The sound-sensation of ripping hair as I pull a few strands from my scalp and let them drift from my fingers to the forest floor. They are my offering, a token gift from my body in preemptive gratitude for what I am about to receive; a physical manifestation of a sacred pause for me to consider the lives I will take or alter to sustain myself.

I am so hungry, I tell the world. Please, I need food.

Feast

After eight suns eating nothing but what we forage the hazelnut rush has dried up, and I just made a five mile round trip I didn’t really have in me to attend the Naming celebration of two of my campmates. My energy is low, my balance unsteady. I leave my shoes at a fork in the leaf-matted trail so I don’t have to hunt to find them, roll up my pant legs and cut through the woods to the bog creeping out over the lake.

High-stepping and barefoot, my blackberry scarred shins are sensitive to the thicket of labrador tea. I weave around a clump of stunted tamaracks, tipped with their little scruffy tufts like the mind of Dr. Seuss brought to life. Finally soft, deep sphagnum moss, its spring green burnt to Christmas red by constant exposure to the sun. The sky stretches out above me, mesmerizingly complex, threatening either sunshine or thundershowers as I reach the edge of the lake and take out my fishing pole.

The floating bog undulates beneath me as I reach into my breast pocket for the worms Fridolin gave me. A stream of bubbles burbles to the surface as the bog sinks under my weight, leaving me ankle deep in tannic water.

Opening the bandana, I stare, and want to cry, or sit down and never get up. There’s nothing there but a single shred of dried worm, veritable worm jerky. I don’t even know if I have the energy to walk the twenty-five canoe lengths to where Fridolin stashes his fishing gear for more bait.

Scouring the bandana I find one more piece of worm jerky that I can break in two.

All right, I tell myself, more than a little overwhelmed. Let’s see what happens.

I fenagle the worm jerky onto the hook and toss the line over the edge of the sinking bog, watching the bright spot of the worm fade into the dark water.

Instantly a jerky nibble, a bait thief on a lightning strike, but no fish. I toss the hook back in again.

Another tug and I set the hook and out of the water in a furious silvery spiral erupts a sunfish, thrashing for life at the end of my line. Hurriedly I swing her over the bog before she fights free, reaching out to gently cup her against my thigh, careful of her flaring dorsal spines. Killing her with a few sharp raps from the hilt of my knife, I stow her under some moss out of the sun, untangle my line from a fluffy seed stalk, and toss the worm back in.

Tug.

Out spirals another sunfish, dappled with glorious orange spots, as big as my whole hand, the biggest I’ve ever caught.

Again and again pumpkinseeds and bluegills give themselves to the hook, all on three reconstituted worm pieces, until ten fish lie at my feet.