Page 38 of Last Chance Cowboy
“Oh,” he said, picking up a large can and holding it up. “There’s also bear spray. This is important.”
“Bear spray?”
“Yeah. It is high-octane pepper spray. You don’t want to spray this in an enclosed space unless you absolutely have to because you’re going to fog yourself too.”
“So if a bear attacks me… I pepper spray it?”
“Yeah. Trust me, in some situations, it’s more effective than shooting them, especially if you’re not a great shot. And especially if you don’t have a high-powered enough gun. All the bullet is going to do is make it angrier.”
“Well, I don’t know how to shoot a gun either.”
“We may have to save that for one of your lessons.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I think I’m good.”
“I’ll decide when you’re good.”
Her eyebrows lifted, and she tilted her head to the side. “Will you?”
“I’m the one who’s in charge of the lesson plan.” He took all the items and loaded them into her pack and handed the pack to her. She took it, and he watched as she tried to get it adjusted to the correct size to get it around her hips.
She frowned, gazing down at the pack. “This looks stupid.”
“Wilderness survival isn’t about how youlook, Cara, it’s about not dying.”
“Thank you, Zane. I was unclear on that. Here I thought it was a fashion show.”
“No.” He turned away from her and headed toward the path that ran parallel to his house, back toward the creek. “The good thing about getting lost in the woods this time of year is that generally it isn’t going to be dumping buckets of rain; what happened to you was an anomaly.”
“Great. But it still happened to me.”
“It sure did. It’s a great example of why being prepared is necessary. Because even if something is unlikely to happen, the chances aren’t zero. That’s just how life is. We’re all one freak accident away from being an outlier statistic.”
“That is… deeply grim.”
She had no idea how deeply grim he was or how earned that grimness was.
“Yeah, well, sometimes being deeply grim keeps you alive. Down here, you’re going to find wild raspberries, blackberries, huckleberries, and the occasional wild strawberry. So, that’s a lot right there for you to work with, though they can be a trick to find, because the deer and the bear want to get a hold of them before you do.” He moved aside a couple of plants to reveal a wild raspberry patch that he already knew was there. “You’ll recognize these, edible. Clearly.”
“Oh. Those are just… teeny tiny raspberries.”
She moved closer to the small, red fruit.
“I think I’d recognize most of these if I thought about it,” she said. “I didn’t do any foraging in Vermont, but I’ve definitely seen baskets of different wild berries at farm stands.”
“I assume you’ve baked with most of them.”
“Definitely. You know I like fruit in my baked goods.” She was looking down at the foliage like it might all be magical now.
“Of course, you can also eat some grasshoppers if you’re still hungry once you’ve finished with your berries.”
She blanched, recoiled in horror. He actually hadn’t been trying to horrify her. But of course, that was the kind of thing that civilians would take issue with.
“Hey, it’s a good source of protein. They roast up pretty nicely on a fire. Kind of like popcorn.”
“That is horrific.”
“Survival doesn’t care about whether or not you’re squeamish.”
