Episode 8: "Would you go on a skinny dip with me... ?"

"You have a point. Maybe we can get everyone to share blankets around the fire. In fact, that might even be the best thing for the first evening when all the girls' clothing is wet; you know, basic survival techniques– snuggling together under a blanket, sharing body heat."

"That's a good idea. Does anyone know anything about survival techniques?"

Nobody answered until Samantha said "I don't either but I saw a book on it on the bookshelf in the staff office. I'll ask to borrow it."

Linda said "great idea, but don't let on what it's for."

"Don't worry, I'll ask Lisa. She told me she'd be in the office to round out her housekeeping schedule."

"Samantha, I'm curious," said Tom. "Would you mind that I borrow the book after you're finished with it?"

"No, not at all, in fact, I'll even let you have first crack at it. We've got our showers after breakfast and Lisa's got me on housekeeping this morning, so I wouldn't have been able to read it right away, anyway."

Samantha came back shortly with a book in her hand; it was a beat-up paperback with pinkish cover showing the silhouette of a vaguely military man walking in the wild. The title of the book was 'Down but not out'. Paging through it rapidly, Tom saw that it had been published in 1965 by the Royal Canadian Air Force as a training manual for its pilots who might have had to bail out or crashed in the Canadian north.

"Hey, Sam, this looks good; it was written over forty years ago but the information looks pretty basic and up-to-date. I'll try to read it a first time today and give it back to you. After you finish it, as well, we could talk about it to see if different parts stuck to our minds."

As soon as he finished breakfast, Tom found himself a quiet spot in the sun where he could read without being disturbed. The chapters of the book were set up along major subjects by order of priority, so the first one was First Aid, then how to build a fire, how to build a shelter in summer and in winter, how to signal for help, how to hunt for food and basic knot-craft, at the end. Since it was summer, Tom decided to concentrate on summer survival knowledge but he couldn't resist reading about how to build an igloo because he had always wondered how the Eskimos succeeded in staying warm in a house made of snow. According to the illustrations, the temperature inside an igloo could reach fifty degrees but that seemed impossible. Then he realized that it was fifty degrees Fahrenheit, which he knew was the same as ten degrees Celsius. Even that was quite warm, the equivalent of a nice spring day.

Going through the book, Tom realized that one of the most important aspects of survival was staying warm, because if one was cold, the only thing one would think of was getting warm again, to the exclusion of everything else. The book had also mentioned in the first aid section that the best way of healing a frostbitten hand or foot was to hold it tight against someone's body, under their clothes and he remembered that about two years ago, he had read a novel from the library, where the main character had been a park ranger in some remote area. This ranger, having rescued a woman from a car wreck in the middle of winter, had pitched his tent in the middle of the snow, had taken off both their clothes and had crawled into his sleeping bag with her to warm her up. At the time, he had thought it was silly; after all, taking off one's clothes in the middle of winter to get warm, but now, he wasn't so sure. Maybe Robert was right about huddling close together under a blanket. While he was thinking about that, he realized that, if he had to be naked with someone, he would much rather it was Linda than anyone else.