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wasn’t reassured. In the dark, that eerie howling scared me half to death. It was five A.M. before much light reached the forest floor around my hiding place. When was the soonest that rescue could come?
    Today. Anytime now. Morning, afternoon, evening. If they were going to be able to spot me, I was going to have to stay on the beach.
    The heavy rubber rain suit in the rear hatch of my kayak came to mind. Too bad I didn’t have it, and the boots, and the hat designed to shed rain past the collar.
    Knock it off, I told myself. Think about what’s possible.
    I should be able to find some fresh water. Maybe I could go without food a while longer, but I was going to have to find water.
    At 6:30 A.M. I heard an airplane. It sounded far off, but it was sure enough an airplane. I mustered enough courage to crawl out from under my hiding place and follow the bear trail down to the beach.
    The sky was leaden, and it was drizzling. I could no longer hear the airplane. No sign of the kayak. No such luck.
    The beach had shrunk from what I’d seen before. What was the tide doing? Coming in, I calculated. At high tide, within a few hours, I’d be hemmed right up against the driftwood and the trees and almost impossible to spot.
    Conditions were terrible for flying. A heavy blanket of clouds made a low ceiling, no more than five hundred feet judging from the slopes above. Beyond the cove, the gray face of the sea was rolling and whitecapped as far as I could see.
    Would they even look for me here, on the southern foot of Admiralty?
    The wind had been blowing hard from Baranof to Admiralty across Chatham Strait. Wouldn’t they more likely look along Admiralty’s rugged, rocky west coast,than around the corner on the southern shore?
    I looked west, to the near slopes that rose jagged and sheer out of the cove and disappeared in the clouds. The climb and the descent to the west coast would be murderous without boots. At tidewater I’d come out of the forest onto a ragged strip of jumbled rocks.
    Sheltered by the cape, this cove looked friendly by comparison.
    Stay put, I told myself. That’s what you’re supposed to do if you get lost. That’s what they tell hunters every fall in Colorado. You’ll only make things worse if you try to hike out.
    Be patient. They’ll look for you here. Give it time.
    I scanned the cove toward the east. Halfway around there was a break in the mountains that backed the beach. There would be a creek there, and fresh water.
    Where the cove flared seaward again, almost at land’s end, my eyes picked up a large rounded object at water’s edge.
    A whale, a beached whale. From the black-and-white pattern I recognized it as an orca, a killer whale.
    There was motion around it.
    I squinted. What I saw was a bear, unmistakably a bear, with two dark moving specks close by that had to be cubs. The whale was dead, and the bears were feeding off it.
    In the drizzle, I stood just out of reach of the rising tide and watched the bears at the whale and the sky. The drizzle turned to rain. I should have been building some sort of shelter on the beach.
    Across the cove, the bears were about to have company. Big dogs, I thought at first, but just as quickly I figured out it was the wolves I’d heard during the night.
    I squinted. There seemed to be six or eight of them trotting down the beach toward the whale and the bears. They slowed to a walk, but kept coming. I wondered what would happen. The mother bear charged them, then retreated. With the cubs at her heels, she made a beeline for the trees.
    With the tide coming in, I knew I had better go to the creek while there was open beach remaining. I was able to follow a thread of sand among the smooth dark beach stones and above the slippery seaweed and the mussel beds. I chose each step carefully. It would be so easy to bruise or cut my feet.
    Heavy rain, in sheets off the sea, forced me into the forest before I could