White Shirts In The Wilderness: A Brothers Survival Short Story

By Dennis Vidoni

in the late 1960's the brothers vidoni reconnect as wild and crazy twenty and thirty-somethings guys. In the course of their hard partying they conjure up the idea to go on a survival trip into the canadian wilderness. one of the brothers is an army veteran with some experience in the wild. the other is a willing but naive accomplice. the not quite prepared for the wild duo set out on a three week adventure with a fishing rod, a pellet gun, a tent and a two-day store of food. they encounter the rain, drizzle, snow and biting cold of late may in canada. their mettle is tested. their ingenuity is spurred on by myriad obstacles and difficulties. it is a story of young men, survival, misstep, misery and accomplishment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dennis Vidoni
• Release date: May 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311230553

Dennis Vidoni

Dennis O. Vidoni was born in Chicago in 1945. He was raised in Chicago’s blue collar suburbs of Cicero and Berwyn. Upon graduation from Eastern Illinois University he taught high school social science and was a baseball and basketball coach. He then earned a masters degree in counseling from Roosevelt University and later a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Marquette University. His twenty-six years in the field of psychology included work as a clinical counselor, Counseling Center Assistant Director and Director, Assistant Professor and most prominently as Coordinator of Paraprofessional Training and Services. The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Kansas Benedictine College, Regis College and the University of Illinois were among the places of his professional employment. He retired in 2001. Dennis is an avid sports enthusiast both as a fan and participant. He and Mary his wife of thirty-eight years have one son. He has written two books. His first is a real-life account of a father and son at they explore the length of the 275 mile Kaskaskia River of Illinois entitled "Canoeing The Kaskaskia: A Father And Son Short Story". The other book, "White Shirts In The Wilderness: A Brothers Survival Short Story" tells a tale of a not quite prepared duo that conjures up the idea to go on survival trip in the Canadian wilderness.Dennis currently resides in Urbana, Illinois.

Book preview

White Shirts in The Wilderness:

A Brothers Survival Short Story

By

Dennis O. Vidoni

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Dennis O. Vidoni

Smashword Edition, License Notes

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Chapter One

Well, then came a long pause as he handled our sleeping bags and food sack, you guys are traveling light. That was the Canadian outfitter’s response to our query about the appropriateness of our gear. The subtext to his gentle statement was that ‘you guys don’t know what you are doing.‘ My oldest brother Pier and I were about to embark on our first wilderness canoe adventure and the outfitter’s nuanced reply was suggestive of the sophistication of our backcountry skills. I had no experience in the wilds. Two jamborees with the boy scouts in suburban Chicago was the extent of my in-tent qualifications. Those came just shortly before I was kicked out of scouting for being incorrigible. Pier had been a paratrooper in the army and had been in several bivouacs. A bivouac being temporary tented military camp. He had also visited this part of Canada on a boy scout trip some 17 years earlier. He was the instigator, brains and leader of this current trek into the wild. We were both unprepared for what lay ahead of us. Me more than he.

This trip had been a couple of years in the making. It was the confluence of several life events that created the opportunity for this survival trip, as we called it. PIer, who is 9 years older than I, had moved from Cleveland, Ohio to St. Louis early in 1968. I had graduated college in 1968 and had taken a teaching/coaching job in the small town of Athens, Illinois just outside of Springfield. Living in Springfield I was just about 100 miles away from Pier.

For the first 23 years of my life I had not been particularly close to my oldest brother. Our father died in 1952 when I was 6 and Pier took on more of a stern parental role as I was the

‘baby’ of the family. In truth we did not have many interactions at all as he went away first to college in 1954 and then to the army for three years in 1956. I left for college in 1963 and in those intervening 4 years, 1959-1963, our paths really did not cross frequently. I was much closer to my brother Norman who was 7 1/2 years older and to my sister LeAnna. Pier was much closer to Norm.

Our proximity in 1968 led to familiarity as he and I started to hang out as two wild and crazy guys. In 1968-69 we went on several road trips together. In addition I would visit him or he would visit me. We partied hard. In the course of being sidekicks we started talking about going on a survival trip. He picked the place of his first wilderness adventure as a boy scout in 1952. His troop, which included Norm, went to the end of the Gunflint Trail in northern Minnesota. That is where he and I would test our endurance and our masculinity. We tried to get Norm to come along but he had just gotten married in May of 1968 and was unable to get away for an extended period. After perusing the maps of the area Pier determined that the location of his boy scout trip was probably close to some place near Quetico Provencial Park in Ontario, Canada. I was game and naive.

Pier should have been born into a native American tribe sometime back in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Any one of them would have been to his liking. Our plan was to live off the land as the Indians had, catching fish and animals. We had not devised a scheme as to how to catch the animals but we were undaunted. Pier was extremely confident in his ability to sustain himself and I was ....naive. Eventually we discussed this adventure with our cousin Bruno, the patriarch of the Vidoni family. He said we were crazy but he would supply us with a pellet gun and a knife. As an aside I might add here that Bruno complained for years afterward that the beautiful black handled Buck Knife he lent us was forever dull. No matter how he tried to sharpen it the blade would remain edgeless. Perhaps we wrecked the knife by trying to sharpen it on a piece of granite we found laying around. Whatever the reason the ruined blade was to be a source of some man-to-man jabbing banter for decades.

We determined that 3 weeks of living off the land would be sufficient to prove that we could do it. We never articulated what it was but it was certainly an important thing to do. Being attracted to adventure and risk was something Pier strove for all of his life. At least all the years that I had known him. Jumping out of planes twenty-three times as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division was a manifest of his penchant for risk. My wife and I gave him a tee shirt, among other gifts, for his 1980 marriage that had emblazoned across the front, LOOK FOR DANGER. And look for danger he