Survival



Ракова Анастасия Андреевна. 11 лет. Survival. HIGH

Before I took part in the Expedition through the Arctic, I had lived by a schedule. In the Arctic you lose sense of time. Having 24 hours of sunlight we could start our hiking at what we thought was 3 PM but it was actually 3 AM.
Our entire being was focused on one thing: survival.
That day or night (I can’t say for sure) I was on polar bear watch while the others were sleeping.
I didn’t have to fall asleep so I looked outside for some fresh air and came face to face with a ...

… A white bear!
It was sitting on the pads near of our house and was eating our seal’s hulk.
Its nose and pads were stained with blood.
It was greedily tearing off the pieces of the frost-damaged meat and was putting them into his mouth.
I was petrified. I remembered how hard it was to get the seal.
We hadn’t been provided with food for month; It sank when we were crossing the river by boat. We had few cans of canned food and crackers.
We had to get some food. Yesterday, we finally killed a seal.
It was a very hard hunt! We were tiring out the unfortunate animal for about three hours.
Thank God, we were saved from starvation. We cut the hulk, gorged on, put it into a bag and hung it up to the roof of our house as high as possible.
We were tired and went to bed, hoping that we had enough food for several days. It was horrible to see the bear eating our stock.
I wanted to shout at it, to banish it, to save our food, but I stood stock-still.
My heart sank when the bear stared at me with his black eyes.
I couldn’t move. The animal was watching me for a couple of minutes; it felt like eternity to me.
I thought it was satiated `cause it raised its heavy body and went away.
I was standing without moving for a few minutes thinking that every minute in Arctic is survival.

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