American Hunting: Starting with Solitary Life in the Wilderness

Chapter 176 The Storm Is Coming! (Seeking monthly votes! Just a few hundred votes away from 10,000!)

Lin Yu'an, wearing snowshoes, turned and walked towards the shelter. This morning, for him, was a perfect, textbook-perfect strategic victory!
The morning's hunt, from strategy formulation to trap upgrades and the final harvest, perfectly validated his judgment.

This not only provided him with over five kilograms of high-quality protein, but more importantly, it validated a passive hunting system that proved effective in snowy environments.

It was afternoon when he returned to his semi-subterranean shelter.

He took off his backpack, took out the two frozen willow pheasants, and threw them on the snow at the door with a dull "plop".

He didn't immediately begin dealing with the spoils, but instead looked up again to observe the changing weather.

On his way back, Lin Yu'an witnessed the weather constantly changing, growing increasingly gloomy. Now, after just one glance, his expression turned extremely solemn.

The clouds in the sky have changed dramatically in just a few hours.

He immediately activated the camera on his chest.

"Good afternoon, everyone. I have just finished inspecting and expanding the trap lines, and the results were good. But now, I am facing a more serious problem."

"The wind is starting to feel strange. It's no longer the steady, cold wind it used to be. Instead, a gust of wind is blowing from the southeast, carrying the salty smell of the ocean. The next gust might come from the northeast, stirring up the snow in the forest."

“The wind direction is messed up.” He said to the camera, his voice lowering.

"In a stable weather system, the wind direction should be consistent. These chaotic gusts indicate that something is disturbing the pressure field here."

He looked up again, his gaze fixed on the sky, trying to find more evidence.

He pointed to the lowest clouds and said, “Look there! Those clouds, torn like tattered cotton, are skimming the sea surface and sweeping inland at an alarming speed. They come from the ocean, and this is the first danger sign.”

But what truly made his heart sink was the view from even higher up; his gaze pierced through the low clouds and looked towards the highest point.

"But what's worse, are those feather-like clouds with hooked tips up there?"

"Those are cirrus uncinus clouds! They're being pulled southeast by a high-altitude jet stream traveling at over 100 kilometers per hour. Their direction of movement is completely different from the clouds below that are coming from the east!"

"The winds at high and low altitudes are fighting! This means that the atmosphere above my head is undergoing violent distortion and conflict."

“There is a huge, unseen ‘engine’ stirring all of this up!”

He paused for a moment, piecing together all the clues in his mind: the chaotic ground winds, the low clouds from the ocean, the high-altitude jet streams moving in opposite directions...

Before participating in the competition, Lin Yu'an had repeatedly studied the information about this sea area, and a terrifying term came to mind!

"All these signs point to a guess that I least want to see."

His tone became extremely serious: "I suspect that a 'bomb cyclone' is forming!"

To confirm this worst-case scenario, he needed definitive evidence, so he quickly walked to the huge rock next to the shelter that overlooked the entire bay and gazed at the distant horizon.

The scene in the distance, like irrefutable evidence, completely shattered the last shred of hope in his heart.

That vast expanse of water connecting to the open sea is no longer the tranquil state it was in near the shore, covered by floating ice.

Waves, like mountain ridges, are forming from the distant horizon and advancing toward the coastline with unstoppable force!

Lin Yu-an said to the camera with a serious expression, "These swells and local wind and waves are two completely different concepts."

"Local wind waves are generated by the wind blowing in front of you, with short and chaotic waveforms. But swells are energy transmitted from a huge storm system tens or even hundreds of kilometers away!"

"Its peaks are far apart and its period is very long, which means that it loses almost no energy during transmission."

"The wind is blowing from the southeast, but these surging waves are coming from the due east."

"This means that the eye of the storm that created them is directly to our east, and it's moving toward us at high speed!"

As these swells approached the shallow waters near the shore, they suddenly rose and curled upwards, eventually forming massive, shattered walls of white foam! Then, with a deafening roar, they slammed into the reefs that were already encased in ice.

Each impact sent up sprays of water several meters high, followed by a deafening roar like distant artillery fire!

“Before I came here, I spent a lot of time studying the weather data of the Labrador coast.”

He faced the camera, his voice strained from the wind: "This is one of the most active regions for temperate cyclones in the world during winter."

"When the cold, dry polar continental air mass from Greenland in the Arctic meets the warm, moist maritime air mass brought by the powerful Gulf Stream from the south, it is a common sight over this area."

"It will be like mixing two chemical reagents, producing a violent, explosive release of energy! This will give rise to an extratropical cyclone with the power of a tropical hurricane!"

"In meteorology, there is a very vivid name for it: 'bomb cyclone'! Because it can drop more than 24 hPa in central pressure within 24 hours, and its energy increases exponentially."

