i had a hard time coming up with a description of this,pretend and faux were close but maybe "a creepy feeling" was more like it.first off my only survival issues involve wilderness ones. no floods,storms,earth quakes or TEOTWAWKI on my list of things to be concerned about.to make a long story short on the last day of a wilderness canoe trip in Northern Minnesota a few weeks ago i had a longer day of it to make it back up river to the landing,a rocky opening along a boggy bank.over the years i made it from my last camp at the mouth of the river and over several portages in about four to five hours.pulling out in my car for Minneapolis,280 miles,around 5PM means i can get home around 10:00.this year i made the parking lot at 8:30 wet and tired.
wet because i "wet footed" the portage landings to avoid any tricky moves balancing on rocks to load and unload the canoe.this was a two week solo and the down river current was strong due to some very,very heavy storms.the rain also put the river,the Little Indian Sioux, and it's rapids over the banks and onto to the paths in places as well as making those rapids very impressive,time was lost taking photos.moving up river i could tell it was getting late and decided that the drive home would not only mean a late arrival,past midnite,but i would be going into the city on a friday night,down freeways that feel like a ride thru a fun house after weeks in a canoe.
so i made a plan,camp at the drive in camping loop about a half hour from the landing where i started the trip,if i got lucky and there were open sites this late into June,there were.
i could have pulled into my old site where there is a grassy opening in the trees just yards from the car pull in but i found that a "better" site was open by the lake side that was more private but down some steps away from the car so i had to make several up and down trips for gear and a run to the water pump.i set up the car camping gear which even has a pillow from home! the plan was a dinner of some sort,sit in the car and read,putting my back on a real seat would be a treat after sitting up against trees,rocks and my packs.then a bucket bath and into the bag for the night with thoughts of a big fisherman's breakfast at a lodge on Crane Lake before the drive home...OK!!--the crux of the post..dinner was a pack of beef and noodles with all the dry sausage bits i had left and a cup of cold tea,no sugar.sitting in the car with the dome light on still wet from the knees down covered in sunscreen and bug juice,grubby and tired with bugs and moths beating on the windows i finely got a meal around 10:00.wolfing it down the thought hit me---this is what it would be like if i/we had to make a run for it and live on the road to escape--fill in the blank yourself here-------....i'm happy to say it was just bugs and not zombies beating on the windows while i was garfing down what passed for a meal and the couple people that walked by on the road were on the way to the biffy and not after my supply of Spam and fish hooks.i read until i was getting sleepy,Stilwell And China a great book,then heating a bucket of water to pour over my head without soap which was at the bottom of my pack along with a towel.i dried off with a flannel shirt that i was going to wear on the trip home.slept like a log and was up at 7:30 and by 9:30 polished off the fisherman's breakfast--two of everything with hash browns and big cups of coffee.made "i'm out and safe" phone calls and hit radio stations playing old hits all the way home.i should post the short video of the office towers of Minneapolis coming into view with Highway to Hell blaring out--lots of moments stuck with me from the canoe trip and i have some survival fire making shots to post here but that 10 second "vision" of what it would be like to "survive" in the car really stuck hard---as you can see from this too long post...
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