Back To The Roots (REWRITTING)

Ch. 10 Meat

They had been doing good living on their own for about a month, but now that it was August they had to start preparing for winter. Kyla had already stored up a small collection of plants and herbs for teas, seasonings, and medicines. They had also been drying any extra fish they caught. Kyla wasn’t sure how much food they were going to need but she knew one or two fish here and there wasn’t going to cut it. To be safe she just assumed there would be no food available through winter except what they gathered. And what they really needed was meat and furs, and the only way they might be able to get it was to make snares. So that was how Kyla’s planned to start her day. 

She had read about ways to make cordage from plants and trees but she would work on that later, maybe over the winter if she could, right now she was just going to use some of her fishing line. She walked the woods looking for saplings that could be easily bent over but not easily broken at the same time she scanned the ground looking for any sign of a path critters might be using. When she found these two things together she bent over the sapling and placed a river rock on it that was barely heavy enough to hold it down. Then she tied one end of the line to the sapling and made a loop with the other end that she propped up on a twig. Her hope was that an animal coming along the path wouldn’t notice the string and would run through it and spring the trap.

While Kyla worked on setting snares Lily and Josiah were collecting mussels for dinner. They waded in the water walking up and down the creek near the bank feeling with their feet and hands for the shape of a clam shell. When they found one there were usually others in the same area and they collected them and put them into their pot. When the pot was full they collected a few more that they ate raw. Before heading back home they shelled and cleaned the mussels and put them back into the pot full of water.

As they walked home Lily gathered some wild onion and garlic and placed a couple of them in the pot. The rest she stored in a cool dry pit they’d dug in the back of their den. Lily put the pot near the fire so it could boil into a soup and thought of what else she could add. Some cattail root might be good, she thought. It had a buttery potato type flavor and was starchy, that would help make her soup creamy and more filling. She went back to the den for the cattail roots and added it to the pot as well. 

While waiting for dinner to cook they gathered as many pine cones as they could carry and brought them back to the fire where they busted them open with rocks. Kyla said they could survive for years on pine nuts alone if they had too, so they gathered them in all their spare time. The nuts were placed by the fire and dried then stored for winter, later they could be eaten the way they were or ground and made into mash, flour, or soup.

Kyla’s tummy rumbled after setting up her tenth snare and she started back to camp gathering pine cones and placing them in her shirt as she went. About halfway there she could smell something delicious that made her stomach rumble again and she hurriedly picked up her pace. When she got back Josiah was using a piece of bread to finish off his bowl of clam chowder. 

“That looks amazing, I’m starved!” Kyla said, as she walked into camp.

“Taste pretty great too,” Josiah said, smiling up at his mom.  “Did you get the snares set?” he asked, as she came to sit down.

“I did,” she said, reaching over to ruffle his hair.

The longer they were out here the more Josiah had opened up. He was a completely different seven year old than the one she’d first met. Lily handed Kyla a bowl of soup while rubbing her temple with the other hand. Lily on the other hand seemed to be getting more and more distant.