American Hunting: Starting with Solitary Life in the Wilderness

Chapter 170 Coastal Freezing and Crisis Management

Day 14.

When Lin Yu'an woke up, he found the outside world completely silent, and the sky was a deep blue, a color unique to the world after a blizzard.

He stepped out of the shelter and took a deep breath of the cold, fresh air.

Last night, another heavy snowfall covered the whole world with a white blanket.

“A perfect sunny day.” He squinted, adjusting his eyes to the blinding light of the snow.

"But the weather like this is often the coldest. Now, I have to go and see how much the temperature drop and snowfall overnight have affected our food supply."

When he arrived at the shore, the sight before him made his heart sink to the bottom.

The tide was at its lowest point of the day, but the once vast expanse of gray mudflats had completely disappeared.

Instead, there was a vast white ice field covered with countless ice floes and snow!

Last night's low temperatures completely froze the "ice porridge" and "sea ice mud," connecting them to the snow on the shore.

He carefully stepped onto the ice near the shore and forcefully smashed it down with his ice axe. "Bang!" A muffled sound rang out, leaving only a shallow white mark on the ice, which was at least several centimeters thick.

“It’s over.” He stood on the ice, looked around, and said in a heavy, almost declarative tone.

"The intertidal zone is completely blocked off. From today onwards, the perk of beachcombing has been completely taken away by nature. I will never be able to easily obtain any mussels or conches from here again."

His gaze turned toward the lake.

He arrived at the lake, where the situation was equally dire. Apart from a small patch of unfrozen, ink-black water in the very center of the lake, the entire surface was covered in black water.

The rest of the area was completely covered by a solid layer of ice covered with snow.

Those three flexible fishing rods, on which he had placed high hopes, were firmly frozen in the ice, like three small tombstones.

"The means of obtaining freshwater fish have been basically cut off. I can only wait until the ice breaks for fishing in a few days. I can't expect to get any more fish from here in the short term."

He finally walked towards the coniferous forest, and under the thick snow, he even had some trouble finding the traps he had rearranged the day before.

He brushed aside the snow, and there were four carefully disguised white nooses, still standing quietly in place, without any sign of being triggered.

On the surrounding snow, apart from his own footprints, there were no new animal tracks to be seen.

"Last night's blizzard sent all the rabbits hiding in their warm burrows. The land traps are still the air force."

Oceans, lakes, and land.

During his brief morning patrol, Lin Yu'an witnessed firsthand the simultaneous failure of his three major food acquisition routes.

Lin Yu'an stood in the snow, silent for a long time.

He knew that from today onward, he would enter the most difficult phase of this survival game: the pure consumption phase. He would likely have to rely entirely on the food he had stockpiled to survive the remaining forty-odd days.

Back at the shelter, my gaze fell on the two cattail baskets filled with mussels.

These hundreds of pounds of mussels were no longer just food to him at this moment, but his only hope for survival.

“Now, dealing with them has become the top priority and an urgent task.” He spoke to the camera, his tone becoming extremely solemn.

“I have to cook them all as food and then freeze them because mussels are extremely dangerous once they die.”

"First of all, there's the issue of decay. Look, live mussels have their shells tightly closed; that's because their adductor muscles are working hard."

"Once death occurs, these muscles relax, and enzymes in the body begin to break down proteins, producing substances such as cadaverine and putrescine. Although at the current low temperatures, this process will be very slow and will not produce toxins immediately."

"But you can't tell which one in this basket is freshly dead and which one may have been dead for many days. If you eat something that isn't fresh, you'll suffer from stomach upset at best, and vomiting and diarrhea at worst. In the wilderness, that's a disaster."

"But none of these are the most terrifying things."

He emphasized, "The most terrifying thing is an invisible, intangible danger that cannot be removed by cooking—paralytic shellfish poisoning."

"Many mussels accumulate this neurotoxin in their bodies by filtering microalgae from seawater while they are alive."

"This toxin is heat-resistant; it remains even when you fry, stir-fry, cook, or deep-fry. It can directly paralyze your nervous system and, in severe cases, lead to respiratory failure."

"So what I need to do now is to cook all the mussels thoroughly in one large-scale cooking session to ensure that every bite of food I freeze and store afterwards is 100% safe."

"Several hundred pounds of mussels cannot be cooked one pot at a time with my small pot; that would be too slow."

He looked at the camera and announced his plan: "Therefore, I need to build a more efficient cooking system!"

First, clear a space in front of the shelter, sweep away all the snow to expose the frozen ground underneath.

Then, he began collecting a large number of flat, moderately sized stones from the vicinity. He used these stones to build a rectangular structure on the open ground, similar to the long, narrow grills commonly seen at barbecue stalls in China.

This "oven" is about two meters long, forty centimeters wide, and thirty centimeters high.

"This stone trough is today's stage; its purpose is to hold the charcoal fire and concentrate the heat."

Then, he took out the roll of professional annealed steel wire tripping cord.

Lin Yu'an unrolled the entire roll of steel wire and began weaving a huge, metal mesh grill.

He first twisted several strands of steel wire together to create a thicker "main rib" to serve as the frame for the grill.

Then, he used thinner single-strand steel wires to weave a uniformly spaced grid on the frame by weaving it back and forth.

It took him two full hours to complete the huge metal grill, which was more than two meters long and about forty centimeters wide.

Then, the grill net was placed steadily on the long stone oven, and a huge primitive barbecue device appeared before our eyes.

(P.S.: This is just a picture; only the overall atmosphere matters.)
Finally, a large amount of dry firewood was filled into the entire stone trough and then lit. A roaring fire shot into the sky, turning the metal grill above glowing red-hot and melting the surrounding snow.

