"What? What is it?" Carl asked Paul, who stopped and crouched down toward the ground.
"Come look at this." Paul waved Carl over, and he walked over and leaned in to see what Paul was pointing at.
In the dirt, he saw some kind of print, though he didn't know what it was.
"This is a whitetail deer mud track. You need to keep your eye open for stuff like this because if you're running low on food, you'll need to learn to hunt." Paul said to Carl, who nodded while taking a closer look at the track.
"Now, see this track here is very long and rectangular shaped, meaning it's a buck, a male. The doe leaves a more heart-shaped track.
This back here is the dewclaw, meaning this buck was probably pretty heavy. The pointy end of the track is the direction that they are going in. So he was going the direction we are going in.
The track looks fairly fresh as the edges of the track mark are clean and distinct."
"So we might get to see a deer?" Carl asked with excitement, he was ready to start hiking again.
"We might get to hunt one too, we'll see," Paul said before they started walking again.
"Cool!" Carl's eyes shone with excitement, his little body carrying him forward, and every so often he would check his compass to make sure he was going the right way.
About an hour in, his entire body was hurting, and his feet felt like they were on fire, but finally he saw the beaver pond in the distance with green pine trees surrounding it.
"Wow." It was a beautiful scene.
The sun had just started climbing over the tops of the pine trees, casting a soft golden light across the forest. Everything felt calm and fresh, the air still cool and smelling like damp earth and pine needles.
Down by the stream, a beaver dam stretched across the water, messy but solid, made of sticks, logs, and mud.
The pond behind it was smooth like glass, with little ripples from bugs skimming across the surface. Bits of green plants floated lazily in the water, and long strands of underwater weeds drifted with the gentle current.
The pine trees stood tall all around, their reflections stretching across the water. A pair of beavers were already up, paddling around slowly, one of them dragging a stick toward the dam. Nearby, a few birds chirped here and there, their songs echoing through the trees.
It was peaceful, just the soft sounds of nature waking up and sunlight slowly spilling into the clearing.
"Look at the beaver." Carl smiled and pointed at the beaver that was carrying a stick in the water.
He felt super excited and wanted to go pet the beaver.
"They are cute, but don't let that deceive you, they are quite feisty about their territory, so don't get too close," Paul said while smirking a little at Carl's antics.
"Come on. See those two trees near the water, we're gonna set up a tarp tent right there." Paul said before walking over to a grass clearing near the water.
They were next to a tree so they could use it as support for part of the tent, and in front of the tent was grass for a few feet before there were rocks and then a drop off into the water.
"How come there are no deer?" Carl looked around while taking off his big bag and setting it down while taking a sigh of relief.
"Because you walk like a two-hundred-pound sasquatch through the forest, they can hear you stomping from miles away," Paul said while throwing all his gear on the ground.
"I don't stomp!" Carl said while trying to think if he had been stomping or not when walking.
Maybe he did stomp?
"Don't worry, I'll teach you how to be quiet while walking through a forest. It's part of the training." Paul unzipped his bag and took out the tarp tent along with a couple of hatches and cords.
"Alright, see this tree right next to us and then that tree over there." Paul pointed to the two trees that were a distance apart but not too far.
"Yeah." Carl nodded
"We need to tie this cord around them and then tie them into a knot so we can lay our tarp over it. So take this side and go over there, and I'll take this side."
They spent the next twenty minutes getting their tent set up, and Paul showed Carl how to use the surrounding resources to help with that.
They used four rocks to pull out the tarp strings and laid them on top as stakes before using the poles to stand it up, but instead of poles, they cut branches from trees and also used them as poles as well.
"So now that our shelter is made, we need to work on our fire for our first meal. Now we don't want to start a fire on this grass and start a massive forest fire by our campsite, so we need to find a few large flat pieces of stone nearby to start our fire on."
"On it!" Carl ran off looking for stones while taking his hatchet with him, and bringing back any wood that they could use to start a fire with.
This was the most fun he had in a long time. It wasn't that he disliked his mom or dad, but they had always been arguing and fighting, and it seemed like they hardly had anymore fun family moments like going camping.
He didn't know Paul that well, but he felt Paul was similar to him. Just a lost kid without his parents, though Carl wanted to get back to his mom, while Paul didn't seem to be keen on being near other people.
Maybe he could get Paul to join him in looking for his mom, but right now he needed to learn the skills to survive on his own.
He had a keen sense of when things weren't looking good, and when he saw Paul trying to radio one of his people last night in the cabin, he saw Paul look surprised and worried when no one answered back, they both understood that the world was worse off than they had imagined.
Carrying back a few heavy stones, Carl plopped them down before Paul taught him how to lay the tinder, kindling, and fuel before lighting the fire correctly.
"I'll teach you how to make your own fire with just two pieces of wood, but honestly, unless that's your very last option, I wouldn't even attempt it as it could take you hours just to make the tools alone and then a few more hours to even start the fire.
Of course sometimes you don't have a choice, so that's why I'll be teaching you." Paul said, while Carl thought the idea of starting a fire only using two pieces of wood was cool, not knowing how complicated it really was.
He would learn to regret it later.
"Alright, get the pots and pans. I'll get the rice cooking over the fire while you start cutting the green onions, garlic, carrots, mushrooms, and zucchini. Hurry!" Paul clapped while putting some water in a pot with rice, while Carl, who had never cut anything in his life, looked like a newborn baby trying to cut green onions.
"At this rate, we'll be here all day. Start cutting. Use your wrist!" Paul motivated him, which was just his psychotic killer glare with the occasional clap and yell.
"Haha." Carl smiled nervously while wiping the knife off after he dropped it on the ground after it slipped out of his hands.
"Drop the knife again and your eating grass for dinner." Paul said with a cold glare his eyes piercing into Carl, making him feel literal goosebumps on his skin.
Carl started even faster and watched out of the corner of his eye as Paul started laying down cut-up pieces of Korean rib onto a hot pan over the fire, which made him lick his lips at the delicious smell.
"Watch what you're doing. I'm not stitching your finger back on." Paul said while laying down a sauce over the meat and stirring the rice."
Carl put all of the cut-up stuff in a bowl while Paul cooked some of it with sesame seeds and oil before adding two eggs to the fire along with some spinach.
"Almost done. Hey, back up." Paul pushed back Carl, who was basically leaning into the fire while looking at all of the food.
"It looks so good. I've never eaten something like this before." Carl licked his lips and felt his stomach growling.
"Better enjoy it. You're washing dishes tonight." Paul patted Carl on the shoulder before putting the rice and all of the other ingredients into two big metal bowls along with the meat, before it was ready to eat.
"Mmm, it's so good." Carl couldnt stop eating, but soon enough he was patting his belly full, and his dish wasn't even entirely empty.
"You better finish all of that. You need it to grow." Paul said while forcing himself to also finish his entire bowl of food.
"Ill try" Carl sat back up slowly and took a bite every so often but at this point he wasnt really enjoying the food.
But still remembering how hard it might be to get food in the future, he decided to try and eat all of it.
Twenty minutes later, they were both so full they would puke if someone punched them in the stomach.
"Alright, go wash the dishes in the water."
Carl didn't argue and spent the next thirty minutes cleaning all of the dishes and while the water was cold he didn't mind it as he got to enjoy seeing the beavers splashing around and at one point he had to run back as the beavers seemed to have got mad that he was near the water.
Finally, he finished the dishes and set them back in the tent area before he found Paul sitting on a rock looking onto the water with a calm face, though his eyes held back emotion not even he could understand.
"Come sit down. We need to talk."