May 28th, 2006
Like I told myself, I did end up somewhere else on the island. My body was still un-harmed but I felt like someone was watching me from above.
Today was my day to get things done and not to sit around. My first order of business was to investigate around the island to see if anyone else was here. There were no foot prints in the sand for the first twenty minutes or so. Occasionally I saw some marks in the sand that looked to small to be human foot prints. Some crossed each other; others just went into the forest. I figured it was an alligator or bird.
I couldn't tell if I had made my way past an area because they all seemed to look exactly alike. The palm trees, the water, the sand, it all looked like a mirror to me. I tried to calm myself down by going for an early afternoon swim. Since I didn't have a towel I'd have to let the wind and sun dry me off. The water was a lot warmer then the sun so when I got out it felt a bit nippy at first. The one problem with mixing water and sand is that they stick together. So you could bet I pretty much looked like Sandy the sand man. Other then the clichés, I looked like I came out of a washing machine, wet and smelling like ocean.
I quit looking for others and started searching for wood to build up my hut. My best bet would be anything close to the water figuring from broken ships and boats. Little by little I went around picking up seaweed covered wood and had to pick off the seaweed otherwise my house would smell like the bottom of the ocean. I wanted my hut to look authentic in having real pirate material.
As I turned the corner there was a black sheet laying on the ground. I knew I could use this as a flag to let anyone know that life existed on the island. I wanted a kick ass name for the island but nothing came to mind right away. I would figure it out later. I didn't know whether I should take it all back at once or little by little.
My mind said "do it all right now so tomorrow you won't have much to do". I knew that the actual building work would take a long ass time. After nearly three hours of walking around I recognized my site by the fire that was still going. In the meantime I looked around for some rope and hung out my flag against a palm tree that was just above where my hut would be. I didn't need it to be big on the inside but since I knew someone else would show up soon I might as well not risk it.
My first priority was getting a stair case of some sort going. I took a wood shop class my sophomore year of high school but I never excelled at it. I took two pieces of wood and looked at each other like somehow they were going to connect like two puzzle pieces. Instead they just sat there in my hands waiting for me to combine them like Siamese twins. Though one piece was shorter then the other I had to comprehend with that. The shorter piece would go on top. I figured I would have three pieces of wood making up the stairs then have a little deck area to sit out on that would go around the whole hut.
An hour later I was wrapping vines around the boards to hold them together and in place. Once I found that the vine worked I went into the woods to collect some that was growing off the trees. As I learned the hard way there were no such thing as log vines, which I took credit from in a Saturday morning cartoon show when I was about five years old. Since the forest was like a jungle I couldn't tell what the weather was like outside. The birds and animals inside made it difficult to hear anything that may have been occurring. By the time I was done collecting the vines and headed out the rain had started up. So immediately I dumped the vines down by the pieces of wood and headed back into the forest where it seemed like an invisible force field was around it keeping it dry from the hard falling rain.
I waited in the forest so long that I almost fell asleep standing up. If it hadn't been for a bird that squawked nearby I would've collapsed and most likely hurt myself. I poked my head out of the woods to see if the rain had ended. Instead what I got was the sun beating down on my head. The rain must've warmed the temperature up causing a drought. My latest conclusion was that someone had been controlling the weather from a far and knew that I was going to start building a house! So intentionally they "Accidentally" hit the rain switch causing a delay in my construction. (If you think that these conclusions are wrong then I suggest you tell me the real reason!) I picked up a piece of wood and looked at across the blue sky at what awaited to be my next big challenge.