In wilderness I sense the miracle of life,

and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.

Charles Lindbergh

Ryan Smithers didn't sleep much that night, or if he did, it was an utterly dreamless sleep that seemed to linger on and on. Sometime that morning, before the first hints of light had even begun to creep into the eastern sky, some small songbird woke up and began to serenade the darkness.

His voice was soon joined by several others, a veritable orchestra of pitches and patterns that rose to booming crescendo as the sun's rays broke over the horizon. Ryan rolled on his side, pushing himself up, surprised by the fact he was not as stiff or exhausted as he'd expected. He didn't feel rested exactly, but it was better than no sleep at all. He stretched, and rubbed his hands briskly over his face.

The interior of the plane gave testimony to the fact last night's crash had not been a dream.

With a groan, he pushed himself to his feet and slouched up to the cockpit to check on Burns.

The old man was as Ryan had left him, wrapped in blankets and unmoving. Ryan checked Burns' pulse again, and found the steady beat reassuring.

In the growing daylight, Ryan was able to better inspect Burns' injuries. He had a laceration across the left side of his head to just above his eye, a gash where his crepe paper-like skin had torn against a window bolt. It was superficial at least.

Ryan knew how much head wounds could bleed, but this appeared to have clotted and well over night. The blood had dried along his head and face, leaving maroon tracks on his pale skin.

It was Burns' left arm that worried Ryan the most. In the crash, it had become wedged through the handles of the yolk, and broken by the impact as Burns' body twisted against the controls of the plane.

Tentatively, Ryan reached out and touched Burns' left hand. The skin was warm, comparable to his right. Ryan took that as a good sign, assumed it meant no loss of circulation. Burns' fingers were likewise neither swollen nor blue, though a bruise was beginning to creep its way down his forearm towards his wrist.

Ryan pursed his lips, and pushed himself back into the hold. He started going through the storage trunks, looking for some manner of medical kit or bandages that he could use to splint Burns' arm. Back when he'd been a Boy Scout, he'd earned his first aid merit badge, but that had been nearly twenty years ago, and he certainly didn't remember everything. The hold was dim, but enough ambient light filtered in from the windshield that he could make out what he was doing.

He found two parachutes, and more than enough of the thin but strong line. He set them aside near the aft end of the compartment, and kept rummaging.

More survival blankets, a tool kit with an assortment of wrenches, screw drivers, and the like. A battery-powered flashlight and twelve-volt battery, the terminals long ago corroded beyond use. There was a mess kit of stackable pots, pans, and utensils.

Near the front of the cargo bunk, just behind his seat, he found what he was looking for. A heavy metal box with the familiar red cross in a white circle was easy to pick out amongst a heap of cans and silver-foil packets. The word Verbandkasten stenciled above the cross.

He hauled it out set it on the floor of the hold. It was as heavy as it looked, and just as solid. He undid the two ancient clasps, and flipped the lid open. A musty, antiseptic smell greeted him. Ryan coughed, and fanned the air with his hand. It smelled like a hospital. At least that meant whatever was inside was probably still good, he reasoned. Ryan leaned over the box... and found himself immediately wishing he could read German.

The contents were foreign to his modern eyes. None of the neatly packaged Band-Aids in their own sterile pouches that he was accustomed to seeing. He pulled out several small bottles, some clear glass, others tinted brown to block out the light. The labels were yellowed with age, all in German. A mercury bulb thermometer, several small paper-wrapped packages of dressings, a rather large flat tin, and a red and white canister with the numbers 20 x 100 cm finished up the main supplies.

Ryan supposed the canister was probably gauze wrap. He'd need that for Burns' arm.

He pulled the flat tin box out and pried the lid off. Inside were several survival manuals, once again in German, a flint and steel, a compass with a cracked face (probably broken from colliding with the flint and steel), a large knife, and a small mirror with a hole in the center. Ryan had no idea what that was for. It was barely large enough to shave with. He set the mirror and survival kit aside, and leafed through the books, pointedly ignoring the image of a German eagle atop a Swastika on the cvers. The idea that these were Nazi supplies made Ryan uncomfortable.

He forced his mind away from the implications of history, and focused on the project at hand.

One book looked like it was basically One Thousand and One Uses for a Parachute. Though Ryan couldn't make out a word of the text, the diagrams showed the circular cloth being folded, cut, rolled. The pictures were easy to follow, showing the step-by-step process make a shelter, a carrying bag, just about anything really.

The second book was a military survival handbook. It had less pictures than the parachute book, and Ryan growled in frustration as he flipped through the brittle pages. At least there was a thorough section on first aid, with pictures he could use.

