The Mountains of Eden

Chapter 4

(2013/Oct/09)

Having the schematic for the air-cans made the planning stages easier, but did not, it turned out, make the actual manufacturing portion any less difficult. Weeks went by during which Hallik and Halka tried to find ways to press metal into the large sheets called for in the diagram. While they struggled that, Jael worked on figuring out a way to carry the cans once they were made.

A final size of 72 centimeters in length was decided on. The cans would be too large to carry easily by hand, which meant some sort of harness needed to be arranged. Jael spent his days farming and hunting deeper into the forest than he had ever gone before, and his evenings tanning hides, cutting them into strips, and weaving them into straps.

For practice, he used two blocks of wood, roughly the same size that the finished air-cans would be. He went through several different configurations for his harnesses before he found one that would carry both logs in relative comfort, while still allowing him free use of his arms. He knew that climbing the mountains would require almost as much use of his hands as it would his feet, and he wanted to make sure that the air-can harness would not impede his ability to clamber over rock and scree.

Once he had the harness design settled, he made a spare just in case something happened to the first one. Then, he returned to the library in his evenings, and read all that he could about mountain climbing.

One thing that the books said, which confirmed his own visual assessment, was that the highest mountains would be very cold all year round. The snow on the tops of the mountains around the valley never melted, not even in the hottest days of summer. On advice from one book about a group who climbed a mountain called "K2", he began making warm, fur-lined jackets and pants for himself, and a pair of boots a size too large so that he could stuff them with fur also to keep his feet reasonably warm and dry.

Almost every day, it seemed, while he was tending the garden or checking his traps, he would think of more things that he would need for the trip. He took to keeping a list on the table in his cabin, and the moment he got home he would scribble whatever thought had occurred to him on it. The list grew dauntingly long.

"I will find a way," he would mutter, staring down at his list in the flickering light of the table lamp. "I have to."