to hold a festival these days? Stages, talent, bathrooms, freshwater, sanitation, food. There’s a million things to organize, and you want to do this out in the sticks?

‘No. That’s the thing. I sold this on the exact opposite of all those things. This is going to be a wilderness thing, which is the band’s new name by the way, and the festival’s going to be mostly electronic music’.

‘What is?’ Andy asked.

‘What is what’?

‘What’s the band's name’?

‘Wilderness,’ I answered. No-one objected, so I guess we’ll go with that.

‘We don’t have any money, Ethan. Where would we get the cash to get this going?’ Bubba pressed.

‘Well, I really haven’t had time to work out all the details, but I am getting a small deposit from the festival goers’.

‘Where would we hold it? Bubba pressed. ‘Do you have some land we don’t know about’?

‘Once again,’ I said. ‘The details have yet to be worked out’.

‘And, you’re going to get all this done and ready in less than 8 months’?

‘That’s right. And it’s going to be awesome. Think about it. All these beautiful people coming together. Sharing vibes from around the world. Dancing and hanging out. We need this. The world needs this Bubba’.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Everyone stopped talking to think about everything. In my case, I was thinking about all the work that would be involved in setting up the festival. I was mostly thinking about how much fun it was going to be until Bubba started bringing logic into the conversation, which he is prone to do. At first setting the thing up wasn’t an issue. Only a handful of European’s were planning to come, but now there were signs some Americans wanted to come too, and a lot more than a handful of Europeans. Maybe it was going to be a lot of work.

The boys though, were thinking along the lines as I had been thinking, which as stated was void of any forethought. They were thinking how much fun a festival would be. Raven was thinking how the festival would break up another predictably monotonous summer. Andy was thinking of all the people he could share his insightful knowledge with, and Jason was thinking, he might even get laid. Everyone was thinking how cool they would be, because they were the guys putting on the festival.

‘We can hold it on First Nation land’, Raven says. ‘We can skirt a few regulations that way’.

‘Alright’, Bubba says, starting to sound a little excited. ‘But only if we don’t make this thing too big. Maybe a thousand or two people max. That way, we can build most of the stuff we need’.

That was a good number for me, because in actuality, pretty much that many people had already committed to coming. We decided to call the fest ‘Wilderness in the Woods’, and everyone got excited and started saying, ‘I’ll do this’, and ‘I’ll do that,’ and I’ll tell you what, we arrived at the music store pretty stoked. We walked in there like a headlining band would.

So, we get into the store, and the choices were okay. Nothing beyond the basics. They had all the Fenders, Gibsons, and a few Gretschs. You know, the work horses. I grabbed a Les Paul, and had Jackson, one of the employees, direct me to an amp. They had these little glass booth type practice rooms with a few amps and a stool to sit on. Jackson plugs me into a mid sized amp which looked like it could do a bit of damage, and set the volume to three.

‘Thank you Jackson,’ I say. ‘You may run along now, unless of course you have a pick in your pocket’.

Jackson pulled out a pick, ‘Call me if you need me.’

‘I will my good man’.

Three. Three sounded good. At five the tone of the guitar started to come through, but in my opinion, the volume had to be at eight to be really appreciated, especially if the entire store was to appreciate it.

I cranked it to eight, and took a deep breath. My first performance. ‘De, de, de, de’, I started off on Led’s Stairway to Heaven. Oh, that sounded good. ‘De, de, de, de’, I continued, holding the notes and feeling the power of the amp run through my veins, the guitar and out into the store. What a feeling.

I looked up to make sure everyone was catching my performance. They were. Oh, the look on their faces. In wonder, all eyes were on me, so I busted out the final notes of the opening phrase. ‘De, de, de, de. De, de, de, de... De, de, de, de. DA, DAH, DAH’.

Again, I look up, almost expecting a crowd to have formed around me, I played it so well. Everyone was still focused on me, but the expressions had changed a little. Someone says, ‘For fuck sakes, Jackson,’ and Jackson comes running into the room. ‘Very good. Very good,’ he tells me, ‘Except we have to obey the sound bi-laws,’ and he unplugs not just my amp, but the big amp as well, and then plugs me into this tiny little practice amp, no bigger than six by six inches. Then he sets that amp to 3 and closes the door to the room when he leaves.

That kind of pissed me off. Maybe someone should tell them, if talent walks through the door, let them play. That’s what sells guitars. Anyway, I set the guitar down, and wandered out to see what Bubba was up to. Mostly, because that was pretty much all I had learned of the song anyway.

I found Bubba talking with the store manager about renting equipment for our gig.

‘So, could you get us all the stuff we need?’ Bubba asked.

‘How big is this thing going to be?’ the manager asked.

‘We’re planning for about a thousand. No more than two’.

‘Yeah,’ says the manager. ‘I can probably hook you up. If I don’t have it, I know where to get it, but I can tell you this right now, you’re going to need a lot of billies’.

‘How many billies?’ Bubba asked.

‘How many days is it’?

‘Three’.

‘And you’re going to build your own stage’?

‘Correct’.

‘I don’t know man. Sound and lighting. This shit gets expensive just to get out here, let alone carting it out to your place. At least a hundred thousand, probably more’.

‘Grand’? Bubba replied, shocked.

‘Dude,’ the manager says. ‘This stuff is expensive, especially where you’re holding it. You’re going to need some cash’.

‘Well, like I say, we’re just thinking about it right now’.

