Challenge #01924-E100: A Tisket, A Tasket...
Coracle. Ancient form of water transport made out of sticks, cow hide* and waterproofing. *any firm waterproof material will do. -- Anon Guest
The human was messing around with the local vegetation again. They had already taken some fallen wood and whittled two paddles, and now they were making a positively enormous basket out of the long, bendy reeds that had once been growing by this lake.
"Is this a temporary shelter?" asked Thok.
"Nope," said Human Grif. Still lashing things together with some of their hand-made twine. Using both hands, at least one of their feet, and occasionally their teeth to prevent the whole thing from becoming an unanticipated human trap[1]. They finished tying one spar and carefully swapped holding its other end together with their toes in favour of tying it down too. "This is sort of a boat."
And Thok had thought that they had fully explored the strangeness to which a human could sink. "How can anything 'sort of' be a boat?"
"Jury's still out as to whether it qualifies." Human Grif was getting faster at tying the spars down. "It's all down to how you define 'boat'."
"A small vessel for travelling over water, propelled by wind, oars, or a motor?" said Thok.
"Well... yes. Generally. Okay. That's a pretty broad definition, I grant. Some people would debate that what I'm making is more a basket for keeping the water out of the people who are in it. Boats have prows, sterns, starboard, portside... that sort of thing." A spar escaped Human Grif's grip and nearly struck them in the face. "This thing is more like a big firkin bowl that is basically going to be held together by gutta-percha."
"And those leaves you have gathered are for...?"
"Infrastructure," said Human Grif. They had a smallish pot keeping the aforementioned gutta-percha warm on the fire. A spatula-esque tool was waiting by the fire. And now that Human Grif was satisfied with the skeleton of the thing, they now began tying and glueing large leaves to the outside of what Thok could only describe as a gigantic, hemispherical basket. "This is a coracle. And it's going to save us fifteen days' travel time to the pickup zone for this leg of the journey alone."
Hence, why they had spent a majority of this day making it. Thok was beginning to believe the stories of humans making advanced technology out of bear skins and stone tools[2]. "There are enough bodies of water to be concerned about such things?"
"Enough to be homicidally annoying, yes. We can't tough it out on rations and the scant number of things on this planet that are edible more than once. Especially for the longer travel time it would take to ford or skirt the number of obstacles we have to traverse. So... coracle. Also comes in handy as an emergency shelter."
"Why not build a more proper boat?"
Human Grif shrugged. "Dunno how."
[1] It shouldn't be so shocking that many improvised human survival rigs end up this way, but it is.
[2] There may have been some miscommunication involving that one episode of Star Trek.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / elecstasy]
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Proper boat wouldn't make as good an impromptu shelter :D