How Not To Be Eaten
How would I describe the setting for my mystery novel, “Body In The Bush”? It is both small town and the woods, the bush, that surrounds me as I write, as I live, as I breathe. It is a very real place to me.
An Adventure
I am not an outdoors person in the classic sense. I do not kayak, nor ski. I do not run among the trees. But I do hike and, all but this past winter, I did snowshoe. I wander the logging roads and deer trails that slice through the woods, or as we Canadians call it — the bush. Up until a few years ago, I would scramble up small cliff faces that I should have known to stay away from. I used to call it “mountain goating”. Eldest Son and I went for a wander one day, we followed a small creek into the trees just to see where it went. We slipped over rocks, clambered over fallen trees, jumped over muddy slices and found ourselves at the base of a …not quite a cliff, but bigger than a hill. We stood and looked up at it, at the face of it that looked as if a God had reached down and hacked through it with a knife.
“We can get up there,” Eldest Son said.
And like a twenty-year-old fool, I agreed.
We climbed, slipped, pulled ourselves hand over hand, slipped again, cursed, laughed and wheezed, but we made it.
What did we gain? Sore muscles, skinned knuckles and memories we still talk about to this day.
There was no spectacular view, we were surrounded by more trees. We were not lost, we knew generally what direction the house lay in, we knew that we could always reverse and go back the way we came. But we didn’t. We were on an adventure. A 19-year-old guy trying to figure out his place in the world and his 45-year-old mother, trying to convince herself she was not going to get old. We spent hours out there, watching where we put our feet just as carefully as we watched for bears. It was spring, and a dangerous time to cross paths with a sleepy bear. Or a mother with cubs. So when you’re out in the bush, you have to listen for wildlife, you have to recognize when things are too quiet or when something smells off. Could be there’s a dead something not far off, or it could be a bear that has rolled in dead something. Either way, you want to be very aware of your surroundings. ‘Situational awareness’ the military calls it.
Because out in the bush, a situation can go from pleasant to deadly in less time than it took me to type that. You can step around a tree and suddenly find yourself mere feet away from two bear cubs. And not knowing where their mama is can make anyone’s blood run cold. There’s no outrunning a bear, and those who’ve tried are either dead or have scars to talk about.
There are wildcats out here too. Lynx, cougar, and bobcats. And while most of the time we don’t hear about cougars stalking people outside of British Columbia, it does happen. I’ve seen a video of a hiker being followed by a cougar on a well-populated trail in Ontario. The hiker is walking backwards, filming the cat who is following him 15, maybe 20 feet away like he’s just out for a stroll sharing the same strip of dirt. But what was on that cat’s mind was not, “Hey, let’s walk together, ok?” For a wild cat to follow like that, it’s either hungry or diseased. Either way, it’s dangerous. Now, the hiker managed to stop and confront the cat, keeping trees and boulders between them as much as possible. He talked to it rationally, yelled at it, threw sticks and rocks until the cat got the message that its meal would not go down without a fight. Finally, it wandered off, stopped once and looked over its shoulder at the hiker and left for good. On film, you can hear the fear in the guy’s voice, you can see him reach out a hand in front of the camera to show the tremors of terror. But he won the showdown. He learned first hand that you’re never really, truly safe out here in the woods. There are things out here that will kill you, and things that will eat you. That’s the circle of life.
So it made perfect sense to me that this would be the place that would not only shape my Detective, but also provide the scene for a murder, as well as a place where a dead body might never be found. It makes perfect sense to me. Wild animals are not choosey about their food most of the time. If it doesn’t put up a fight, all the better. Wolves, coyotes, martens, bobcats, cougar, bears and dozens of other creatures will all take their share if they can. There are even rabbits that eat carrion, so don’t think Peter Cottontail is all sweetness and innocence! Don’t believe me? Go check YouTube for the rabbit eating a dead partridge. Never mind, here’s the link.