He didn't rush to start roasting, but patiently waited until all the firewood had burned into hot charcoal with a stable temperature and a dark red glow. Then, he moved the two storage baskets full of mussels to the grill.

He grabbed a handful of mussels and, with a "whoosh," spread them evenly on the scorching hot metal grill.

"Fuck-"

When the mussel's shell came into contact with the hot metal, it immediately made a loud noise and emitted puffs of white steam.

At this moment, Lin Yu'an seemed to have transformed into an experienced barbecue chef. Holding two long wooden sticks, he constantly turned and stirred the piles of mussels on the grill, ensuring they were heated evenly.

Soon, a wonderful chemical reaction began.

Even though these mussels were dead, the intense heat of the charcoal fire caused the residual moisture inside their shells to boil and vaporize rapidly, generating enormous internal pressure.

At the same time, the adductor muscle connecting the shell also rapidly denatures, contracts, and ruptures under high temperatures.

All you could hear were the popping sounds, a bit muffled than when grilling live clams, but still very frequent.

The shells of the mussels were forcibly broken open by the internal steam and external heat, revealing the orange-yellow mussel meat inside, which had already been roasted.

An indescribable, pure, salty aroma of the ocean, mixed with the smoky scent of charcoal, instantly filled the entire camp.

He quickly used a stick to pull the already opened and cooked mussels off the grill and piled them onto a clean, large piece of birch bark next to him.

Then, a new batch of raw mussels was immediately laid out on the barbecue grill.

And so, he spread it out, flipped it over, listened to the pleasant "pop pop" sound as it crackled open, and then shoveled it off. He was like a worker efficiently operating on an assembly line, constantly repeating this process.

Time flew by in the tedious yet rewarding repetitive work, and he hardly stopped for a moment from morning to afternoon.

By the time the last batch of mussels was cooked and pulled off the grill, the sun had already begun to set.

He spent an entire day processing all of these hundreds of kilograms of "strategic reserves" into safe and delicious cooked food.

He did not choose to peel them all immediately.

This is a huge undertaking. It would take most of the day to peel them all out, and the shells themselves are the best food storage containers.

He waited for the roasted mussels to cool slowly until they were no longer too hot to handle. Then, he put the last batch of cooked mussels, still in their shells, back into the cattail basket.

He moved the basket full of cooked mussels to the deepest part of the snow outside the shelter and buried them deep inside. The thick snow was a natural, perfect refrigerator.

"It's done."

"Starting tomorrow, I will only need to dig out some each day, throw them into a pot and heat them up briefly, and I can enjoy delicious grilled mussels."

"This will be my most stable source of protein for a long time to come."

On the morning of the fifteenth day, Lin Yu'an woke up very late, around nine o'clock.

This was the first time he had allowed himself to sleep until he naturally woke up since entering the wilderness.

Last night, in the warm, dry shelter, the crackling of the burning wood in the fireplace and the howling of the wind and snow outside were very soothing, allowing him to sleep soundly.

(P.S.: The main purpose of the picture is to convey the atmosphere.)

He slowly sat up, and unlike his physical exhaustion, his mind felt an unprecedented sense of relaxation and peace.

With the food supply problem temporarily resolved and a sturdy dwelling basically in place, the two heaviest burdens on his mind were finally lifted.

He stepped out of the shelter, the blinding sunlight making him squint. Overnight, the world had been transformed.

The snow was even heavier last night, covering all the footprints he had made before. The earth was pure white, with only a few conifers stubbornly showing their dark green.

The air was as cold as a knife; inhaling it into my lungs brought a sharp, stinging sensation.

"A perfect sunny day, but the temperature is at least below minus ten degrees Celsius." He rubbed his hands together and exhaled a thick cloud of white breath.

"Before starting today's work, I still have to conduct my routine patrol. Although I don't expect to find anything, it's intelligence gathering, and I have to find out if there are any new traces after such a heavy snowfall."

This time, his mindset was completely different from before. He was no longer hoping to get food, but rather like a scout, purely to gather intelligence.

He first walked towards the coniferous forest. The thick snow required a great deal of effort with each step. He came to the first trap that had been set up yesterday and carefully observed it.

The trap was intact; the camouflaged white noose still hung silently beneath the path through the bushes.

To his surprise, there was a new set of rabbit footprints not far in front of the trap.

The trail of footprints extended to about a meter in front of the trap, then suddenly stopped. Next came a few slightly messy, stepping marks. Finally, it made a sharp turn of almost 180 degrees and fled in another direction.

“It has found it.” Lin Yu’an squatted down and carefully studied the story on the snow.

“Look here, it stopped here and hesitated. It probably didn’t see the noose, but smelled the scent I left here yesterday.”

"After a heavy snowfall, rabbits are at their most alert, and they are extremely sensitive to any fresh human scent that does not belong to this forest."

He inspected the remaining three traps, and they were all in similar condition.

He stood up and patted the snow off his hands: "The conclusion is clear. Relying solely on passive traps at this stage is exponentially more difficult, and we can only hope for luck."

Back at the shelter, I stood at the empty doorway.

The cold wind was blowing in through the hole, mingling with the hot air emanating from the fireplace to create a small whirlwind.

"Today, we're going to complete the last piece of this fortress puzzle: install a door."

Then, Lin Yu-an began to explain his door-building plan in detail to the camera.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

(Good morning, 7:04 AM Beijing time. It's Monday again, another workday. Remember to eat breakfast.)
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(End of this chapter)