The others realized he did not know what to do and gave him suggestions. Even though Martin had never managed very many chin-ups, he succeeded in pulling himself up and supporting his weight with one arm. That left the other arm free. He briefly took note of the immediate surroundings. There were enough branches up here. He grabbed one after the other and climbed the rest of the way to the parachute, the lines of which were tangled in the tree. He pulled out the knife he had placed in the pocket near his knee and cut the lines until the parachute was pulled down by its own weight. It fell to the ground with a thud. I hope the guys from the Navy have not overdone the realism, he thought, as he climbed down again, hung from the lowest branch, and dropped into the soft moss.
“Congratulations,” Miller said after they had pulled the parachute and its payload into the middle of the clearing. It was a tarp folded into a sack containing various cans.
“This is your food for the next two days.” Miller pointed upward. “Water comes from there, too, although there is also a creek here.”
Hayato started to open one of the cans with his knife.
“Did I say anything about breakfast? First we will build a shelter and start a fire,” Miller sternly instructed.
The tough material of the parachute served as the basis for a primitive tent, which was reinforced with branches and secured with parachute cord.
“Definitely keep the rest of the cord,” Miller advised. He was the only one giving instructions now.
The fire proved to be more of a problem. Miller let them experiment for a little while. Amy had seen in a movie how someone made fire by quickly twirling a stick of wood against a second piece of wood with tinder piled around the contact point. However, they didn’t find any wood dry enough for this purpose. Martin was about to talk to the instructor when Francesca came to the rescue. She opened her jacket and took off her necklace. It had a pendant in the shape of a thick metal rod.
“Spoilsport,” Miller said, when he saw what she was up to.
“This is a firesteel. A pilot can’t be without a firesteel.” Francesca told them exactly what to do. Hayato was supposed to find birch trees and cut off several pieces of bark with his knife. Martin was told to gather old, dead branches, even if they were wet. With these branches, Amy and Francesca created a fire pit, protected by the tarp. Then Francesca used her knife to cut fine shavings from the inside of the birch bark.
“This is our tinder,” the pilot said.
She created a fist-sized pile of shavings and placed it on a dry surface. Then she held the firesteel at a 45-degree angle over the tinder and started scraping the knife across it. Sparks flew into the tinder, and soon a small flame spread and finally set the dead branches alight. Once the fire was big enough, Francesca removed the tarp from over it.
“If we regularly add new wood, the rain cannot extinguish the fire,” she explained. “In the end, the outside of the wood is quickly dried by the heat. It just cannot be young and fresh, because green wood is moist on the inside.”
Miller clapped his hands.
“Who wants some coffee? It’s breakfast time.”
Martin looked up at the lingering gray sky. A bright spot was slowly climbing upward. It must be almost noon. Each of them picked out a can and placed it near the fire. The food, eaten directly from the can using a knife and fingers, tasted delicious.
Miller advised the group, “In the wilderness, you are going to need at least two meals a day.”
After the meal, Martin would have liked to have rested for half an hour, but Miller wouldn’t let them.
“Let’s see how you can come up with a second meal. In temperate zones, you are going to find a lot of edible plants in the forest, but there is nothing like a piece of meat. Don’t try to tackle a wild boar in areas where they exist. Bears are too strong. Foxes and deer are too fast. It is even hard to catch rabbits with what you have on hand. But you can catch squirrels. What do you think of a tasty squirrel?”
Miller addressed the two women directly. Francesca kept a straight face, but Amy grimaced.
“Okay, we are going to need a straight branch, at least a meter and a half long and five centimeters thick. Martin and Hayato, you start looking for one. Amy and Francesca, we happened to find an old umbrella. I would like you to remove the metal ribs from it.”
Martin nodded at Hayato. They went into the forest in different directions. It took Martin a quarter of an hour to find two suitable branches and to clean them with his knife. When he returned, Hayato was already sitting by the fire. The women had turned the metal spokes of the umbrella into rings, which they now attached to the branches at about half height.
Miller began his lecture, “This is our squirrel trap. These animals are lazy, just like we are. We will lean the branches at a 45-degree angle against a tree where we suspect squirrels to be located. When they climb the tree, they choose the most comfortable path, until they realize they have stuck their heads in a wire loop. Then they jump. That’s not good for the squirrels.”
Amy was staring at the branch she held in her hand.
“Do we actually have to do this? We understand the principle behind it now,” Martin said.
“Martin, I am sorry, but you have to. How else am I supposed to show you how to skin a squirrel?”
“Thanks, Martin, but I can handle it,” Amy said.
“Well, let’s place our traps. Then we have to wait a while. In the meantime, we’ll collect water, in case there is no creek.”
Miller selected two trees he considered particularly promising for squirrels. Martin looked around. I don’t have any idea why he would choose this area, he concluded.
“You see the shit on the ground?” Miller pointed. “Squirrels must be here regularly.”
Then he led them back to the makeshift tent in the middle of the clearing.
“We still have a lot of parachute fabric left over. How can we use that to get water? Francesca, don’t say anything,” Miller directed.
“Put it in the rain and then squeeze it out,” Hayato said, laughing.
Amy raised her hand like in school. “Construct a funnel?”
“Then let’s get started.” Miller did not indicate whether this was the correct solution. It seemed logical to Martin, so he did not contradict him.
“If the funnel is supposed to have a radius and a depth of one meter, we have to cut out a sector with a central angle of 360 degrees times the radius, divided by the root of the depth squared plus the radius squared,” Martin explained.
“What?” All three queried him, almost simultaneously.
“Imagine a cake baked in a round cake pan has a radius of one meter. Somebody already ate a piece of one minus one divided by the square root of two.”
They still looked at him aghast.
About to lose patience, Martin tried again. “Almost a third of the cake is missing, okay?”
They cut the remaining fabric with their knives so it had the form of a circle with a sector of about a third missing. They joined the edges of the missing one-third, using parachute cord. Then they supported this construction with branches and placed a container below the hole in the middle.
“This is an area of about three square meters,” Martin explained. “In October, there should be an average of two liters per day per square meter, so within 24 hours we should be able to catch six liters of water. That should be enough for two to three people—only if it rains, of course, and rains the average amount.”