‘Hey,’ says the manager. ‘Let me know. I’d love to help out’.

All our equipment was already packed up for us, because Kate had called ahead and chose everything on cost and practicality. We still ended up with some pretty cool stuff. We got a Stratocaster, a Telecaster, an Epiphone J-45 acoustic, a nice drum kit, bass, keyboard/synth, and four amps. Not a bad rig at all.

The next day we decided to have a meeting to figure out what everyone’s role would be, and set some timelines.

‘Are you saying almost a thousand people have already committed to coming to this thing?’ Bubba asked, as soon as we got to that part of the meeting.

‘About that, yeah’ I replied.

‘And you haven’t even announced ticket sales or prices yet’?

‘Nope’.

‘Well,’ Bubba says, who by the way has been a lot more anal about this thing than I thought possible from a person who spends his life getting stoned. ‘You better start telling people we’re full. If this gets any bigger, we’re going to be in trouble’.

‘Yeah, I’ve been trying to do that. I don’t think it’s going to work’.

‘What do you mean’?

‘Well, I keep telling them I don’t think we can accommodate many more people, and now they’re saying, ‘Well, we’ll just see where it goes’, and keep sending money. They’re a very nice group of people. No pressure other than the fact that they’re all coming here’.

‘Fuck me,’ Bubba says. ‘Are you sure you can get the land, Raven’?

‘I have a spot picked out. It’ll hold a lot more than a few thousand people too. I think I can speak for the Council and say they’ll be okay with it as long as we clean up after ourselves’.

‘That’s to be expected and goes without saying,’ Bubba replied. ‘What else do we need’?

‘A stage,’ Raven said, ‘But we can build that’.

‘DJ’s and maybe a few bands,’ Andy says.

‘And food and Porta Potties’, he added. ‘We’ll have to perform an analysis to figure out how many Porta Potties we’ll need’.

‘You see guys,’ Bubba says. ‘None of this is going to be cheap, especially out here. I checked up on that, and we can expect rental prices to triple. I bet we’ll need a quarter million dollars to hold this thing, and that’s only if it doesn’t get any bigger than it already is. I really don’t know how we can do this.

‘Well we have to do it,’ I said. ‘They’re coming one way or the other. Besides, people have already sent about $50,000.00. We have that, and can earn some extra money before the festival’.

‘Yeah how’?

‘Get jobs’.

‘You can’t get a job! You’re useless’.

‘Well, we can do other things’.

‘Like what’?

‘We can post videos online,’ I said. ‘I bet a lot of people would want to watch a bunch of guys getting stoned and talking about all the things we talk about. Just the other day we solved the problem of what we’d do if there was a cyber attack. No-one else is talking about things like that’

‘About a million people are talking about things like that’.

‘Not stoned’.

‘Yeah stoned,’ Bubba says. ‘This online video thing is pretty competitive. I doubt we can count on it for an income’.

‘Well’, I said. ‘I know something else we could do’.

‘What’s that?’ Bubba asked.

‘Find the treasure’.

‘What treasure’?

‘The one you discovered while researching your book, and not telling us about’ I said.

‘I never researched anything about treasure,’ he says.

‘Oh, but you have, and you have a pretty good idea there’s one out here too. You let that slip one night when we were shooting the shit.’

‘When did I say that’?

‘One night you told me you will never put anything into a novel unless there’s a very real possibility of it being true, and then in the same breath you tell me how your main character goes off and finds treasure’.

‘So’?

‘So, there’s a treasure out there in the woods, and judging from some of the other stuff in your book, it’s pretty close by’.

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Bubba says. ‘Of course there’s a possibility of treasure. Ships have been stopping along the coast since the 1700’s. That doesn’t mean there is a treasure. It’s just a possibility like I said. Not very likely’.

‘Uh huh, and what about the first day we met back at the forestry station. At first you said you were out looking for gold, and then all of a sudden, you got paranoid, and told us you were just researching your novel, and stopped talking about the gold, and told us to forget about the gold. What about that’?

‘I was joking’!

‘You sure spent a lot of time backtracking and trying to convince us all you were doing on your expedition was researching your novel. Who goes out of their way to tell you they weren’t out searching for gold at least a hundred times unless that’s exactly what they were doing? Admit it! You know there’s a treasure out there. What do you guys think?’ I asked the guys.

‘Sounds like there’s gold in them there hills,’ Raven said, and knowing Bubba, the other guys agreed.

‘Well, there isn’t Bubba,’ replied defensively.

‘Think how guilty you’re going to feel if you’re lying to us right now,’ I continued my attack. ‘You hate lying. You may as well just fess up that it’s out there. Besides, you’re obviously too lazy to go after it or you’d be out there right now. Why not let us help out? It’s for a good cause, and you don’t even care about money. Dude, this is for the band’.

‘I’m not lying. I don’t think there’s a treasure. There might be some cargo out by Boat Basin, but that’s all. I found documents indicating a ship foundered around 1800, and they had to dump their cargo while repairing the ship. It’s possible that the ship sank’.

‘What kind of goods’.

‘Whatever was on the ship. Probably just trade items’.

‘Could it be treasure’?

‘I don’t know about treasure. I suppose there might be some gold or a few trinkets’.

‘That’s good enough for me. Let’s do it’.

‘Do what’?

‘Go find the treasure’.

‘It’s not treasure,’ Bubba stressed.

‘All in favor of finding the treasure,’ I asked.

Everyone but Bubba raised their hands.