Tool-Time, Revisited: A Riveting Column
This is Part 2 in a series. Your ship was lost with all hands…except you. Swimming through the lagoon you wash up on a sandy beach with nothing but a tin cup, a few wooden pallets that washed off the boat, your trusty tool kit that somehow made it ashore, and a tinder box. You don’t know where you are and you’re stranded on this uninhabited atol. What do you do?
Even as you’re lying, face down, on the beach, all fucked up, you are aware that the plan must first be to survive, then to somehow get off this island and back to civilization.
Bear Grylls (2014). Photo by National Churches Trust.
You have to do it all with nothing but your Ultimate Home Tool Kit (UHTK), whatever is available on the island, and your wits. Thinking back to episodes of Man vs. Wild, you ask yourself: what would Bear Grylls—former British Special Forces and survival expert—do if he were in my soggy, sand-filled shoes?
He’d get up, get moving, and survey the situation and surroundings. That’s what he would do. You realize it’s time to channel your inner Bear and also to draw upon your MDI[2] training and prioritize. What would Bear do next?
Photo by Meritt Thomas
Find a suitable place to build a fire and a shelter… without those you’re fucked! There are dunes above the shoreline with enough of a canopy and enough visibility… that looks good, go for it.
Snatching up your trusty UHT Kit, you move to your new—and hopefully temporary—digs. Base Camp, you call it, though it’s still pretty rough.
Next: those pallets that the sea spit up on shore after the storm. One by one you drag them to Base Camp and stack them next to your tool kit.
Photo by Corentin Sauriat.
Okay, what would Bear do now?
Time to build a fire pit. Spotting rocks of various shapes and sizes scattered across the shore of the lagoon, you gather as many as you can and you’ve now built a rock circle that will provide warmth, light, a cooking fire and, most importantly for the long term, a signal for passing ships or aircraft. Hopefully, you can get the hell out of here! Still, you have to admit it’s beautiful on this lonely beach.
For a brief moment, as you gaze at the firepit, it looks almost like a circle of men at a team meeting. You smile and think, How ironic! This circle of rocks, built to start and maintain a fire so I can somehow survive this ordeal, is like a men’s team that delivers the same thing! It’s the correlation of seemingly unrelated events.
Next, Mr. Grylls? Ah, yes! Get the fire started. You have your flint and some other tools in your UHTK, and enough pallets to get moving. You have shelter, now a fire; water and food are next. That is the clear order of priority.
Exhausted but determined, you pick up your claw hammer and begin separating the boards, prying the nails out carefully—they’ll be useful later and they’re as valuable to you as gold. Now you cut individual pieces using your saw. Fortunately, you budgeted and didn’t burn the entire pallet in one fell swoop. You realized you may need a stockpile because you might be there for a while.
Owl in Spanish moss. Photo by Ryk Naves.
Let’s see now, how would Bear kindle a fire?
A flint won’t ignite a board: only lit kindling will do that. There’s nothing useful on the beach so you venture into the island’s interior, beyond its perimeter of trees, in search of something that that will burn quickly. In one episode of his survival show, you now remember, Bear used a handful Old Man’s Beard, a hanging lichen that was dangling from tree branches, as kindling. You can’t find any of that but, fortunately, Spanish Moss is growing in thick hanging tangles in the local jungle. Thank God, you say to yourself as you gather an armful, knowing it’s a brilliant source of kindling. You make your way back to Base Camp, clump the moss together in the ring of fire. Ring of fire you chuckle…it reminds you of the Johnny Cash song, and the relationships you’ve had with various women in your life. Every one of them was, in some way, a ring of fire. The relationships, at any rate, went up in smoke.
Grab the flint, time to jam and get at least one thing accomplished. So long as you have fire you can make it through the night. You strike the flint to ignite the kindling. Again. And again.
Oh, please Lord, you think, but it’s not happening. You keep going. You keep trying. You must. They don’t call this stuff ‘hardware’ because it’s easy, and giving up is not an option. You’ve arrived at the point of exasperation and you’re already tired. Fuck it! But you’re also still wet and that’s not good. One more time and… bang! The moss finally ignites and you, like many men over the course of thousands of years, have created fire. Yes! But now you have to protect it, nurture it, else the fire will gutter and go out. You can’t let that happen: it’s crucial to your survival.
Photo by Ben Lambert
There is enough pallet wood to last until morning so you shelter the fire as best you can, feed it slowly, let the embers warm you overnight. You may be hungry but at least you’re safe for now, and tomorrow’s another day. Time enough, when you awaken, to rise, stretch, and think…
What’s next… and what would Bear do?
References:
[1] Grylls, Bear. [Year of Episode]. “Episode Name.” Man vs. Wild, Discovery Channel
[2] Mentor, Discover, Inspire (MDI), a non-profit men’s organization, is the parent entity of Legacy Magazine.
About the Author
Matt Coddington is an award-winning commercial locksmith. He currently works and writes in San Diego. He is a former paperboy; a former avid collector of baseball cards, and a former musician and Drum Corps International world champion. He is sixty-three, single, and has no children. His next chapter—whatever it may be—is set to commence soon.
