Ashore

At left, an empty boat courtesy Horia Varlan. Nice snap.

I'm back in civilization. I've been off the grid and out of the country. I had a blast and a lot of time to think about the current WIP. I've got a game plan to get over the humps that were in my way and a scheme to make the story work.

I often have schemes.

I'm behind on my reading and that will take a while to make-up.

I had a bit of adventure on the trip.

Hours into the bush by float plane, I came upon a boat tied to the shore. It look much as the boat at left, only tied to the shore. There were a few personal items within. Few enough that I knew it wasn't a boat crewed by anyone familiar with how wrong things can go in the bush. The little 15 HP engine had two tanks of fuel both with too little for comfort when combined. No answered the repeated calls.

Now, my mind ran to alternatives. I've already written a couple of stories about death in the bush from the hands of a fellow party member and a story about the slaughter of a fishing party by a fellow with nothing much to do with the time on his hands than kill some fishermen.

I knew one of the outposts on the lake had been closed for the season already. I thought the other empty when we flew over on approach.

Murder kept creeping into my mind. Murder-suicide, actually.

On the next day, we learned that the other abandoned looking outpost held a couple of people doing assessment work for the Ministry and it involved 2 kilometer hikes into the bush along GPS nav lines identifying tress and categorizing their size. The folks doing the work were not really backwoodsmen and traveled light. No harm.

It did get the creative juices of mayhem flowing right off the bat. The rest of the outing saw pages of notes on the unfortunate demise of otherwise healthy people not associated with danger. That's not strictly my bent on things; but, the unfortunate demise figured heavily in my thoughts.

Nothing like a vacation thinking of murder.

I hope your break went as well. I hope the body count is high. I know the word count is high.

Kill 'em if you've got 'em.