Sleeping With The Enmity

Days Waking - 98

Location - 65°52’59N by 149°43’11W

It’s a rest day of sorts, even though we moved camp a mile or two. The overnight watch was mostly uneventful but we wanted to put some more space between us and the BFGB of yesterday.

It’s hard to guess in this rugged terrain just where his home range ends. We’ve been looking at trees for territorial markings, but what layman can tell where one BFGB’s home ranging area ends and another’s begins?

You’ll notice I said the night was ‘mostly uneventful’. When Caeled and I got up for our watch duty at 4AM, we found team Adrian and Church SLEEPING ON DUTY.

Now, when Caeled and I are on watch, our biggest problem is keeping quiet so we don’t wake everyone up. I’ve rarely felt the urge to pass out and when I do, the idea that I have people’s lives in my hands helps to keep me awake, if not completely alert.

So we were yelling at them, visions of BFGB dancing in our heads. Everybody woke up, and there commenced a big angry shouting match, and a lot of dirty laundry was aired, and much uncomfortable back-biting took place. Not a good place to be just then.

So, two guesses who gets to do the cooking duty for the next couple of weeks. That’s right, it’s those sleeping bastards. When I start to think about all the scary predators that are out there, and the idea that the folks supposedly keeping watch might be sleeping, I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep comfortably again for quite a while.

Jake told us about some story he heard where if soldiers are sleeping on duty, they are awakened by getting pee'd on. And then they get beat up. That about fits the angry feeling we were all experiencing just then, I'd say.

We’ve broken these two sleepers into different watch groups. Church is now with me, and Adrian is now is Caeled. Although as quiet as Church can be, I might have trouble keeping awake too.

Today was a decent day. I wanted to walk off from camp a bit and do some writing, but the image of the bloody bear was still too fresh in my memory. So I stayed within earshot of camp but out of sight, within view of a very pretty little lake, and wrote three poems!

It was relaxing, even if the bugs did get on my damn nerves. One of the poems is pretty decent, the other two are crap and I’ll probably trash them. It was good to write them, sometimes you just need to get those words out of your head so they’ll leave you alone.

I’m really looking forward to getting into Fairbanks. We’ll likely be there a few weeks while we put together some funds. That will be interesting, interacting with humans on a daily basis once again.

Will we love it or hate it? Time will tell.

Litany Webb, signing off

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