Post by Kenzie on Jul 11, 2015 9:57:18 GMT -5
Cliff left his house in cargo pants, hiking boots, and a tee shirt. The warm California sun was beating down on the back of his neck but he’d already applied sunscreen and bug spray prior to taking a step outside. Across his shoulders were the straps of the very large green hiking bag on his back, which was full of water, his tent, some food (barely enough for three days), his bow and arrows, and plenty else that would help him on his trip.
Cliff typically loved to live off of the land. But here in Cali, it was a pain in the ass to try to do that. Cliff made the mistake of trying to do so one of the first lone trips he took. He didn’t pack enough food for the weekend, assuming that he could find something out in the woods to sustain himself. But he didn’t have his father there to show him which plants were good to eat and which ones were poisonous—he had never actually eaten his kills before and couldn’t stomach skinning the squirrel he had killed earlier. Cliff didn’t find much of any vegetation that worked in his favor so he had to give up and come back early, much to his disappointment. He had planned to take a spontaneous weekend away from his mother and John—in retrospect it was for the best. Had he succeeded, he likely would have returned to search parties looking for him because his mother thought he ran away or got kidnapped.
Cliff approached the forest, noticing that his uncle Eldin was not at their meeting spot yet. That was fine—Cliff was actually a half an hour early. Cliff walked into the woodwork just a little bit and came across the trees that he’d bene using as target practice ever since they moved here. One could clearly see the markings of targets in the trunks of the wood, and the chips in the bark where Cliff’s arrows had sunk in and bene pulled out.
For the half hour he was alone Cliff pulled out his bow and arrow and took aim at the targets with practiced ease. He drew back the string and fired, all of his hits hitting the targets, the majority of them hitting the center. A grin was on his face as he continued to fire, proud of himself, until all of his arrows were sunken deeply in trees. Once he had no more arrows, Cliff approached each tree he had fired at and used the technique that his father taught him to wiggle them out, using the pocketknife to make the holes the arrows made a little easier to remove them from.
Once all the arrow were back in his quiver, Cliff took a more challenging position, and repeated the process. The wind blew but it wasn’t the same Maine wind that Cliff missed—it was the dry, hot California wind. His father certainly didn’t like this area; that was for certain. But even out here, with it being so obviously California, Cliff felt a connection when he was firing the arrows, or out in any sort of nature he could find. Only a few more years and he’d be back in Maine, anyway. He waited for Eldin for their trip to start though he was competent enough to go hiking on his own now, but this was his usual bonding activity with his uncle, the only person in his immediate family who he felt hadn't betrayed Rhett in some way.
