The Rain Bear

By Conrad Lovelle

The rugged North Coast is a haven for campers and hikers with countless trails and wondrous settings. Adventures in the wild that boyhood dreams are made of. This is one of many stories that describes how a commonplace camping trip with a group of teenage boys can so quickly become a lonely and harrowing experience when the group surrenders to a rainstorm and goes home. All but one of them; and this is his story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Conrad Lovelle
• Release date: Feb 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311740304

Conrad Lovelle

I spent my early years in a small town rich with cultural diversity. In difficult times during my childhood I learned to escape through reading and fantasy. Eventually the storybook readings merged with friends' accounts of far-off lands, and a Romantic was born. My taste outgrew the confinement and simplicity of the small isolated town and at age 15 I answered the call of my wanderlust, leaving home with just $12 in my pocket to hitch-hike 1000 miles to the nearest West-coast city.Those seeds of my childhood led me to many cultures and into many homes and hearts along the way. Writing romantically (sometimes with impish delight) to express my own feelings and experiences was an early passion, and throughout the years I have written about love and life's processes; about events that have occurred and encounters that have endured, and those that have faded away.

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The Rain Bear

by Conrad Lovelle

Copyright Conrad Lovelle

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Contents

The Rain Bear

About Conrad Lovelle

Conrad Lovelle – In Other Words

Connections

I love the forest. An arena of countless adventures, it offers freedom, escape.

The Rain Bear

CRACK!!! The ceramic insulator on the power pole exploded in a starburst of chunks and splinters, raining down onto the gravel below. Adrenalin pumped, I had scored a direct hit. We scrambled to scoop up the larger scraps, jumping and waving our prizes in the air, each one of us bragging we had the biggest and best piece yet.

We had hiked the five-mile trek along the seldom-used tracks many times before; Marc, Nick, Lorne, and I, and at a steady but aimless amble we passed the time with rock throwing contests. The competition was high. We were twelve and thirteen year old boys-become-fighter-pilots, brought to life from the Saturday movies.

When we got bored with the insulators we switched our attention to targeting angry crows and chattering squirrels. Cries of I got it, I got it! rang out as rocks ripped through the leaves of the bushes and giant Devil’s Club that filled the swath carved alongside the tracks. For the most part, whether or not there even was a hit was highly questionable. The density of those bushes and thorny Devil’s Clubs made blatant liars out of every one of us because there was no way anyone could check up on you in that mess, occasionally the chatter was silenced.

On this hike the dynamics were different. Lorne was always a bit of a whiner and even though he had given up on me he worked tirelessly on Marc and Nick trying to convince them to turn back. It didn’t help any that the uncertain weather was rapidly worsening. Inside I was quietly uneasy and I hoped they would hold out, I loved these chances to get away from home. Nothing was said as we all scanned the skyline, but target practice became incidental and we picked up our pace a bit. By now we were only about 20 minutes from the clearing where the tracks met the river bend. It was a favourite spot for us and once we get there it would be a snap to get set up.

Less than 100 miles from the Alaska Panhandle as the crow flies, our small town sits in the belly of a northern British Columbia; the footprint of some forgotten glacier long ago