To Endure and Other Stories

To Endure

I jumped through the open door, clutched my blanket to me, and stumbled away from the helicopter before it clawed upward into the night. I watched until the running lights faded to nothing.

It was colder than they said it would be. I wondered why they hadn’t given us anything more than a blanket. Damn budget cuts.

This was a corporate confidence-building and trust generating exercise. It was designed to give mid-level employees greater self-confidence. Also to enhance our trust of upper management, who would be there to retrieve each of us before 10:00 AM the following morning.

This was northernmost Siberia. The sky was moonless and wrapped in clouds. I lay on the ground and pulled the blanket around me. The cold earth sucked the warmth out of me in minutes.

I had no light, not even a single match. It was too dark to look for a better place to sleep. I had to make do where I was. I managed by lying down for twenty minutes and then doing jumping jacks for ten. I finally fell asleep as the clouds began to clear and the temperature began to drop.

I woke slowly, shivering under the thin wool blanket. There was a faint smell of salt in the air. That confirmed I was close to the northern coast.

The first rays of sunlight revealed nothing but flat tundra as far as I could see. At first the tundra was gray and indistinct, then as the sunlight reached it, it was reddish and green. By the time the sun was above the horizon, it became a kaleidoscope of green, gray, red, and brown with long dark shadows streaking the surface. As the sun continued to rise, the shadows, thrown by hummocks less than eight inches tall, disappeared.

When the sun was even higher in the sky, I could see far off, snow-capped mountains piercing the mist. I had no idea how far they were from me. Maybe a hundred miles, maybe even three hundred miles.

I wondered if the others had been as cold last night as I was. Phil Dixon, the general manager of our Russian division, said we’d be dropped off more than twenty miles apart. I supposed it was Phil’s way of preventing collaboration.

Our night alone in the wilderness was supposed to build great confidence, but right now I was just thirsty and hungry. I listened for the return of the helicopter, a huge green and gray Russian beast. But the tundra was silent, eerily so. As the sun rose higher, I heard seabirds and saw them flying overhead, their whiteness the only discord in the cloudless, blue sky.

It was almost evening before I realized something was wrong. I was still standing, slapping at a myriad of tiny bugs that bit like fire, the blanket wrapped around me, watching for the helicopter as the reddening Sun began to kiss the horizon. Was this part of the test, or had something happened? The helicopter not being on time was certainly not trust-building. I listened for the helicopter as the wind strengthened and the temperature dropped. One minute I was slapping bugs and the next the bugs were gone and I was shivering.

The wind felt like it was blowing over ice. It was cold and wet, yet there was no rain. My clothes and the blanket grew damper, colder. So, this was summer on the tundra?

There was nowhere to get out of the wind so I dug up great chunks of the cold, plastic, gooey soil with my hands and built a wall. In an hour, I had a barrier three feet high. It blocked the wind. Then I thought, what if the wind shifts? So, like the engineer I was, I added to the wall until it surrounded an area just large enough for me to huddle inside with my blanket. I debated roofing the structure, but I had nothing to support a roof. I ripped up handfuls of thin grasses and moss, and piled them inside my wall to make a mattress.

It was getting late so I lay down inside the wall and alternately worried and slept. The wind picked up sometime during the night and screamed across the tundra. I pulled my blanket tighter around me and fell back asleep.

The next morning my hunger was subsiding, but not my thirst. I’d been without food or water for over thirty-six hours. I knew nothing about survival in the wilderness, but I knew that seventy-two hours was about the limit a man can go without water. I needed water and there was none here.

I could wait for the helicopter to show up, and maybe it would before I died from thirst. Or I could go look for water. I decided to look for water and leave signs so if my rescuers showed up, they could track me.

I considered trying for the northern coast, but, from what I remembered, like most of northern Siberia, it was almost deserted. Besides, I was afraid all I would find was salt water if I went toward the coast.

I climbed over my mud wall, wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, and, based on the position of the Sun, made a twelve-foot-long, southeast-pointing mud arrow on the ground. That was the way toward civilization.

I tried to hold a straight path across the landmark-free tundra. I made a pile of earth every one hundred paces.

Night came and I hadn’t found any water. Was this how it was going to end for me? Double master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and geology from Purdue University, a great career with a multi-national company, and I die of thirst alone on the Siberian tundra because someone in our company screwed up?

I knew my parents would miss me, but few others. My girlfriend broke up with me two weeks before because she didn’t like Beast, my big, clumsy, sweet, shedding labernease dog. She was already dating someone else. I wished Beast was here with me instead of with my parents. Then I realized, if he was, he might die here as well. I was glad he was with them. They loved him as much as I did.

I built another earth wall. Dehydration was slowing me down. My joints ached and I knew I wasn’t thinking as clearly as before. But at least I slept out of the wind to conserve what moisture I had left in my body. My lips were cracked and bleeding. I couldn’t even find a small stone to suck on.

I checked my pockets again. Nothing. Phil made each of us empty our pockets in the helicopter. He said it was so that none of us had any advantage over the others. Of course, corporate wouldn’t allow employees to carry any sort of knife or weapon, but I might have found a use for my cell phone. I could’ve used the battery to start a fire, if I had any fuel for a fire anyway. And my Tech Four pen and paper notebook would have been useful as well.

What I really wanted was a canteen full of water and a warm, waterproof sleeping bag. I slept poorly, dreaming of camping gear.

The wind died down by morning. I rose from my mud huddle and walked southeast. The temperature was above freezing. At times I was almost sweating in my blanket. I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to build markers anymore. If I didn’t find water today, I’d be dead and it wouldn’t matter where I was, or if they ever found me.

I think I’d have worried more if I wasn’t in shock. To go from working in an office in Ohio to being stranded alone in the Siberian tundra with no food or water in just three days was mind-blowing. I had to force myself to stop worrying and think about what needed to be done.

I jogged fifty paces and walked fifty paces. Normally I could maintain that pace all day, but not when I was dehydrated. Every hour or so I had to stop and rest. By afternoon, I had to stop every half-hour. I was no longer sure I was traveling in a straight line. I was slogging along, almost in a daze when I fell into a small stream. I cupped my hands and drank the icy water as fast as I could. Then I remembered to slow down. In an hour, I was feeling much better. I built another mud huddle and began searching along the stream for food.

The stream was tiny, only two feet wide and six inches deep. It ran in a small channel carved into the tundra.

I searched the banks for food. There were a few plants I didn’t recognize. I was afraid to eat any of them. I looked in the rivulet. I saw a flash. It was a minnow. Food! I was hungry enough to eat anything I could catch.

I chased after the minnow, foolishly splashing through the water and getting my shoes and socks soaked. The minnow got away.

Most of the men I worked with would have just sat down and quit at that point. Modern society seems determined to remove the man from men, especially in the cities. But I’ve never been one to give up. Most folks thought I was too damn stubborn. They were probably right.

I needed a net. I had no idea how to make a net but I damn well knew I was gonna make one. I needed cordage, something I could unravel, or rip into lengths. The blanket was too strong, and so were my