"Judging from all the signs I've seen, we're about to experience it for ourselves."

Looking at the churning sea, Lin Yu'an's tone became extremely serious: "This is both a huge disaster and a rare opportunity."

"The problem is that once a storm hits, I could be completely trapped in the shelter for days and unable to go out to find food."

"But the opportunity lies in the fact that such a large storm can bring amazing storm surges, capable of washing away the entire coastline!"

"It might bring up things from the deep water, like the mussels, sea urchins, and other shellfish we've been dreaming of, even seals and polar bear carcasses! There might be unexpected finds on the beach after the storm." "But first, I have to survive. Right now, everything has to give way to dealing with this storm!"

He immediately sprang into action, grabbing a handsaw and a short-handled axe, putting on snowshoes, and once again rushing into the eerily windswept forest.

He needs to stockpile enough firewood to last at least three days before the storm fully erupts.

This was not a rough estimate; he had a clear goal: to completely fill the side of the shelter that was right next to the back wall of the rock, from floor to ceiling, with dry firewood.

Lin Yu'an worked frantically in the forest, no longer having time to select the standing dead trees that required laborious felling.

His target was all the fallen timber that could be processed quickly, specifically looking for spruce and birch trunks of suitable size that had been broken off by previous wind and snow, hung on other trees, or fallen to the ground.

The wind grew stronger, whipping up the snow on the ground and creating gusts of white "snowstorm," which severely impaired his vision.

He had to squint to find his way through the swirling snow and mist.

He found a fallen, withered spruce tree, about waist-thick, but he didn't bother with the thickest part of the trunk; that would take too much time.

He used a handsaw to quickly cut the branches, which were about the thickness of an arm.

"Crunch... crunch..."

The handsaw moved steadily through the cold wood, sawdust mixed with snowflakes, which were blown everywhere by the gale.

Whenever he sawed off a suitable piece of wood, he would immediately start cutting the next piece without even cleaning it.

Time is his only enemy now.

He bundled the cut timber into a large bundle with rope, put the rope over his shoulder, and dragged it step by step, laboriously, toward the shelter.

His figure darted back and forth between the forest and the shelter, like an ant frantically hoarding food in preparation for the end of the world.

He quickly trod out a clear, deep path in the snow.

He neatly stacked the firewood he had dragged back inside the shelter, right next to the cold, rocky back wall.

The temperature there is the lowest, and it is also the safest, which can minimize the risk of fire.

The woodpile was growing taller at a visible rate, from ankle height to knee height, and then to waist height.

The mountain of firewood, exuding a dry, woody aroma, gave him a sense of security that was stronger than food, a sense of protection against the unknown weather.

But he knew that fuel alone was not enough; he also needed water reserves. Once a blizzard hit, visibility would be almost zero, making it extremely dangerous to go out to fetch water, and he might even lose his way.

Moreover, the ice on the river surface is covered by thick snow, and breaking it open to retrieve the ice would require several times the physical effort.

Most importantly, he also had to do the final reinforcement of the shelter's roof.

He immediately sprang into action, grabbing his backpack, handsaw, and axe, and braving the increasingly fierce gusts of wind, headed towards the already frozen freshwater river.

The river surface was already covered with a thick layer of white snow, making it look no different from the surrounding land.

He walked to the middle of the river.

"The ice in the center of a river is usually the purest because the water flows the fastest there and freezes last."

"Most of the impurities in the water are washed away during the flow, resulting in very high purity ice formed from the water here."

He selected an area and began to clear away all the snow on the surface with his feet, revealing the hard, bluish-white river ice underneath.

Then, he took a deep breath, gripped the short-handled axe tightly with both hands, raised it high, aimed it at the ice, and smashed it down hard!

"boom!!!"

A dull, loud thud resounded! Ice shards flew everywhere, leaving only a cracked crater the size of a bowl on the hard ice surface!

"So hard!" He shook his arm, which was numb from the impact.

But he didn't stop. Instead, he aimed at the same spot and began to strike it repeatedly at a high frequency!
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"

He was like a tireless blacksmith, putting all his strength into each strike, the axe blade colliding with the ice surface with a deafening sound.

Countless ice shards, like shards of glass, flew in all directions.

A few minutes later, he put the axe aside, knelt on the ice, and began to use his hands to scoop out the shards of ice he had smashed, one by one, and put them into his hiking backpack.

He held up a crystal-clear block of ice to the camera and said with satisfaction, "Look, this is the perfect source of drinking water!"

"Its density is much greater than that of snow. The same volume of ice can melt into five to ten times more water than fluffy snow! Although it requires more trips, this is the most reliable method."

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.

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(End of this chapter)