To split a broken arm, he'd need several rigid objects, and wrap to bind it. Though there was a picture that showed how to apply traction to set a fracture, Ryan was not at all confident in his ability to perform such an act. He'd heard stories during his Boy Scout days of people who had injured the victim further by attempting, and failing to set broken bones. One Scout Master recounted a tale of a man who had a major artery in his arm severed when a well-meaning, but poorly qualified hiker attempted to set his arm.

Keep the arm in the position you found it, as much as you're able, the Scout Master had said. If it's bent, do a bent sling. If it's straight, splint it straight. Your job isn't to be the doctor. Your job is to keep the victim from further injury until you get to proper medical care.

The book showed both types of splints.

Ryan looked at Burns' arm.

He'd have to bend it some, that would be unavoidable. No point in moving Burns until he had to, Ryan reasoned. Grabbing the survival knife, he pushed the hatch open, and dropped out onto the pontoon just as he had last night.

The world that greeted his eyes took his breath away. The rising sun shone over the trees, casting a yellow glow over everything. Ryan's shadow, still long, danced across the side of the plane, mottled by the reflecting sunbeams against the hull of the craft. The lake was calm, still, mirror-like. The water was a warm amber colour, not clear like Ryan had expected.

Just as he thought, the pontoons had come to rest hard against a golden beach, made of rough glacial sand. Ryan balanced his way across the ridge of the pontoon to the shore, and stepped down. The sand crunched under his feet. It was the same amber colour as the water, coarse; a mix of crushed quarts and granite.

The lake itself was hemmed in by shrubbery that must've recently leafed out. They still had that young, yellow-green hue of new growth. Beyond that, a sea of evergreen tree tops blurred into the distance.

Looking lengthwise down the lake, from the westerly direction they'd come, Ryan saw a distant marshy area, a clearing through the trees. An inlet, or maybe an outlet, where water flowed. Beyond the western tree-line he could make out the rise of mountains, jagged, snow-peaked, and faded blue by distance. He shivered, despite the warmth from the sun. Spring clearly came later here. The weather was several weeks behind. What would've been late May back at Yale was still only April here… wherever here was.

Something glinted up at him from the sand, a flash of light that caught Ryan's eye. He blinked, and made his way over, curious; then he laughed in surprise. It was his cellphone, mostly buried from the force with which he'd thrown it last night. Ryan pulled it out of the sand, shaking it off, careful not to scratch the screen.

Though the battery was nearly empty, it appeared none the worse for wear from its impromptu flight. "I guess I got lucky there," Ryan remarked to no one in particular.

For some reason, holding the little rectangular square gave him a sense of normality. He tucked it into the pockets of his jeans, and picked his way over the beach to the edge of the forest.

Unlike the beaches of the Atlantic, there was no gradual creeping from sand to soil. Here, it was as if a giant hoe had cut the land, dividing the gritty beach from the dark earth beyond. A stark boundary between one environment and the next.

The forest pushed itself as far as it could go against the shifting terrain. Several low bushes grew between the trees, scarcely more than knee height. They looked like the blueberry plants that grew in the rambles of Burns' estate.

Ryan didn't bother looking for berries.

Even if they were the same plant, or a wild variant thereof, it was still far too early in the season for blueberries.

As if on cue, Ryan's stomach rumbled.

He willed it to be silent.

He needed at least two smooth, straight branches, possibly three to make a brace for Burns' arm.

Pushing against undergrowth that seemed all too willing to fight back, Ryan turned his back on the lake, and plunged into the forests beyond.

...

Ryan was glad he'd brought the knife with him.

It wasn't a machete, but even sheathed it made a nice club to smack the scrub growth aside.

He forced his way against the forest, a tangled mat of narrow branches that seemed to reach out, snagging against his clothes, skin, and hair. At least once a stray limb threatened to snatch his glasses from his face. "Not today, Satan," Ryan muttered dryly, giving the shrub a whack with the hilt of his knife. The deeper he went, the darker the forest became, and the clearer the understory got.

Away from the lake, away from the open area it provided, plants struggled to get started on the shady forest floor. He was able to move quicker. Every few yards, Ryan turned and looked behind him, memorizing the way the woods looked, and keeping track of the sun's location. The last thing he wanted was to get lost.

It wasn't just the scenery that changed. Under the sheltering evergreens, the air was notably cooler and dryer. The damp, young scent of the lake had been replaced by an older almost primeval scent of spruce and balsam.

