King of the Wilderness

For today’s lunch menu, he decided to make a pot of steaming ”seafood stew.”

He took out his slightly blackened 1.6L stainless steel Seagull pot, filled it halfway with clear fresh water, and set it securely on the stone stove in the hearth.

While waiting for the water to boil, he started processing the ingredients.

He first lightly cracked the shells of the highly adhesive limpet with the back of an axe, then skillfully used the tip of a knife to extract the orange, abalone-like meat inside, and tossed it into a bark bowl.

Next, it was the sea snails. He placed them in the pot, and after the water boiled, he simmered them for just one minute before retrieving them with a makeshift strainer made of twigs.

After blanching, the snail meat shrank from the heat, and he easily extracted a large piece of elastic, toothsome snail meat with a sharpened twig, which was much easier than removing it raw.

Placing the snail meat in his mouth, it was exceptionally chewy, and as he chewed, he could even hear a faint ”creak” sound from between his teeth. The umami flavor built layer upon layer, incredibly fresh!

The last to be processed were the mussels. He carefully cleaned each mussel’s shell to remove parasites and sand.

When the water in the pot reached a boil again, Lin Yu’an began his cooking.

He first tossed in several clean pieces of kelp that he had previously gathered and washed.

As soon as the kelp hit the hot water, it unfurled immediately, changing from dark brown to a more olive-green shade, and a unique oceanic aroma began to permeate the air.

Then, he added the prepared limpet meat and sea snail meat to the pot before finally putting in that handful of clean mussels.

He didn’t cover the pot, instead munching on sea snails while quietly observing the changes in the pot.

With homemade chopsticks, he picked up a mussel that had just opened. The hot mussel meat, with a hint of slippery broth, was cooled with a breath and went straight into his mouth.

It was tenderness worth savoring! The muscle meat transformed into a soft plushness between the tongue’s resistance, leaving only a pure sweetness.

Next, he turned his attention to the impeccably cooked limpet meat.

The texture of the limpet was much firmer, resembling chewy meatballs with a rich and unique flavor akin to abalone in every bite.

Sitting by the bonfire like this, Lin Yu’an enjoyed the bountiful ”Labrador Coast stew” in the simplest way.

Soon, he finished every last bit of seafood, finally fishing out and consuming the simmered soft and sticky kelp.

With an entire pot of seafood in his stomach, the satiated warmth dispelled the chill brought by the sea breeze, and it fully restored the energy he had expended during the morning.

He let out a satisfying burp, feeling invigorated once again.

With his energy completely restored, Lin Yu’an stood up, brushed the dust off his hands, and refocused his gaze.

The food issue was temporarily resolved, but the thin waterproof fabric above couldn’t shield him from the minus thirty-degree winters in Labrador.

He needed to immediately start looking for a suitable location to build his permanent shelter.

Lin Yu’an began meticulously surveying the area around his temporary camp. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

In his mind, he had a clear set of criteria for selecting a site. First, there must be a natural barrier, with a massive rock wall being the best option.

This would block out the biting wind from at least one direction and save a lot of building materials and labor.

Secondly, the terrain must be good, requiring well-drained gentle slopes never to build in a low area, or else a rainstorm or snowmelt could turn his home into a pond.

Lastly, it should be a safe and convenient distance from resource points.

It needed to be close enough to the forest to gather lumber, near enough to the coast for his ”seafood bank,” and close to the freshwater lake on which his survival depended.

He spent an entire afternoon traversing back and forth, evaluating four or five potential locations, but each was rejected due to various defects.

Just as he was about to widen his search range, one place ultimately captured all his attention.

It was less than two hundred meters to the north of his temporary shelter.

It was a rock wall about two meters high, composed of hard granite, perfectly facing north, capable of blocking out the most prevalent chilling winds.

Below the rock wall was a south-facing gentle slope covered with thick tundra and low vegetation, offering excellent drainage.

At the end of this gentle slope, less than a hundred meters away, was the edge of a tall and dense spruce forest.

This location almost perfectly met all his requirements!

Lin Yu’an stood before the rock wall, touching the cold, rough surface of the rock.

With his eyes closed, a clear blueprint began to unfold in his mind.

He would first dig down into the slope to construct a semi-dugout foundation, utilizing the Earth’s temperature for insulation.

The rear wall of the shelter would directly utilize this natural rock wall, making it impenetrable.

Then he would go into the forest to harvest the sturdiest spruce logs, using them to build the other three walls of the shelter, no higher than three to four logs to minimize heat loss.

On one side of the shelter, he would use the slate gathered from the North Slope to build an efficient stone fireplace with a chimney, right next to the wooden wall.

The roof would extend forward at a gentle angle from the top of the rock wall, using thinner timber rafters and covering them with a giant waterproof tarp.

It would finally be overlaid with thick tundra, soil, and moss, creating a waterproof and ideally insulated structure.

Continuously planning in his mind, Lin Yu’an contemplated what kind of shelter he needed to build to survive this icy winter with peace of mind.

Day four.

