“The human has gone back to caveman forms survival in the wild. This show that they still have the instincts of their grandparents…”
-Cedar, Annual meeting of the gods
Walking down to the lake I thought, if I wanted a steady source of food I would need to farm or hunt. But, how? Farming right now was not an option since I had no access to seeds which I would plant. But hunting, or rather fishing would be a proper source of protein almost year-round. Arriving at the lake I looked at my own reflection. My dusty dirt hewn face looked like an intrusion in the crystal-clear water. It brought me to think I would need to stay hygienic to live comfortably.
So, I decided to take a bath. It was a dumb idea given that the water was probably only 20 degrees above freezing, but it is said that ice bathing gives you an immunity boost, right? So anyways I jump in and have my breath taken away by the sudden shock of near freezing water touching all my body. I re-surface and start breathing rapidly. This isn’t going to plan. I swim almost immediately to shore and sit on the sandy side. That was probably something I wasn’t going to do again soon.
After my near freeze, I got out and put on my clothes. I decided to get a good stick to use as a fishing rod. Once I found that I looked for strands of grass good enough to weave together for making a line. Finally, I cut of the remaining un-edible pieces of rabbit for bait. Once I was ready, I headed down to the lake to fish.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
After waiting for what felt like an hour, I finally felt a little nip. Then a bite, and on the third and final bite, he swallowed the bait and I pulled. I pulled, pulled, and pulled. And finally, I pulled the fish out of his homeland. It was a Colorado Golden Trout, A quite big one in fact. I’d say it was a foot long weighted about 12 pounds. To store it while I was catching another fish, I clambered up the mountain to grab some snow and brought it down to the lake. I put the fish into the snow to keep it fresh for longer
Once I completed that task I decided to try and catch another fish, but I wasn’t all so successful. Once the sun started setting, I was ready to quit but finally I got another fish. This time it was a one and a fourth foot long rainbow trout who got clipped by the side of his lip. Once I got packed up, I rushed to my little shack so that I could put my stuff away. After that I went to collect firewood and leaves to waterproof my shack.
In the forest it was already get quite dark which didn’t help me collect the big sticks, but I got around it. I grabbed a few big sticks to break, along with a log to peel bark of for fire starters. I decided to use leaves for waterproofing my wall along with some moss at the bottom to soak up any water that still got thru. I used oak leaves because they were quite big and in abundant supply.
Once I returned to the base, I started upgrading the walls with more sticks and started digging shallow holes to make them more stable. After that, I placed the base layer of moss leaving a small hole at the top to let smoke exit. Once I finished the initial moss layer, I started adding the oak leaves making sure the stems went thru the wood so that they didn’t come off. Once that was done, I added some branches I took off evergreens to make it camouflaged, which made it look cool.
Once that was done, I decided to eat the Colorado golden trout for dinner. To prepare the dinner I cut off both the fish’s fillets and used half of one to cut into sashimi. The other half was cooked into a beautiful piece of cooked fish. I preserved the remaining fillet in even more snow for future use.
My opinion on the food was that the sashimi was delicious even without soy sauce and that the grilled fish could of course been better with salt, that I didn’t have. Once I finished up my meal, I went to bed to get a good night's sleep.
***