original spot.
I comforted myself by thinking that Bowser had traveled in the past and had come back. So it was not impossible, I told myself, for a person to get back. If Bowser could get back, so could I. Although the moment that I thought of that, I was not too sure. Bowser might have a way to smell out a time tunnel that no man could ever have.
Just standing there and worrying about it, however, would not solve the problem, would not give the answer. If I couldnât find the road back to the present, I might have to stay a while, and I told myself Iâd better take a look around.
Looking in the direction the mastodon had gone, I saw a herd of mastodons, a mile or so away, four adults and a calf. The mastodon that had almost run over me clumped steadily to join them.
Pleistocene, I told myself, but how deep into the Pleistocene, I had no way of knowing.
While the lay of the land remained unchanged, it had a vastly different look, for there were no forests. Instead, there was a stretch of grassland that looked somewhat like a tundra, dotted here and there with clumps of birches and some evergreens, while along the river, I could make out misty yellow willows.
The birch trees in the clump next to me were leafed out, but the leaves were small, the immature leaves of spring. On the ground beneath the trees was a carpet of hepaticas, the delicate, many-hued flower that came to bloom shortly after the snow was gone. The hepaticas lent an air of familiarity, almost of identity. In my boyhood, on this very land, I had ranged the woods to bring home in grubby hands great bouquets of the flowers, which my mother would put in a squat brown pitcher, setting it in the middle of the kitchen table. Even from where I stood, it seemed to me that I could smell the exquisite, distinctive, never-to-be-forgotten odor of the tiny flowers.
Spring, I thought, but it was cold for spring. Despite the sun, I was shivering. An ice age, I told myself. Perhaps just a few miles to the north reared the shining ramparts of the glacial front. And here I was, with no more than pajama pants and slippers, and a shotgun in my handâa shotgun with two shells in its barrels. That was all. That was the sum total. I had no knife, no matches, nothing. I glanced toward the sky and saw that the sun was edging up toward noon. Noon and chilly as it was, it could be freezing by nightfall. A fire, I thought, but I had no way to make a fire. Flint, if I could find some flint. I racked my brain to recall if there was flint to be found in the neighborhood, although even if there were, what could I do with it? Flint struck against flint would produce sparks, but not hot enough to start a fire. Struck against steel, the sparks would be hot enough to start a fire in tinder. The gun was steel, but there wasnât any flintâfor now I remembered that in this area there wasnât any flint. Perhaps I could take a shell and open it, extracting the shot charge, then pour out some of the powder to be mixed with tinder, and fire the opened shell into the tinder. Theoretically, the burning powder expelled from the barrel would fire the tinder if it was mixed with powder. But what if that didnât work, I asked myself. And where would I look for tinder? In the heart of a rotten log, if I could find a rotting log and could tear it open to get at the dry, pulpy inner wood. Or bark peeled off a birch tree and shredded finely. Maybe that would work. I wondered whether it would, but could not be certain.
I stood defeated, exhausted with my thinking and the fright that was creeping in. Now, for the first time, I became aware of birds. First the flowers and now the birds. Iâd been hearing them all the time, but my brain, roaring with its problems, had rejected them. There was a bluebird perched on a winter-dead stalk. A mullen stalk, perhaps. I tried to remember if the mullen was native or had been imported, in which case, it could not be a mullen stalk.