Totem, Part V

Food was in short supply once he slipped beyond the fence. And while it didn’t take long for him to realize he wasn’t being chased and that no one would ever be chasing him again, he quickly became aware that he might starve to death if he didn’t reacquaint himself with wild-game hunting.

Strangely, he befriended a pair of dogs, an Australian shepherd and a Collie, who seemed more than willing to trade their wildness for a rub on the belly and a scratch behind the ear. These new companions proved to be wonderful hunters and often returned with small game to be cooked and shared.

They spent near three-years moving about the wilderness, hunting and surviving, where learned to eat foods that would disgust another ordinary and rational person. Soon the clothing he’d escaped with were worn away and eventually he began to wear the skins of the larger animals he’d killed or had found already dead and partly eaten.

In that time, he’d not seen another human being and had learned to be alone and solitary much like a male bear. Slowly, he made his way back through the mountains, passing through what once had been Redding and later Susanville.

Neither appeared as they had when people inhabited them, nor did they look like his dreams, the ones he held onto in order to cope with being being imprisoned and forced to labor for those he did not know. Because of sadness, he didn’t linger, proceeding on into what had once been Nevada.

It was south of Susanville and north of the long forgotten and overgrown, weed infested Janesville Cemetery, that he found an older horse, one familiar with the human, and who at first was indisposed to being ridden again, but who after some gentling became another companion the was grateful to have. The Bay proved to be gentle and seemed to enjoy carrying him along barebacked.

Little looked the same as he dropped in the Cold Spring Valley. Overgrown with weeds and tangles of thistles and vines, collapsed overpasses and fallen bridges.

Nine days later, he passed through the Hidden Valley and over the hillside from which he used to escape. The valley, Spanish Springs, was empty, devoid of life, save for a number of wild horses and a pack of dog that looked to be half-bred with coyotes or visa-versa.

This had been home and now it wasn’t. While he stayed for two days, he finally decided to continue southward.