Chapter 5 - Forest Strangeness

Night was still eating away at the day when the sound of snow crunching softly some distance away had me put my guard up, but when I glanced over, my muscles relaxed.

It was a hungry looking doe taking shelter in the same grove of trees as me. Its large brown eyes regarded me curiously from a distance.

My first thought of relief was that it wasn't the bear from a few days ago. My second thought was that there was actually an animal in this forsaken forest that didn't have the carnivorous powers to eat me.

Studying the deer, I watched it lay down, tight against a tree, on the very outskirts of the protected shelter. It was clearly avoiding me that was easy enough to see, but the innate decision to seek protection and not freeze to death was admirable to watch.

Instead of thinking of this deer as food, I saw it as a survival companion. Looking at it, my heart felt pity.

It kept its doe brown eyes on me and my fire, ready to spring and run if I did anything suspicious. I could see the muscles tensing and relaxing as they were fighting their flight or fight response.

Not being able to think of a way to gain its trust, I simply watched it on the edge of my peripheral vision and focused more on the fire at my feet. The deer relaxed some more, no longer feeling my constant gaze that previously bored into it.

Thoughts drifted back to the bear, and I was wondering if it was back to hibernating. It's imperative for bears to hibernate, for there isn't enough food in the winter for them to eat. I wondered what caused the bear to awake from such a deep slumber in the first place and why it wandered away from its original hibernation cave if there was one. I certainly didn't see one for the miles as I was walking.

Starting to feel unsettled by the mysterious thoughts protruding into my brain, I attempted to shake off the feeling that something was actually wrong, but the thoughts continued to invade. Sure, it was winter, but usually, one would see little critters scattering about the ground in search of something hidden beneath the snow. The fact that I've only seen a bear not doing what it was doing and this deer close to starvation was concerning.

Even the looming sense of a storm brewing across the horizon wouldn't stop an animal from scavenging for its next meal. Animals need food for sustenance and with that it also keeps them warmer with the stored fat, so the fact no animal has crossed my path in the last few days, for food or just traversing the forest, was a mystery to me.

Raising my head to look back at the deer, I could see it was starting to fall asleep, probably physically exhausted from attempting to find food all day and keeping safe from a frozen death. This would be the perfect chance to get the much needed food I needed to return home safely, but I couldn't summon the urge to take this deer's life. Something was telling me not to. Instinct, maybe? I was not sure.

Instead, I rested my head against the bark stripped tree behind me and watched the deer enter a restless dream, the muscles twitching every so often. A cold started to creep within me, watching the sleeping mammal. An unnatural cold.

I slipped my arms back into my coat sleeves in response and pulled it tight around me with a furrowed brow.

Above me, the sky that I could see through the tree canopy was dark gray. The tree canopy itself was black besides and the fire illuminated it to a dark green. The branches cracked noisily, swaying hazardously as they whipped one another.

The snow-covered bushes littering the forest ground is what scraped against my legs, although I could not feel it through my many layers. My pant leg showed the assault inflicted upon it, protecting my skin from being painted with scratches from the sharp twigs.

Honestly, the lack of sticks on the ground was more surprising than the lack of animals, in my mind. I didn't even get hit by a fallen branch or stick while the snow pelted down on me in harsh winds, and I have dreadful misfortune, so to say this is surprising.

All who know me would say I'm a walking catastrophe. Everywhere I go, my misfortune follows. I could argue that part of it is my inability to make reasonable choices, such as my decision to go hunting in the forest in the middle of winter, on a whim.

 Arguably, at the time, I thought it was a perfect time to hunt. No one else was going to be hunting, so all the forest inhabitants were for the taking. I was positive I would find myself with a few rabbits and maybe a deer, but here I am, almost a week later, lost, and with naught. Either I terribly miscalculated or my misfortune has preceded me.

Even when being successful on the majority of hunts I go on, bringing back significant amounts of meat and hides, along the way, is another story. Even if I watched all my steps, I could still manage to trip on my own feet. This is why I've resorted to using traps in hunting. Means when I stumble and fall on my face. The prey is trapped already and is unable to run away.

So maybe taking an unexpected adventure out into the forest without preparation was my downfall. Especially in the middle of winter. I had prepared and brought enough supplies to spend three days out here. A typical hunting trip for me.

A day to set the traps, a day for my plan to go into action, and the last day being for me to recheck my traps and bring everything back.

Guess I should have prepared a little more. It's winter, after all. The snow will make the traveling take longer, the traps to fill slower, and the need for me to consume more to keep my energies up in the cold environment. I didn't take any of this into account when I set off.

Didn't even account for the slim possibility that I could get lost within the pine forest. Guess I will take that into account from now on if I make it back alive.

I usually know this forest like the back of my hand, but that's when the ground isn't littered by centimeters of snow. I can recognize the different trees that lead the hunting path of mine, whichever appear to at first just be replicas of each other going on for miles. I can feel the footpath I have made throughout the years, leading to my different hunting spots. It's all so familiar, yet now it's all so different.

With my compass, I have not once gotten lost….

Okay, I have gotten lost, but I was always able to find my way back within 24 hours.

But as I continued to traverse the snowy forest, everything got disoriented. Even with my compass, I appeared to have lost my sense of direction and time. I started to wander aimlessly, pulled mindlessly into different directions.

Every time I checked my compass, I was off course. Even five minutes of not staring at the compass led me astray. It was as if the compass had a magnetic distortion, causing it to constantly change the direction it pointed.

My brain became muddled with confusion. I carelessly lost some of my items, stumbling along, trying to find something, anything I recognized. And now I'm here. Somewhere in the middle of the pine forest, that seemed so small when I entered.