Ryan had in mind what he was looking for: three branches, each at least an inch wide, straight and smooth. He was hoping for something old and dry. The live branches of the conifers were too supple, to forgiving. They'd been as assuredly as the broken bones in Monty's arm would give. They wouldn't do at all.

Moving cautiously, Ryan finally came upon what he was looking for. The skeletal remains of some old deciduous tree that had long since died and come crashing down to the forest floor. The bark had fallen off the branches, leaving them pale and bare. Bonewood, Ryan's brain decided to call it. A very apt description.

He unsnapped the leather sheath from the handle of his knife, and was delighted to discover the back of the knife was grooved with serrations. One side was the blade, obviously, but the back could double as a hand saw. He found several branches that gave him the width and length he was looking for, and set to work cutting.

Ryan was glad he didn't have to cut through a thick log. Though the saw blade was sharp, and the serrated teeth bit deep, the short length meant far more back-and-forth pulls than he was expecting. His forearm began to ache as a group muscles he rarely used fired up. At last, he had three sections of bonewood, each a bit longer than his own forearm. Shaking out his aching arms, Ryan sat on the fallen tree. He used the blade of the knife to whittle the ends round and smooth. These'll do, he thought, holding the braces up. That's the simple part. Now I'm going to have to move him.

It would've been easy, Ryan noted, to sit here and do nothing. Procrastinate and wait for some deus ex machina to give him direction or solve the problem for him. Maybe, if he listened long enough he'd hear the distinctive sound of a rescue helicopter cutting just over the tree tops. He strained his ears, willing the sound of rotors to appear in the distance.

God or Deus, or whatever looked out for him did deign to intervene.

The only sounds were the rustle of evergreen needles in the breeze, the chirp of birdsong. Layers and layers of the same sound fading into the distance on all sides.

So much for silence, Ryan noted as he pushed himself up. His feet seemed loud against the forest sounds, a clumsy and heavy crunch against the whispers of the trees.

He made the short hike back to the crash site, hacking through the low scrub as he went.

The plane sat like some displaced silver bird, glaringly obvious yet small when compared to the vastness of the wilderness beyond. It was a touch of familiar and yet so alien. Perhaps what struck him the most was how quickly the natural world had already adapted to its presence. A pair of ducks sat on the trailing edge of the pontoon. A small flycatcher, or maybe it was a kingfisher, perched on the tip of the tailfin.

As he approached the ducks took off, leaping in to the water and paddling away, loudly quacking their disapproval at his presence.

"Yeah, yeah," Ryan muttered, climbing up the fuselage. He squinted for a moment, adjusting his eyes to the light. Carefully, using the knife, he cut several strips of cloth from one of the parachutes, coiling up the shroud lines as he went.

It looked like the supplies in the picture.

Anything else would have to rely on improvising.

Now came the hard part.

Ryan slid into the gap between the seats and lightly slapped Burns' cheek. "Hey, you going to wake up, old man?" he asked, trying to inject of bravado he most certainly didn't feel.

Burns didn't so much as twitch.

Ryan noted with a hint of distress that Burns' lips were dry, and starting to crack.

Of course, he realized as he regarded the unconscious man. It wasn't merely a potential neck injury or his broken arm that were the greatest threats to Montgomery Burns. Dehydration, Ryan realized. That would be the true killer.

Without medical attention and water, the man could easily die before help arrived. How long could a person live without water again? Something like three days? Four at most? Ryan couldn't remember exactly, but that seemed about right.

With a curse, Ryan shrank back, reconsidering.

He'd planned to split Burns' arm, then wait it out.

"We can't stay here too long, can we Monty? I don't know if you logged a flight plan, or how detailed you made it, but we might be waiting a long time until the Mounties or whoever find us."

Ryan looked at the pile of survival blankets, considering.

"I really hope you're as unconscious as you look, because this is going to hurt."

Standing behind Burns' seat, Ryan slid his hands under the man's armpits. He felt his heart pound against his ribs. "On the count of three," he said, squaring his stance. "One… two… three!"

With a grunt, he hauled Burns up and back, pulling the man's arm free from the yolk, and twisting the man's shoulders to drag him between the seats. It wasn't a graceful maneuver, but it was effective. Ryan set Burns down on the rolled blankets, then spun him around so his feet were facing downhill towards the tail. "We don't need all the blood going to your head, do we," Ryan huffed, wiping his face with the back of his hand. His brow was drenched in sweat.

