{12} Reflections on lions and Tigers And.. Something else

Writing this narrative was my favorite assignment so far in the class. I do not have much experience writing, so this was a new adventure. I chose to write about an event that I thought I remembered clearly. But while I was trying to create a compelling story, I realized that it was much harder than I thought to remember more obscure details that are needed to engage the reader. It was also a much more difficult transition from my oral recanting of the story turning into the written word, but I am glad for the opportunity to grow with this progress.

{11} Lions and Tigers and... Something else

We were asked to write a narrative about a personal story, here is the one i wrote about an event that happened 4 years ago

“CRACK!” My body reacted to the sound before I could even tell it to. I whipped my head around to see where the noise was coming from, but of course I couldn’t see anything. I was 35 feet above the ground, strapped into a rickety metal chair with some old rope. The tree that was the support for our makeshift tree-stand was directly between me and the sudden, out of place sound. Unfortunately, I didn’t need to see the source to know exact what the noise was. The sound of bark being ripped off the trunk of a tree by something much, much heavier than it could support. The only things that heavy out in the forest were deer, and bears. And unless Bambi learned to climb trees in the last few years, I knew exactly what was wandering around a hundred yards away from me.

This was bad news. I had no gun on me, since Dad had forgotten the keys to his trigger lock, leaving his handgun perfectly safe and inaccessible in the console of his prized red hunting truck. Frustrating, not surprising, but not really of much importance. Until this moment that its. I had no way to protect myself other than my bow, which did wonders against a nice buck, but not so much against an angry bear.

The sun was disappearing quickly, but I knew better than to get down and start moving about. Id either scare away any prey in the area, or I would go from hunter to hunted in no time flat. So I stayed put and watched the shadows grow. As the darkness rolled in, so did my imagination. My brain turned every movement, every shadow into something sinister. An overactive imagination is great as a child, fun even. As an adult, it was downright terrifying.

I was a prisoner to my mind as it turned from dusk to pitch black. I knew my uncle would come for me soon, so I stayed in my stand, and didn’t make a noise. After what seemed like hours, I heard him stomping through the brush to where I was. For a 6’5’’ giant, it was no surprise I could hear him from a mile away. I soon saw the beam of his flashlight shining up at me. I quickly unstrung my bow and collected all my gear, and scurried down the tree.

“Any luck, Aaron?” I hopefully asked, though I could tell he hadn’t gotten a shot off by his lack of excitement. We had started to carefully hike the 2 mile trek back to the truck.

“No, you?” he returned, but he already knew the answer.

“Me either, but I did hear something, like bark being ripped off a tree. About a hundred yards away, but boy was it loud.” It was nearly pitch black, but he stopped in his tracks and fear jumped into his eyes for a second before he could suppress it.  The last thing he wanted to do was panic a fourteen year old girl in the middle of the woods.

“Oh, probably just a porcupine, no need to get worked up over nothing,” he said nonchalantly, but his eyes scanned the area where I had heard the noise from.  However, his body didn’t believe his words, as I could see him picking up the pace, trying to get as far away from there as possible. I didn’t hesitate to follow. Seeing him panic just increased mine. If Aaron, the calmest and most unruffled guys I knew, was worried, then I needed to be worried too. As we walked, I had to take three steps to match his one giant stride. My head was on a swivel, taking in my whole surroundings. I shined my weak flashlight in every shadow I could reach. I needed to see everything I could, for fear of being caught by surprise by the forests most dangerous creature.

It was no secret that they were out there. Just last year we had returned to camp after a long day to see it completely trashed. Our cooler overturned and food strewn everywhere. Not to be outdone, my masculine dad and uncle wanted to catch the perpetrator in the act. They set up cameras all around our camp the next day, and sure enough, the next evening he was there. A giant grizzly that filled the whole picture, rummaging through our supplies. Yeah, they were out there.

Suddenly, Aaron stopped in his tracks. My heart skipped a beat as I looked around for the source of his alarm. I saw nothing out of the ordinary. No grizzly on the hunt, but through the dim circle of lamination coming from my flashlight, I thought the area looked familiar.

“This is the spot of our visceral dump yesterday,” he said, a note of panic creeping into his constant calm. I took a moment to process. Yesterday Aaron had made the first kill of the season, the first in a long dry spell in our family as it so happens. When you kill an animal for its meat, you only take what you can eat and leave all the other organs for some scavenger to find. A perfectly harmless and routine part of big game hunting, unless you happen to be anywhere in the area that stinks of fresh meat when you know there’s a bigger hunter around.

If we were in a hurry before, that was nothing compared to our hustle now. The panic was rising in my chest, and I could feel the darkness playing tricks on my mind. Every noise, every twig snap was magnified and morphed into something much darker.

We trudged through the undergrowth as quickly as possible, flashlights reflecting off of every tree and log, until in one sweep of the light, they weren’t. Something else was reflecting, much, much brighter. Eyes.

I would swear that I jumped three feet in the air. The eyes started to rush towards us and we reached for the only weapons we had, our bows. Not that those would do much against a hungry bear that hardly flinches at some bullets. More than a few colorful words came flying out of Aarons mouth as he moved in front of me. Noble, but not much against an attack. As the eyes came toward us, more started to appear behind them. Two, three, four pairs of eyes. The light started to illuminate the bodies of the creatures approaching us.

Sheep.

My heart slowed from dangerously high to mildly high. After a minute of disbelief, I started to laugh. Aaron quickly joined in, bend down low to the ground and picked up some pebbles to toss at the cause of our near heart attacks.

We started to walk the short remaining distance to the truck, and the night seemed a little less menacing.