Cooking is at once child’s play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love.
Craig Claiborne
A solid gold lace cover of light bathed the countryside as the sun rose behind me. In the valley, fog flowed like a river from the highlands toward the southern tail of the Great Dragon. Hunger and thirst become powerful emotion that leads us to frenzy, and I awoke with a powerful ache for nourishment. Deepest was the ache of aloneness.
I look into the far distance of memory and see that day’s activity. Still, it is impossible not to filter the scene through the sieve of all I have learned since then. I see new visions with old eyes and a million experiences forming raindrops that fill a deep, placid lake at the feet of the stone I have become.
I went about preparing to light a small fire in a hasty dug pit inside the fire ring made the day before. This would keep the smoke and flicker of fire from alerting others of my presence. I wrapped the remainder of my fish and rice in leaves, placed it on the coals, and covered the fire with a flat rock and then clay. Maybe there were about 5 ounces of water left. I’d need much more before the day was over.
I always ate local foods and wore local clothes to help blend into the crowds of humanity that choked the world’s cities. I learned their customs and courtesies and went about my duties unassumingly. This enabled me to disappear in plain sight. It did not protect me from those trained to ferret out perceived human threats. Only my wits protected me from danger. On this mission, I carried no weapons except a Swiss Army knife, which I still have, and a local parang. The parang is a short blunt machete carried by all the men and women when they enter the forest. Often the parang was the difference between living and dying, so they were treasured tools handed down to generations.
After breakfast, I went about covering my tracks at the campsite and moved down the mountain a short distance to a covered area that kept me hidden from view. The location also gave me a clear vision of the vast wilderness in front of me. It would take a couple of hours to get down the mountain to the river below. From my position, I could see that it was rugged terrain to the west and south but flattened out to the north, where most of the human activity was.
I planned to find a way through the more rugged terrain to stay out of everyone’s way. Every plan has many tradeoffs, and I risked a lot just to stay hidden. An injury would be fatal unless I could self-rescue. I rested in a shaded area on a rock outcrop, and my mind wandered to Rudyard Kiplings, The Man Who Would Be King, written in 1888.
The moral of the story was as accurate in 1888 as it was in the late 1980s and even more true today. In this adventure story, two men convinced a tribe they were kings and took advantage of the natives’ superstitions. Later, they were found to be frauds, and one man was hanged and the other crucified. To his disbelief, the man crucified escaped to return to civilization. His wild account of the adventure earned him a bed in an insane asylum. When one achieves something dishonestly, they must suffer the consequences. What would my consequences be, I wondered?
An immediate need for drinkable water began to override all of my thoughts. I cut a few thick vines with my parang, got a few drops to wet my throat, and later found a dry stream bed that carried rainwater down the mountain. I started following the meandering cut in the hill until it leveled out in a massive ravine. The rocky bottom was filled with gravel and boulders as big as houses. At the base of one of the boulders, I dug down in the loose rock, hitting the sand, and a foot deeper, water began to seep into the hole. I was saved.
The urge to drink the muddy water was powerful. My mind whispered all kinds of reasons why the water was safe to drink. This is how one dies a miserable death from a disease that can eat you alive in hours instead of days. I had a stainless steel cup to bring up the water after it settled for 30 minutes. It was now clear enough to drink. I made another small fire and placed the cup in the coals to boil for a few minutes. The wait was excruciating. After the water cooled enough, I drank the cup and repeated the task three more times, filling my canteen and my stomach. This would get me to the river below, where I could get as much water as I needed.
Hyperion Sky 
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