Aug. 12, 2016
Dear Diary,
The plot thickens. I
always wanted to say that!
“How is your head feeling?” he asked.
I just about jumped out of my skin. I was watching the whole area and there was
no way he could have gotten this close to me without my seeing him.
“Where did you come from?” I screamed. “What is going on around here?”
He looked shocked and said, “I came from over there and
thought you saw me. I saw you looking
all around.
“I didn’t see you and there is no way you could get from
there to here without me seeing you!”
“I didn’t mean to scare you.
Sorry,” he said.
I just looked at him.
I know I didn’t see him and he couldn’t get over here without me seeing
him. Yet, here he was in front of
me. Could I just have missed him? Was I day dreaming? Something just doesn’t feel right.
“Where were you? We
got to the site and then suddenly you were gone.”
“I gave you the icepack and thought I would make sure the
site was secure. I do that several times
a day. So far, they have not come away
from the water, but who knows when they will.
I walked around the perimeter (Like that word? It is a math term.) to
make sure there were no signs of anyone or anything crossing into our site.”
I handed back the icepack as my head was feeling
better. It wasn’t bleeding and the
headache was gone. I had to figure a way
to get out of here and back to my family campsite.
“I think we need to figure out a way to get back home,” I
said.
“I told you, there is no way to go back. The portal opens when the water is rushing
downstream and there is no way you could possibly go upstream against the current.”
“You need to change your attitude. I had a teacher once who said there are many
ways to ‘skin a cat’. (That is okay to say but not the other word for
eliminate! Personally, skinning a cat
sounds disgusting and then to add different ways to do it?!?!) He would always tell us to look at the
problem and use the skills we are good at and then figure a way to use them to
solve the problem. We get stuck when we
try to use a method we don’t understand.”
“So, what are you thinking?”
“I am very good with outdoor activities like camping,
hiking, climbing and survival. I learned
a lot from my dad and also doing those activities. You said that you had tied a rope to a tube
and the rope kept you from going too far downstream. Do you still have the tube and the rope?”
“Yes, but I told you that I could not pull myself back
because the portal was not opened. I
ended up doing the same thing you did.
You walked back up stream but never got back to where you entered the
water. The portal is the only way
back. The current is way too strong to
go upstream.”
“The actual problem here is how to go upstream when there is
a very strong current going downstream.
That is the problem to solve. Do
you think if we both got on the tube and pulled on the rope that we would be
able to fight the current and move upstream?”
“No, even with both of us pulling, we would not be able to
make it. It would be way too hard.”
“So now the problem is how to make the pulling upstream
easier. If we could figure a way to make
the pulling easier, we would be able to move upstream.”
“How do you plan on doing that? When there are two of us on the tube, it will
be heavier than with one. We do not have
the strength to do what you are thinking.”
“You are right, we don’t.
But, I have seen people lift and move very heavy things with the aid of
pulleys.”
“How does that work?”
“Don’t ask me to explain a pulley system, but I know how to
use it! The question is; where can we
get some pulleys?
“I can help with that.
The hikers who do rock climbing have them in their packs. They are not that big, does it matter?”
“No, it will be how we set them up and then how many we will
need. We also need to know exactly where
you came out of the water. You said you
were just inside the portal, so we want to get as close as we can to the
opening so we don’t have far to go.”
“I know exactly where I came out of the water.”
“Now that the cat is skinned, we have work to do.”
“But, how are you going to get the portal to open?”
“I have an idea and you are not going to like it. So, let’s
build the pulley system and then move to the next step. You do still have the tube, right?”
“Yes.”
I feel like Dorothy – I am going home!
No comments:
Post a Comment