Drifting

I hold Hunter’s hand, helping him fall asleep by gently running my pointer finger up and down the inside of his wrist, the way mom does. Well, the way she used to do.

We play our favorite bedtime game: list out the items we had in our CCPKs—Climate Change Preparedness Kits—now all gone, ripped away immediately in the flash flood, in those same frantic moments when we got separated from our parents.

Taking turns, we imagine that each item floated away, miraculously made it to some other survivors, maybe even got snagged up by mom and dad, who might be somewhere nearby, navigating this new, watery world.

The waves gently rock our makeshift raft, tied by a small piece of rope to one of the few treetops we can find, and Hunter starts the game sleepily.

“Jug of water,” he says, laughing like he always does at this one. Of all the things we need most, water jugs are not among them. We’re surrounded by endless floating plastic. There’s water in all directions and it rains every day. “It’s gone,” I reply.

“Cans of food,” I say. “It’s gone,” he sing-songs back, and our minds wander to real food. We’ve been scavenging on floating garbage and bugs for 29 days now.

“Local map,” he says. “It’s gone,” and we laugh again—as if a map could help us navigate wherever we are now, which is totally unrecognizable.

Weather radio – gone.

Flashlight – gone.

Cellphone – gone.

Whistle – gone.

Waterproof matches – gone.

Emergency blanket – gone.

The one thing we each still have, and Hunter starts to rub in his little hand as he drifts off, are the heart-shaped necklaces that mom and dad gave us for Christmas last year. “In case we ever get separated,” dad had said, a bit choked up. The memory of it makes me want to cry, and I wish for the millionth time that he and mom are ok. Inside the lockets are matching photos of the four of us, taken on our last family camping trip.

In the last six months, we had started hearing stories about other countries getting hit with floods like this, or wiped away entirely by tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and every other signal of climate change predicted but not prevented. What had seemed possible in some distant future was suddenly very urgent and inevitable. Mom and dad worked quickly to prepare us, even though Hunter was only 5, and I was 9.

Self-proclaimed End of Days Experts had quickly set up Survival Training Camps, which our parents tried to hype up as fun “adventure camp!” But the general feeling of dread and fear taking over everyone was there too, starting on day one as we learned extreme wilderness first aid (how do you know when someone is dead?), and day two learning how to live off the land alone. We all quietly realized that in this hypothetical situation, our family would be gone.

Unlike our ill-fated CCPKs, the survival training camps had been somewhat useful. The session on “Making Your Own Raft”—which I’d signed up for only because fire-starting was already full of flame-obsessed boys—turned out to be the most useful takeaway of all. Our floating piece of tin plus a raft border we made by tying together plastic jugs with pieces of garbage bags, had kept us safe and mostly dry, even when some scary high waves had rolled in the day after the flood.

“The Importance of Drinking Water” was important, too. Keeping our various plastic tubs upright during daily rainstorms to collect enough water for every day has kept me and Hunter focused and less afraid as our raft gets rocked around.

Everyone gagged and giggled through the “Edible Bugs” session, but Hunter had been fascinated and remembered a shocking amount of detail, including every word of the “Tastiest Treats” song, which he now sings many times a day including all the motions, but more importantly references to inform our constant snacking on insects.

When you want a tasty treat,

What are you going to eat?

Take a look around,

Yummy food can be found.

Crickets! Jump – jump,

Locusts! Swarm - swarm,

Ants! March – march,

June bugs! Crunch – crunch.

If you can cook, then dig in the soil

Grab these bugs to fry or boil!

Slugs! Slime – slime,

Snails! Crawl – crawl,

Centipedes! Legs – legs,

Earwigs! Pinch – pinch.

If their color is bright,

Don’t try to take a bite!

If they have a funny smell,

They can make you feel unwell.

When you want a tasty treat,

What are you going to eat?

Take a look around,

Yummy food can be found.

It’s amazing how quickly something can shift from disgusting to appealing, especially when hunger is all you think about. We mostly find crickets, still surviving on the water’s surface or floating by on things. I worry about what we’ll do if they run out. We haven’t seen dry land in any direction since the flood.

Survival Training Camp didn’t teach us many things, though. Probably in a well-intentioned effort to avoid making hundreds of small children emotionally break down, they hadn’t covered topics we’d had to figure out on our own, with our own lessons and songs.

“What to Do When You See a Dead Body”

• Look quickly to see if it’s mom or dad. Mom was wearing a blue shirt and jeans. Dad was wearing a brown hoodie and jeans.

• Close your eyes.

• Hold each other’s hand.

