I love being read to. So when we exhausted the Harry Potter series I missed having our evenings (& sometimes stolen moments during the day) filled with the sound of Colby reading to us. I resent the introduction of prime time TV. Something has to change- well change back to how it was before Harry grew up.
And somewhere between Hastings Cut off and Horse Shoe Springs I figured out how to kill to birds with one stone so to speak. Fix the nightly routine and add a little romance to the mix.
Read again.
Together. As a family if the kids can tough it out. So why pick Ordeal By Hunger the story of the Donner Party as our book? Because I can’t get that book out of my head. I read it at the age of 12 given to my by an uncle and ever sense then I can hear the narrator with the clarity of 20/20 hindsight critiquing the fatal errors.
Colby needs to read this book. And anyone who has been brave enough to sign on to an adventure with him knows why.
I’ll give an example. We were camping in the desert. Check. We had food & water, 1 of 2 dogs, & 1 out of 4 kid, no cats no chickens. Check. We had a map. Check. And we got stuck on a back ‘road’ on the wrong side of the Okay no photographs of the actual 'stuck' because the narrator from Ordeal By Hunger was in my head saying “These eerier photographs are of the couples last moments alive had they only had a shovel…had they taken time to unhitch the trailer hitch…had they chosen a route that van could safely pass…had their cellular phone coverage not been shitty…”
Ah-yeah ‘Had they only had a shovel’ WTH Colby?! He said, “I thought we were packing light. You didn’t bring honey only jam.”
For the record: Options for sandwich toppings is not equal to a shovel in the desert.
Don’t worry we didn’t die or ‘eat each other up’ but we did spend a night in the van in a ditch. And in the morning we dug ourselves out with a butter knife and an ax. Stumbled back to town a day over due to a message on our phone that some waitress from Sap Brother’s boyfriend wanted us to come pick up our dog (dog #2 too big too old to travel) who she had found wandering (dog not boyfriend), took home, left him in her car over night but forgot to tell her boyfriend that a dog the size of a small cow was in the backseat (Great Dane Lab mix).
While we are the subject of Zeke (RIP), the Great Dane the wanderer, he once wandered into a police stand off. I got a call from the swat team to come pick up my dog because he was licking the men in black. When I showed up in the VW van and an armed officer returned me my dog he said, “You’d think a dog wouldn’t like seeing 15 grown men wearing black and carrying guns but he just loved all of us.”
You’d think you would bring a shovel into the desert.5 out of 5 stars for Ordeal By Hunger, by George R. Stewart. It will improve your knowledge of history, improve your family time, improve your love life, & improve your preparedness OR just make you incredibly paranoid for no reason.
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