Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: LEAVE (11/16/23)
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TITLE: The Way Home | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jeremy Kirby
11/21/23 -
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My body shuddered, the fever was still alive. I rolled over and let the torrential rain wash away my fears.
I blinked awake many hours later, the wash of waves was the only thing in my ears. I open my tent, I can stand but my muscles are still cramping and I can feel the sores in my skin crack open as I stretch.
“I can't eat dad, what are we going to do?”
“The phones are dead?”
“Yeah, not dead, just no service,” he replied.
“We made it 16 miles yesterday but we won't today, not without food.”
I pulled out my map and began splitting the distance, setting smaller goals that we could attain. Just a little at a time. We would have to go 2 days with no food but we have water and electrolytes.
“Can you do it, son?”
“Yeah Dad, I can do it.”
We hoisted our heavy packs and journeyed westward.
It was painstaking at first but as our blood invigorated every cell, our bodies awakened and the pain vanished. We stopped and rested, drank from streams, and sucked on small candies for energy but the heat persisted. Midday we disrobed at an empty campsite and slept in the dirt for an hour. When the pain began to creep in we rose and hiked on once more.
The heat index was near a hundred that day. Not normal for northern Michigan, and that was our problem.
We spent hours slowly stepping over root-bound trails so as not to get injured. We spent all our energy on the hike and now willed to climb the rocks that blocked our path. We whispered to ourselves that we could and would make it up the towering dunes and past crumbling cliff edges and find the end of the trail.
We crossed two rivers and found great rock formations and finally heard the sound of other hikers, other campers. This was it, we had made it to our camp.
My remaining energy evaporated, as if the will I had been running on suddenly vanished and I could not get one foot in front of the other.
Just need rest, just need food, then I can do another day, then another, and we will have finished our goal.
“Dad, dad come over here,” I heard my son say.
He had found the campsites but as we approached we realized they were all taken. We were forced to camp near the edge of a cliff. The wind was so ferocious that it flung my son’s tent into the air before he could stake it down. He caught it just before it flew into Lake Superior.
Nauseated and feverish, I crawled into my tent and waited for rest, relief, and sleep.
The sun set over an angry sea as my boy sat watching, mesmerized by the beautiful sight but still uneasy about the predicament. Then suddenly a tour boat slowed to a stop directly in front of our beach.
He nearly fell down the embankment getting as close to the water as possible. Waving his hands and yelling, he tried with all his might to get the attention of anyone aboard the boat. But to no avail, it turned and headed back.
He struggled back to his tent, defeated. Cold clouds began to gather but in the distance. Amazingly, or by divine providence, the boy heard another tour boat. So again, he slid down the dune as fast as gravity could pull him but this time he grabbed his headlamp. He stood on the beach waving his arms yelling to the boat and flashing his signal light.
“Dad,’ he slapped my tent, ‘do you want to leave?”
I awoke to his request, hearing the boat below, I thought for a moment, sad at the proposition of defeat. “Yes,’ I answered, ‘tell them yes.”
An hour later we boarded a small vessel. The rescue crew consisted of a few pure-blooded yoopers. They were men tried by stormy seas, freezing blizzards, and the loneliness of the wild, and they loved every bit of it. I braced myself as we smashed through wave after wave, racing home before the storm landed.
Not the way I had wanted, but this was the way home.
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I wish you'd had a larger word count to lay a foundation of ... were you survivors of a plane wreck? A boat accident? No not that as there were other campers. A survivor challenge?
Whatever the occasion, I felt the drama.
Felt the struggle.
You may want to consider introducing characters sooner. It was a bit before I knew it was a father-son duo. You started with a passive sentence. Instead, try starting with an active one. If I were asked to edit, I might give something like this as an example:
Blundering through the wilderness, the frigid water to the north and the menacing acres to the south left my son and me stranded and hopeless. If we wanted to survive, we'd have to go west.
I tried to stay true to the original voice just to show you what I meant.
Another thing you need to be careful of is POV shifts. Dad went into tent to sleep so he wouldn't be able to see his son watching or know he struggled or felt defeated. Work it out so Dad can be the one to show reader all of those details through son's dialog and body language.
A sign that it's full of potential is I really wanted to read more, to understand why they went on the trip, and what happened later. You did deliver a clear message and spoke to my heart. We all face having to accept defeat from time to time and this charming story sends that message home loud and clear.