Alive and Alone Read Online Free Page B

off and pulled them away from his shelter.  The live branches he cut from the tree and then lined the cold ground with them.  As he worked, he thought of how he could stay alive tonight when the temperature went way down.
    Finally, he decided he could pull a small piece of aluminum from the aircraft wreckage and use it to construct a small container for his fire.  By burning small twigs he could have a very small fire near the shelter all night long and yet not have it actually inside.  This time he’d never leave it unattended.
    David had learned a few years back how to make a heat reflector using boulders or logs to make the heat from a fire reflect back into a shelter.  It was basically a wall on the opposite side of the entrance to a shelter, with the fire in the middle, and it usually worked very well, unless the wind picked up.  He had plenty of wood, so he pulled eight large logs to the area he’d selected to make his heat reflector.  Using his knife, he peeled the bark from each log and then pounded four large stakes into the frozen ground, two at each end of where the logs would lay.  The stakes were set far enough apart to allow him to stack the logs on top of each other and the poles would hold the logs upright.  
    At times, he noticed he was working hard enough to break out in a sweat, so he’d stop and allow himself time to cool down.  He knew from cross-country skiing that sweating could be fatal in cold weather.  The sweat would freeze and form a thin layer of ice on a person, which could cause death.   Strange, he thought as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, how things I learned in different sports and subjects are coming together to help me.
    As soon as his heat reflector was competed, he went to the aircraft wreckage and pulled a large piece of metal from under the wing.  Being careful not to cut his hands on the sharp sheet metal, he made his way back camp.  Once in camp, he placed the end of the metal under a log of his reflector and pushed down on the soft metal, causing it to bend.  He repeated the process on all our sides and end up with a very crude looking metal bowl.  
    Using rocks under the raised lips of the container to stabilize it, he soon had a small fire going in the very center of the metal.  This time he used the flint and steel and not his matches to start the fire.  He had considered using the matches, only he knew he should save them for real emergencies.  David had always loved starting a fire with flint and steel, just like the old time mountain men had done when they were out trapping beavers.  He knew the secret to starting a fire was to have your tinder, kindling, and fuel nearby before you ever started to work on it.  Of course, his father had always reminded him that all wood used in a fire should be as dry as possible, because it burned faster and gave off less smoke as it burned.  The thought of his father brought tears to his eyes once more.
    As he waited for the fire to die down a bit so he could cook something to eat on the hot coals, he opened one of the survival meals his father had placed in the survival kit. The brownish colored plastic container read, MRE and in smaller print, it stated below, Meal Ready to Eat.  The ration looked like a military meal to David, and while he’d never eaten one, he’d seen Colonel Wilcox eat them on a hunting trip the year before.  If it was the same meal the colonel had eaten, it was not dehydrated, and Dave and his father had always used the commercial dehydrated meals when they camped. They both like them because they were very lightweight and tasted good.
    He opened the plastic, pulled the contents out, and placed them in his lap, as he looked the items over closely.  He discovered the large bag contained a main entrée, a side dish, crackers, coffee, cream, sugar, salt, pepper, peanut butter, hot sauce, an apple cinnamon energy bar, and a fork/spoon combination. All of the contents were in the same