• Count to 300, open one eye and make sure it’s gone. If not, count to 300 again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

“How to Pass the Time”

We haven’t figured this out yet, and I don’t know how we will. The first few days had passed in a blur of fear and tears. We drifted and rowed with our hands, trying to find our parents, trying to build our raft, trying to find any helpful stuff or food. Wondering if rescue helicopters might come. Wondering if we could find dry land. Replaying what had happened in our minds, me trying to help Hunter understand it. “Water rushed in, you did great. You were such a good swimmer! You stayed calm and stuck with me. We’re doing our best. We’re going to be ok. Mom and dad are ok.”

Every day after that drags on and on, the hours blurring together. We sing. We catch and eat bugs, and pretend they’re other foods. We talk about all the meals we want to eat, then it makes us so hungry we have to stop. We play games, although Hunter wants to play “I Spy” constantly, and I am hitting my limit with it. I spy nothing. Water. Sky. Clouds. No other people, not alive ones, anyways.

The one thing that actually helps the time go is when we work on creating our secret language. Hunter started speaking random non-words somewhere around day 5.

“Oobie. Shadoo. Horina.”

I felt scared, thinking maybe he had eaten a poisonous bug. Or he was starting to lose it. But I answered back with my own made-up words, and said we could pretend we’re living in a video game where we speak a different language.

“Oobie oanu. Motani.’

And now we’ve gotten up to about 50 words, like “djeku” for “water,” and “nince” for “insect.” I love this game, even if it means we’re both going a little bit crazy.

“How to Fish with Your Bare Hands and Eat It Raw”

I took the class on fishing. What that class didn’t prepare me for was not having any supplies at all: a net, fishing line, a sharp object for a hook, every single thing needed to make a fire and cook fish. We do see fish, we just can’t get our hands around them. Can we eat them raw? We’re going to have to figure this out ourselves, especially if the bugs start to die.

“How to Lie”

Mom always taught us to be honest and help others, and that would take us far in life. That’s why I always used to get confused when our parents would lie to us; I would walk in on them having a tense discussion about everything happening in the world, and I would ask what was wrong, and they would say “Nothing, sweetie, everything is fine.” Is Santa real? “Of course he is!” Now I have to get Hunter through this, and I get it. I have to look him in the eye and say that everything is fine. Mom and dad are ok. We’ll go home again, someday soon. Soon! Really soon.

I think maybe honesty doesn’t mean telling the truth all the time. Maybe honesty means saying the kind thing instead of the true thing.

“How to Fight”

I don’t know why they didn’t warn us that we didn’t just need to be prepared for natural events and animal predators. That humans are a risk, too. If I were teaching Survival Camp, I would definitely include a class on fighting other people—without it, I’m stuck not knowing how to defend us, but I also don’t know how to feel now that I’ve thrown a lifetime of learning “hands and feet to yourself” right out the window.

Aside from the flood, thinking maybe our parents are dead, the big waves, and the floating dead people, one other really scary thing has happened. We were sleeping, and the raft started rocking hard. What woke me up wasn’t that, but Hunter crying out, “Ally! Ally! Stop him!”

I saw a drenched, scary and scared looking man swimming up against the raft and lifting up the edge, pushing hard, like he was trying to tip us off. I jolted awake and had a memory of the one time I remember my dad got scary. I must have been three, we were walking through a park and an off-leash dog ran at me, lunging at my leg. Without hesitating, he yelled “NO!” and kicked that dog, hard, and it whimpered off without leaving a scratch on me. I cried surprised tears, and dad kept saying sorry, but he had to do it.

That memory and instinct flared up and I yelled “STOP! STOP!!!!!” but he just kept pushing the raft up, hard, and I was scared we really would fall off. I kept yelling and he kept pushing, until I reached my leg over and kicked him hard twice, three times, right on the head, and his body went totally still. And I saw Hunter, with that same look I must have had. I could hear myself saying the same things my dad had said to me. Hunter hasn’t asked about it again. I can’t stop thinking about it. I know he died, I can’t lie that one away.

“What to Do When You’re Not Sure if the World Has Ended”

We haven’t seen any alive people in 22 days.

Where did they all go? Are they all together, somewhere else? Will they try to find us? Should we try to get to “there,” wherever that is?

Or are we the only ones left? Maybe it’s just us… and mom and dad, too. If we made it, isn’t it possible they made it, too? If it were the four of us, surviving feels like it would be possible. Dad would find a way to make it fun. I wish Survival Camp had taught us how to figure this out. I Spy nothing.

“How to Sleep”

• Remember the bedtime meditations mom used to play on her phone. Breath in the good, breath out the bad. In: we are alive. Out: we are alone. In: we are alive. Out: we are alone.

• Pretend you’re on a tropical vacation, and being surrounded by water is a good thing

• Rub the necklace. Remember them. In: they might be alive. Out: what if they’re not.

• Hold Hunter’s hand. I’m not alone. I’m not alone.