Page 45 of Restoration

“A firepit.”

“Oh.” I frown. “Do you think we’ll be able to start a fire?”

“I don’t know. But we should work on it. I think coconut meat is supposed to be good grilled, and if we can ever catch any fish or crabs, we’ll need a fire to cook them up.”

He’s definitely resigned himself to not being rescued right away. He’s thinking now of how we can make things better while we’re here.

And he’s right.

“Yeah, we need to figure out a fire. And we need to figure out how to fish.”

“I’m just not sure how we can make a workable fishing rod without having a hook.”

I think for a minute. “You know what we should try? A net. We can make one out of those vines.”

“A net?”

“Yeah. Like the fishermen in the Bible. Didn’t you ever go to Sunday school?”

He chuckles. “You know perfectly well I did not.”

“Well, I think you just drag the net in the water and hope fish swim into it. It’s worth a try and a lot easier than trying to make fishhooks.”

“Yeah. We can definitely try it.”

“But I think the nets are supposed to be used on boats.” I frown, thinking through how we’ll make it work.

“Well, we’ve got all the remains of that sailboat.” He nods down toward the beached boat that’s still there on the sand. “There’s enough material there to make some sort of raft and oars. We’ve got the knife now, and maybe I can make some sort of hatchet with a rock that can help with cutting the wood.”

“Okay. Yeah. That’s a good idea. We can figure out something. It will be nice to have fish to eat. Our protein bars and fruit aren’t really cutting it.”

“I know. And we’ve got the pan from that boat, so we’ll actually be able to cook them up if we catch them.”

I’m excited about this plan. When we’re done eating, we spend a couple of hours making a firepit not far from our shelter. We dig out a shallow hole and cover it with a layer of small rocks. Then we find bigger rocks to stack in a ring around it and add wood with some dried leaves to burn.

Then we have to figure out how to start the fire. It’s harder than it should be. We try rubbing sticks together. Then we make a search for flint rocks. Once we find some, we pick out a couple of good ones and bring them back. Edmund finds a broken steel pipe from the old sailboat and brings it over to the firepit. Then he strikes one of the flint rocks against the steel.

We get sparks on the third or fourth try, and a few minutes later we have a fire.

We’re both incredibly pleased with ourselves. It feels like a victory. And the smoke from the fire has the added benefit of helping keep mosquitoes away as the sun starts to set.

We sit by our fire for hours as the day darkens into night, even though the added heat is not entirely comfortable.

We practice grilling fruit on skewers since we’ll need to construct some sort of contraption over the fire to hold the pan. We talk about what else we need to do to expand our shelter.

By the time the fire is dying out, we’re both ready for bed. So we wash up, go to the bathroom, and then crawl back into our shelter.

Tonight we don’t go straight to sleep.