Day 3

This night wasn't as bad as the first night as Adam's body heat kept me semi warm. At least I felt my fingers and toes in the morning. In a pattern that would come to repeat itself, my duff became completely scattered and the first shot was fired in the nightly battle between warmth and comfort. My hips would come to resent me and I still think they are mad at me for sleeping on the ground for 3 weeks. In the middle of the night, Scott (a 44 year old canadian consultant and a person I would slowly begin to seriously dislike over the term of the course), woke us up as he was cold (what a shock!) and asked if he could join our duff pile (which was really made for 2 people but already had 3). Of course we let him in. He started to talk about how cold he was. I threw at twig at him and told him (in a not such a polite way) to save till the morning.

The daily ritual of waiting for the sun's rays began. We got some water out of the water holes as we were in for a hot day and quickly began our hike out of the canyon. On the way we saw some AMAZING CAVES which had Indian etchings in the walls (not to mention someone's carvings from 1915 :-).



It was getting hot and we havent seen a water source for hours. I remembered Laurie's lecture two days ago about looking for water sources and how trees and greenery get brighter around water and started to keep an eye out. A few minutes later I spotted just what we needed and asked Laurie if she though there was water about and voila! bingo! I was right.

As it is smart to take a siesta (afternoon break) during the hottest part of the day we found a large cottonwood tree and passed out. This is where I learned to wear my bandana on my neck to keep the dust out as the wind and the sand (sigh...in my mouth) was egregious! Also keep in mind that we actually get 4 to 6 hours of sleep at night since the sun goes down at 10 pm or so and is up at 4:30, 5 am and we dont really get much sleep at night. As I got up I accidentally hit the branch with my neck and probably experienced the worst pain of the entire course. Go figure...I now how a scar on the back of my neck and its from napping! :-) And the hardest part was not screaming obscenities (no cursing) as just my luck: Mike, Laurie and Steve were all napping around me. Funny, that I still cared at this point.



After the nap we got another lecture on juniper pine from Steve, spent an hour working on our fire tools and got hiking again for another few hours. Another lecture, this time on a plant called dog bain. Break near a spring. Steve and Mike disappear for 30 to 40 minutes (no way to tell...no watches). We are finally called about 100 yards away by them and learn to discover they built a duff bed. A gigantic, comfortable looking duff bed. Its at least 2 feet high, filled to the brim with oak leaves. It looks comfortable and more importantly warm.

Needless to say they taught us how to make the bed and sent us on our own to create one for ourselves for the night. They also taught us the proper campsite selection, the W's (Wind, Weather, Water, Wildlife, Widowmakers, Willies...ants) which was pretty cool. Abram, Adam and I decided to combine our efforts and built our own duff bed. And so the great battle for duff had begun as our entire group of 11 people were trying to collect as much duff using our garbage bags (we were allowed to bring one) and our versa clothes (note the pattern of being able to use everything we own for multiple purposes such as a carry sack or leaf collection plate or a pillow). After about an hour and a half we created a pretty sweet duff bed and we still have a few minutes of day light left so I spent the rest of the night carving my fire board. Another group of people got together and decided to build a gigantic duff bed for 5 people which was pretty big!!!

So day 3 of no food. Hunger is surprisingly not an issue. I think mostly its because we're hiking a lot at some altitude (maybe 5 or 6K feet) and because the experience of the cold at night is pretty overwhelming. I am getting pretty dirty at this point though obviously no relief in sight from this problem and is something i had to deal with. Other then putting my layers of long johns on and off every night and morning I will be wearing the same clothes for many more weeks to come. I am surprisingly pretty well removed from the outside world only 3 days into it and while I still have some emotional thoughts during the long hikes, they are getting shorter and shorter and less and less relevant. At these thoughts I fall asleep. Good night.