The morning sun had just pierced the horizon, and Lin Yu’an had already finished his routine of checking the traps. Another day without any triggered traps.

He had a simple breakfast of warm mussel meat, and now his body was full of energy, and his mind was highly focused.

Today’s task was very clear: dismantle the cable and prepare the first batch of the most basic materials for the upcoming shelter construction.

He walked to the rock where the cable was drying. After a night of dry sea breeze, most of the moisture on the cable had evaporated, making it feel dry and hard to the touch.

First, he laid the cable flat on the ground, put on gloves, and carefully examined its structure.

This was a classic three-strand nylon cable, with each strand tightly twisted from dozens of finer fibers.

At the end, you could see the traces of melting from a hot cut that prevented unraveling.

”To dismantle it, brute force won’t work.” He spoke to the camera, pinching a single fiber between his fingers.

”These nylon fibers are tough, but their weakness is being individually broken. My goal is to find its ’disassociation point’ without damaging most of the fiber length.”

He chose the most worn-out part of the cable, using the tip of the Damascus Hunting Knife to carefully break apart the outer strands, one by one, like skinning a prey.

When the cut was large enough, he could clearly see the winding structure of the three main strands inside.

He found the end of one of the strands and began his meticulous and time-consuming dismantling process.

His movements were like those of a patient craftsman, going against the twist of the cable, unraveling those tightly twisted strands loop by loop.

The process was tedious and required immense patience. The nylon fibers, deformed from prolonged stress, had developed a sort of ”muscle memory,” springing back at the slightest release.

Lin Yu’an had to kneel on one end, using both hands to gradually separate these stubborn fiber ropes.

Every time he successfully separated a complete thin strand, it gave him a sense of achievement!

Finally, after nearly an hour, the coarse cable over two meters long was perfectly dismantled into twelve thinner but still tough individual ropes, with a total length exceeding thirty meters.

Having done all this, he did not immediately begin digging the foundation.

Before starting construction, he had to transport the main construction materials, timber and moss, to the vicinity of the construction site to complete the preparation phase.

He took out the sharp axe and triangular saw from his toolkit and strode into the nearby spruce forest.

His goal was very clear: to find standing deadwood with the trunk still upright.

He quickly locked onto a target, a spruce with a diameter of about twenty centimeters. The bark had long fallen off, and the trunk showed a unique grayish-white color amidst the forest.

He tapped the trunk firmly with the end of the axe handle, producing a crisp and solid echo of ”knock, knock.”

”Listen to this sound, crisp and not muffled. It shows the internal decay is minimal, and the wood is still hard. This is definitely material for building the shelter.”

”If wet wood is used as building material, once the shelter is established, the temperature rise inside will cause the wood to shrink and warp significantly as moisture evaporates, leading to a loose and drafty structure. But this naturally air-dried deadwood has dimensions already very stable.”

He didn’t choose those giant trees over thirty centimeters in diameter. He selected those with a diameter between fifteen and twenty centimeters, suitable for wall building and straight deadwood.

After choosing a target, he made a V-shaped ”guide notch” about a third of the trunk’s depth at the base of the tree, approximately thirty centimeters off the ground, on the side facing the direction of the fall.

Then, circling to the backside of the tree, he made the main cut a few centimeters above the guide notch.

The triangular saw, pulled steadily and forcefully, emitted the rhythmic sound of ”sah... sah... sah...” as dry wood chips sprayed out from the cut.

When the cut depth exceeded halfway, the entire trunk made a slight ”crack” sound and began to lean slowly toward the guide notch.

Lin Yu’an quickly retracted the saw and stepped back a few steps.

”Boom—”

Accompanied by the sound of branches breaking, the grayish-white spruce deadwood fell precisely into the open area he had planned.

For the next few hours, the forest continuously echoed with the cutting sound and the subsequent ”bang bang” of branches being cleared with the axe.

With high efficiency, he felled eight spruce deadwoods meeting the requirements and cut them into standard lengths of about three meters, suitable for building walls.

Then, with all his might, he dragged and moved each one to the edge of the forest and stacked them neatly.

Having solved the major wood problem, he turned his attention to the ground.

He needed a large number of complete moss clumps, which would be used as filler, wedged between logs to provide sealing and insulation.

He walked to a place where the moss layer was extremely thick and, like carving pizza, used the Damascus Hunting Knife to mark out a half-meter square grid on the ground.

Then, inserting the blade horizontally between the moss and the soil layer below, he used the full width of the knife to cut a large piece of moss, more than ten centimeters thick, along with its root system soil.

Instead of picking it up immediately, he carefully rolled this square piece of moss into a solid roll, like rolling a carpet. This way, it was easy to transport and maximized the integrity of the moss structure.

By nightfall, he had stacked a waist-high pile of logs next to the future construction site and a dozen rolls of thick moss resembling green Swiss rolls.

Standing before his day’s labor, though his muscles were a bit sore, his heart was filled with the excitement of the construction about to begin!

————

(Today’s ten-thousand-character first update, asking for monthly votes~~)