Sunday, June 5, 2003
"How are you feeling this morning?" Daffodil asked, as Rose crawled out of the tent, dragging her blanket with her and shaking it out.
"Better. Much better," Rose replied, neatly folding the blanket and setting it back down inside the tent. The past two days of rest had done her good, even with the concussion and the long time spent wandering alone. Her head no longer spun when she stood up, and the scrapes and bruises from her fall were already beginning to heal. She felt better than she had since she had started out on her solitary journey.
Daffodil’s voice interrupted her thoughts. "Are you ready to begin that survival training I promised you?"
Rose shrugged, not sure that there was that much that Daffodil could teach her, or that she would really need to know, for that matter. "As ready as I’ll ever be."
"Oh, come on. It’s not that bad. You’ll be out here in the fresh air and sunshine, learning things that you can actually use."
"Unlike college," Rose murmured, acknowledging that most of what she had learned in college would never be very useful to her—especially since she had disliked so much of it that she had quickly forgotten what she had studied. Some things were useful, but much of it had been strictly academic, necessary for teaching or other scholarly careers, but not so useful to one who preferred things to be hands-on, as Rose often did.
"Oh, college has its uses," Daffodil responded, shrugging, "as long as one enjoys what they study enough to remember it. I went to college after I graduated from high school and got a Bachelor’s degree in biology. Then I decided I’d had enough, and set out on my own."
Rose looked at her in surprise. She had never thought that Daffodil, with her unconventional way of living, had ever tried anything so ordinary as college. Daffodil, seeing her expression, grinned.
"Don’t judge a person before you know them, Rose," she chided. "There’s more depth to most people than the casual eye can observe."
"I know." Rose sighed. It was a lesson she’d learned the hard way with Cal. Had she looked past the surface appearance to begin with, and resisted more strongly her mother’s urging that she date him, she could have avoided a lot of pain and misery. It was a lesson well-learned, but there were still things she didn’t quite understand.
"You still look a bit tired," Daffodil told her, "so we’ll start with something you can learn here in camp, and move on from there."
*****
Daffodil proved herself a good teacher, and Rose a willing student. Over the next few weeks, as the Southern California spring turned into summer, Rose learned to find and build shelter in almost any conditions, to find and purify water, and to find food in the wildlands. Some of it was familiar, much of it was not. There were times when Rose wondered how she could have missed such obvious things as wild strawberries, blackberries, and sunflowers, but she had not been taught to notice them before, and so had overlooked them. Other things that Daffodil taught her were even more unfamiliar, making her wonder how she had survived on her own in the wilderness for so many weeks. It was more than just finding food, though that was plentiful in this year of good rain and extravagant wildflower displays. There were dangers that Rose had overlooked, too.
Daffodil taught her how to identify the tracks of different animals, including the ones that might be dangerous to humans. Rose realized that she had seen some of them in her travels, some of them quite fresh, but she had never realized what they were. She had been in more danger than she knew. Water, too, could be hazardous if not cleaned properly—something that had never occurred to Rose; she had been lucky to have nothing more than a few bouts of upset stomach from it, unused as she was to water that hadn’t been purified by a water company or bottler.
She learned about other hazards and survival skills, too. Rose could swim, but she would be no match for a flash flood, rare though they were in this part of the mountains. She had learned the hard way about rock slides and trails that were too narrow to negotiate safely, and she had already known not to stand out in the open in a lightning storm, but she hadn’t realized that standing under a lone tree could be just as dangerous in such a storm. She had known to avoid rattlesnakes, but hadn’t known that they were the only poisonous snakes in California. She had known not to touch thorny plants like cactus, but hadn’t known how to identify poison oak, which, after Daffodil had identified it for her, she realized had been the cause of a badly itching hand and arm she had suffered from after brushing against it.
Rose learned a great deal from Daffodil, but she drew the line at Daffodil’s suggestion that worms and insects were good sources of protein if one didn’t happen to eat a stinger. She had watched Daffodil demonstrate how to eat a worm, but had insisted that she wasn’t hungry enough to try one herself, and had laughed uproariously when Daffodil had made a disgusted face and spat the worm out into the bushes…good source of protein or not, the slimy, wiggling thing wasn’t very appetizing.
Mari had tried to show her similar things at times, at least with plants, but Rose had never seen any real value in listening, and she hadn’t exactly trusted Mari’s judgment, especially after her roommate had come near to poisoning herself when she had confused a toxic plant, jimsonweed, for an edible one and made tea out of it.
Rose trusted Daffodil’s judgment. She had experience in all sorts of conditions, having visited cities, countryside, and wilderness areas all over the United States, Canada, and Mexico, thanks to her free-thinking, free-spirited parents, who loved to travel and hadn’t considered their daughter’s education complete until she had traveled widely, too, meeting different people and cultures and learning the things that most people overlooked. Her education was wide and varied, not just school education but life experience as well. And Daffodil’s constant drilling and lessons, to be sure that Rose could survive on her own, kept her mind off of other, less pleasant thoughts.
By the time July arrived, Rose was well-versed in survival skills and lore, her time alone making her eager to learn. And though she could have set off on her own again, she chose not to, finding that she had healed enough inside that total solitude no longer appealed to her, and she was glad for Daffodil’s company in the camp under the oaks and pines.