Surviving Bear Island by Paul Greci Read Free Book Online

our gear down this steep bank to a mud-hole of a beach and launched. That’s what he and mom used to do. Great plan if you’re planning on disappearing.
    In some spots the devil’s club and skunk cabbage grew so thick you could hide an army tank in it. I kicked at some moss concealing a decaying log. It’d be easy to disappear in the rainforest. Thick green moss covered everything on the ground. Hopefully it wouldn’t cover me.
    If my dad had crawled into the forest and passed out, it’d be easy to miss him. I thought about going back and searching more of the coastline to the north, but the farther north I went, the longer it would take to get to the Sentinels, and with the way the waves were pounding south the day of the accident, I doubted my dad could’ve swam against them. He had to be south.
    And now the possibility that I might not survive kept hammering me.I might try and try and try and still I might die. And I might never find my dad. Maybe he’d survive and I wouldn’t. Or, maybe I’d survive, but if I never made it off the island, what kind of life would that be? A short one, probably. A short, lonely one.
    Alone. Alone. Alone.
    â€œI am alone!” I shouted. “Someone. Anyone. Come and get me!”
    Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw some brush shake. I turned and said, “Dad? Dad, is that you?” I walked toward where I’d seen the movement, calling for him over and over. And then I saw more brush shaking, so I kept going and kept calling, my heart pounding in my chest. I knew I’d find him. Then the black rump of a bear disappeared ahead, the brush bending as the bear continued moving away from me.
    At least it hadn’t come at me. I turned and retraced my steps and kept going. I’d find my dad if he were on this island. And I’d leave more clues as to where I was going so he could find me.
    I was walking next to a waist-high decaying log sprinkled with hundreds of evergreen saplings. Nurse trees, I think Dad called them. All that new life from one dead tree. But what about people?
    When people die are they gone for good? Or are they in Heaven looking down on you?
    With Mom, sometimes I felt like she was close by. Especially when I listened to her music. This one set of her lyrics just kept coming back to me, maybe ’cause I’d listened to it so many times.
    Every fire’s a ceremony.
    Every story’s a testimony.
    If you pay attention, you will know what the river knows.
    Lots of people believed in heaven and God, but me, I didn’t know what I believed. One time before Mom died, Dad and I were out on the deck. He was cooking salmon on the grill, and I was sweeping up a bunch of dead carpenter ants, when these three guys in white, button-down shirts came walking up the driveway. If you took the time to walk up our driveway, you must really want something. I mean, it’s like five-hundred feet long and does a big S-curve up a steep hill, and it’s out in the boonies.
    These guys wanted to talk religion—their religion, whatever it was.Dad was polite and let them make their introduction and show their pamphlets, but eventually he pointed to the trees and said, “Church of the Earth. That’s what I belong to. I respect your beliefs and hope you’ll respect mine, too. For me, life is here. Life is now.”
    As I walked, my raincoat, rain pants and rubber boots mostly shielded me from the moisture covering the plants. But crawling over and under fallen trees, and then climbing up the slope, I began to sweat, and soon was wet from the inside.
    When you’re wet, the only way to stay warm without a fire or a change of clothes is to keep moving.
    â€œYeah, yeah, Dad, I remember.”
    I reached the top of the first ridge and a flat, broken forest lay before me—stands of trees separated by small ponds and wet meadows.
    Muskegs. Soggy but pretty. Too wet for trees to grow. Mostly covered