One Bowl of Dead Man's Soup Please
Blue rode strong after the incident although I eased him into the ride by walking along side him for the first mile. I didn't want to get into full stride if he ended up receiving a wound that was still developing. We rode into base camp around 6pm with Fish and Deer Steak. That was my story and I was sticking to it- "Oh yes my friends, you should have seen this 10 pointer......". Now this side of 'Deer Steak' was cooking on the fire for maybe 2 minutes before my old friend Joshua started giving me a dirty look when the smoke shifted his way. The jig was up; "Grizz Shank Anybody?" was all that I could say, "didn't want to waste it". When that Shank caught up with me later that night I wished the Bear had already killed me.
When I woke up after midnight it felt like there was a 20 pound hunk of coal in my stomach. Tasted like it too as I stepped out of my lean-to tent hoping to see a hospital in the middle of the British Columbia Wilderness. Joshua's brother still had the fire going, he took one look at me and started laughing like a Hyena. I took five more steps and began re-introducing that Shank to the outside world. By 1am Joshua was in another corner of the camp yelling between dry heaves that he is going to kill me at sunrise. His brother is passed out dead drunk from laughing. Before he lost consciousness he told us he had the M.R.E.'s and Trout, no Shank. To all the Vegetarians of the World you can rest easy knowing there is Justice in the Wilderness.
We rode by this family having breakfast
on an old logging road one morning.
Can't say I slept the rest of the night, just drifted in and out of consciousness the rest of the day. Our faithful traveling companion (J's brother) rode off after sunrise to catch a Salmon. Maybe by sundown it will sound good to me, but not now. We spent the day trying to keep down some water, and then Loud Mouth rode in with some fish that I still wasn't up to seeing yet. Neither was my reluctant dinner guest. He was coming to his senses now like I was but solid food was out of the question
We gathered all of the half empty M.R.E.'s and found a meal packet that said Beef Slices in Barbecue Sauce. First mistake. I opened it up, hands trembling, and stuck a few beef slices into the boiling water on the campfire. Second and third mistake. I let it boil a couple of minutes. It was supposed to be some sort of beef broth soup I guess, but we knew there is hardly anything that resembles actual beef mass. We tried to use one of these 2 week old, dried out loaves of bread to eat the soup so that didn't help. As soon as that soup crossed the threshold of no return it was Midnight Grizzly Fever all over again. Now I know why people call it Dead Man's Soup, don't eat it unless you are facing certain death from starvation. I would still consider a bark sandwich with old leaves before custom M.R.E. soup anytime soon. Then again, maybe it was just remnants of Ol' Griz, not the recipe. Continued NEXT page.