Young Survivalist

By James Douglas (The Survivor Tiger)

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As a very young boy we lived in the city. City life for a young boy had its challenges in the 1960’s. My mother was the only parent in our house. Occasionally we would move in with my grandmother when things got too tough for my young mother to handle. My Step-Grandfather would take me ice fishing and Ice skating and hunting and camping and hiking all of the time at his cabin in the north woods, so I started learning wilderness-craft or bush-craft at an early age.

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In 1964 I was 4 going on five years old. I made sure that I knew exactly how many days were left until that magic day when you feel as if you can do anything since you are “one year older”. It didn’t matter that I was only five. I did feel as if I could do anything.

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A couple of months passed, it was early December. I and my friends in the neighborhood decided “we were quite ready to go to the pond in the woods at the end of our street”. We didn’t know the name of the pond, we all just knew we weren’t allowed to go there without adult supervision.

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We all gathered at the trail head leading into the woods. There was Davey and Jimmy Blaylock, Kevin and Jeff Williams, Mark (I don’t remember his family name) and myself. Davey, Jeff and Mark were in my class at school. Jimmy was 2 years older than all of us and Kevin was the youngest at 3 years old.

As we started down the trailhead Kevin started to sob and told his brother, Jeff, that he didn’t want to go and that he was scared. We all stopped and waited while Jeff pointed to his house and told Kevin to

go there and not to tell on us for going to the pond. Kevin agreed as well as a three year old could and we all stood and watched while Kevin trekked back to his house and went into the front door, just to be safe. The rest of us looked at each other shaking our heads and saying under our breathes, “sissy”.

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We turned toward the direction where the pond was. It was only about a quarter of a mile into the woods but everyone had a worried look on their face. The woods had always been a scary place for us. When we would have sleepovers all of our scary stories were centered around the woods.

We, finally, could see the pond.  It was frozen over. We wanted to skip stones on the surface and throw bigger rocks into it for the biggest splash.  We weren’t sure if anyone should walk on the ice to see if it would hold us. So, we gathered small sticks and decided two people that drew out the shortest sticks would test the ice. The two testers were me and Jeff.

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We accepted our fate and started out on the ice one small step after the other. The ice would make cracking sounds but didn’t break. Eventually, we made it all the way to the middle. The rest of the guys came running out to the middle. It was great. Not only did we get to the pond, now we were standing in the middle of it. We were on top of the world Ma! Of course all of our Ma’s would kill us if they knew we were there.

We played on the ice for a long time. Then Davey came up with the idea to get big sticks and break holes in the ice. At the time that seemed like great fun.

 

 

We left the ice to find our sticks of destruction. One of our favorite things to do back then was breaking glass. We thought this would be a similar experience. We wandered through the woods, forgetting that it was a scary place for us, checking every stick on the ground. When we found our stick, we headed back to the center of the pond. Jimmy wanted to start pounding the ice right away. I spoke up and said, “let’s start at the edge, where it’s probably shallower, just in case we fall in.”

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We headed to the edge of the pond and started pounding our sticks into the ice. Almost immediately, Jeff went through the ice and bobbed back to the surface. He started shouting for help. Davey ran over to the edge of the hole in the ice and immediately went through at the same spot. Jimmy, Davey’s older brother, took off running down the trail towards his house. I thought he was running for help. Both Davey and Jeff could tread water but Davey couldn’t swim. They both were trying to pull themselves out of the hole in the ice but couldn’t. I approached the hole carefully, remembering the site of Davey breaking the hole bigger as he went into the water. I kept pushing my stick closer and closer to the hole. Finally Jeff could grab my stick so asked Mark to help me pull Jeff out of the hole. He agreed and he inched closer to me and grabbed the stick a little higher than me. We both began to pull on the stick and Jeff came right out of the hole and onto solid ice. He immediately ran towards home. Davey began to express that he was getting tired from treading water, so Mark and I crawled back, close to the hole and extended the stick to Davey. Davey grabbed it with a death grip and tried to climb out with one arm pulling on the edge of the ice and the other on the stick. He lost his grip on the stick and went back into the hole. I explained to Davey that he had to keep both hands on the stick and grip it tight or he wouldn’t get out of the hole. He gripped the stick with both hands. Mark and I pulled and Davey slipped right out of the hole.

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When Davey, Mark and I got back to Davey’s home, we found Jimmy, Davey’s older brother,  hiding in the shed. He didn’t want to get into trouble by going to the pond so he was hiding in the shed until “they” found our bodies and he would have an alibi.

Looking back at these events I see several lessons to be learned.

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1. If you’re 5 or even 7 years old, do not go out onto frozen bodies of water without adult supervision. With that said make sure the adult knows something about the outdoors and first aid and rescue.

2. If your family spends a lot of time in the woods, teach your kids, starting at a young age, wilderness skills and bushcraft skills. You’ll be amazed at how much they will remember.

3. Just because your brother is older than everyone else doesn’t mean he will know what to do in an emergency.

4. Never quickly approach a hole in the ice or you may slide right in or the ice will give way around its edge.

5. Stay where the ice is still intact and use a reaching stick or rope to pull the victim out of the water.

 

SURVIVOR TIGER