It wasn't that Burns was particularly heavy. On the contrary the tail man was shockingly light. Ryan had seen his father lift Monty on several occasions. His father, Waylon, followed a rigorous workout regime. Ryan had been under the assumption it was his father's strength that allowed him to easily scoop Burns like a small child. Now he realized how truly frail the old man was.

"Shit," Ryan remarked as he laid Burns' arm as straight as he could and gently bound the bonewood splints in place. "You really aren't much more than skin and bones. We might not have three days, really." He watched the rhythmic rise and fall of Burns' chest with each slow breath. "Just between you and I, I was hoping that you might actually wake during that. You're not playing possum, are you. I mean, I didn't think you were, but still, some response would've been nice."

Ryan sat down, his leg resting against Burns' good arm. "We're going to get you out of here. Get us out of here." He gave Burns' shoulder a pat. "You stay here. I've got an idea."

Grabbing his knife, Ryan dropped out of the plane and made a trek back into the woods.

...

Ryan Hall Smithers, former First Class Scout of the Cradle of Liberty Council sat on the beach beside the downed Blohm und Voss Ha 139, a German survival manual to his left side, and a set of parachute strips to his right. Off by the forest's edge were a jumble of thick bonewood branches he'd dragged back.

He worked tirelessly as the sun rose in the sky, twisting the silk strips into braided ropelike cords. Slowly but steadily, the pile by his feet grew. Ryan ignored the gnawing in his stomach, the early signs of hunger, forcing himself to ignore it. To fill his stomach, he'd take a break and drink from the water's edge, cupping the tannin-brown water in his palms, bringing it to his mouth. Despite the amber color it was cool and fresh. Perhaps some of the most pure-tasting water he'd ever had.

Ryan tried not to think of what microbes might be living in it. By logic, he should be using water purification tablets or boiling it, but gathering wood for a fire would take time he didn't have, and he wasn't sure which (if any) of the little tablets in the survival kit were for purification.

You'll have to take your chances with me like everything else, he thought to whatever microbes might be lurking in the water.

By mid-afternoon, Ryan had amassed a sizable stockpile of handmade rope as the sun started to dip west. He coiled them neatly around his arm, and set them in a loop to the side. Now, on to the branches.

In the survival manual, he'd seen a picture of a stretcher. It looked simple enough to build, and the diagram showed it being hauled by one man, while his injured comrade lay strapped to it.

The basic concept was an "V-frame" construction out of branches, the tip of the 'V' being dragged on the ground, while the able-bodied person held the legs behind him. Ryan wondered if, with a bit more modification and some additional roping, he could make a harness that would leave his hands free while he pulled Burns' on the drag-sledge. It wouldn't be too hard, he imagined, especially if he fastened it around the waist-band of his hiking pack.

It was sunset before Ryan finally finished the drag-sledge, stretcher, whatever it was. The three branches were lashed together with parachute cord: two long legs of the 'V' and a single crosspiece at the top to hold everything stable. Ryan wove a good amount of the rope he'd made into loops that would hold Burns steady. Once he got Burns on the sledge, then he'd wrap the old man in blankets and the remainder of the shredded parachute; a papoose.

Somehow the idea of Burns wrapped like a burrito made him chuckle. He shook his head, trying to bring his mind back on the here and now.

His travel plans were straight forward.

Without any true sense of where they were, and no idea where the nearest settlement might be, his best recourse was to follow the outlet. From somewhere in his minimal training, he remembered a scout master explaining little streams lead to bigger rivers, and those eventually bring one to civilization.

During his brief breaks in building, he'd taken the opportunity to patrol the lake shore as far as he easily could.

It was a gift of fate or perhaps indeed God's hand that set their plane near the outflow. The banks looked relatively clear, enough that with perseverance he'd be able to make it downstream with Burns in tow.

There was no point in starting that evening though. Why leave the perfectly good shelter of the Blohm und Voss to go staggering through the darkness. Tonight, he'd organize their supplies, figure out what he could affordably carry, and resign to abandoning the rest. There was no way he'd be able to tote that metal survival pack. Same with the bulky first aid kit.

In the darkened hold, sitting beside Burns, Ryan sorted until the nighttime swallowed the last traces of light. When he could no longer see his own hand in front of his face he gave up. He pulled a blanket over himself, and bedded down, pressing his back against Burns' side. It wasn't for his own comfort, but the old man would probably need all the warmth he could get. Ryan would be their own heater in the cold spring air.

Listening to the symphony of frogs from the shoreline, Ryan took a deep breath, and cleared his mind. There was nothing more he could do but surrender himself to the night once again. The dull, unsatisfied ache in his belly passed. In time, he found peace.