Read Online Idea in Stone by Hamish Macdonald - Free Book Online

leader would have been proud.
    Stefan dropped one match after another on the pile, and blew and blew on the smouldering brush. He took in a deep breath to give the rubbish a big blast of air, but instead got a lungful of smoke. He stood, coughing, and went to his supplies, digging until he found a small rectangular can. He walked calmly back to the log cabin, unscrewed the cap, and poured out half the contents. He screwed the top back on, put it behind him, and lit a match. He dropped the match into the stone circle and a column of fire, Biblical in proportion, flew up toward the treetops overhead. Very shortly after, Stefan was cooking his supper.
    Stefan noticed that the cans of spaghetti were five years past their best before date, but, hungry from the work of getting to the island, heated them anyway at the edge of the fire, and fried all the bacon in a pan. He mixed the bacon and spaghetti into a pot, making a carbonara slop of his own invention, which he enjoyed more than any meal he could remember. His mother would be horrified at his meat-eating, and he liked that, as if somehow being not-like-her made him something of his own.
    He made his way to the lakeshore to watch the sunset, a vast canopy of sherbet colours—red and orange up to yellow that glittered with the faintest of early stars. He loved the smell of smoke in his heavy clothes with sharp pine always in the background. The sun went down quickly, making black silhouettes of the tree-covered islands around his. The darkness as he walked back to his camp through the trees surprised him. It was dark. He wasn’t accustomed to that, living in the city, where blinds and curtains never really did the trick.
    The fire burned down to embers. He used his fork to scrape the bacon fat from the pan into the ashes, where it sizzled and briefly lit. He enjoyed the smell, thinking defiantly of his hippie mother. How could you not enjoy that smell?
    That smell.
    Bears.
    It came back to him now, the constant insistence of his Cub leaders and his grandfather to dispose of food scraps properly so bears wouldn’t be attracted to the campsite. Stefan poured water on the fire, creating a great, bacon-scented cloud of steam. He looked around, wondering if there was anything nearby to smell this. He poured on water until the ashes were cool mush, then scooped that into a garbage bag with his hands.
    Hang it up.
    Yes, that was the proper thing to do, he remembered: hang your food from a tree, away from the campsite, out of reach. Stefan piled all his food onto the tarpaulin along with the bag of bacon-ash-mud. He wiped his hands on his clothes to stop them from being so slippery, tied a thin yellow nylon rope through the grommets in the tarpaulin, then knotted a thick cotton rope to the gathered neck. He picked all this up and walked what he figured was a reasonable distance from his campsite.
    He looked at the trees above. The branches were so far away. He looked at the big bundle in his arms, then back at the trees. He spotted a pair of jutting branches—perhaps not regulation bear-height. Something moved in the bushes behind him. This will do , he thought. He turned his back to the tree, squatted, and hurled the bundle up as hard as he could, closing his eyes.
    He heard a crackle above, and nothing more. He looked up and saw his tarpaulin safely wedged in the tree. Stefan smiled at his efforts, and grabbed for the cotton rope that dangled down. He yanked on it to see if it was secure. It was. In fact, the bundle was stuck. Stefan stood under the tree and pulled hard on the rope. It pulled taut, then snapped free, dropping him to the ground.
    Stefan stared at the tarpaulin bag overhead. Its neck opened. Bacon-ash-mud splashed down on him.
    Something moved through the growth behind him. Stefan flipped over to look, then jumped up and ran in the other direction, flailing his arms in front of himself to clear a path. After several minutes, Stefan rested, crouched panting on the