arrow to the knee

  And it rained harder. And harder. The wind pushed stronger and still stronger and at last the tent seemed to sigh. It collapsed around him and he started rolling across the grass toward the edge of the clearing.
  Everything was upside down, crazy. He couldn’t find the entrance and about the time he thought he had it the tent dropped off the five-foot embankment and he rolled down to the lakeshore.
  He landed in a heap and felt an intense, hot pain in his right leg at the upper thigh and reached down to feel an arrow shaft protruding from his leg.
  Great, he thought. I’ve shot myself in the leg. He hadn’t, of course, but had rolled onto an arrow that had fallen out of the quiver just as the tent rolled off the embankment.
  He couldn’t get his bearings but he knew where his thigh was and he grabbed the arrow and jerked the shaft out of his leg. There was an immediate surge of pain and he felt like passing out. He didn’t, but then he heard a strange whump-thump and something crashed down on his head. This time he did pass out.
  He came to a few seconds later with a sore head, a sore leg and absolutely no idea in the world what was happening to him. He was still wrapped in the tent and his bag was in his face and his bow and arrows lay all around him and he seemed to be in water, almost swimming.
  All right, he thought, take one thing at a time. Just one thing.
  I poked my leg with an arrow.
  There. Good. I pulled the arrow out. My leg still works. It must not have been a broadhead because it didn’t go in very deep. Good.
  My tent collapsed. There. Another thing. I’m in the tent and it collapsed. I just have to find the front zipper and get out and climb up the bank. Easy now, easy.
  Something hit me on the head. What? Something big that thunked. The canoe. The wind picked up the canoe and it hit me.
  There. I’ve poked my leg, rolled down a bank and been hit in the head with the canoe.
  All simple things. All fixable things.
  He fumbled around and at last found the zipper at the front of the tent, opened it and slithered out into the mud on the lakeshore.
  The rain was still coming down in sheets, the wind still hissing and slashing him with the water, but he had his bearings and it was not impossible to deal with things. He dragged the tent back up the embankment onto the grass, limping as the pain in his leg hit him. It was too dark to see much but he could make out the shape of the canoe lying upside down. It had moved a good ten feet from where he had left it and had he not tied it down loosely with the line it would have blown away across the lake.
  He had forgotten the most important thing about living in the wilderness, the one thing he’d thought he would never forget — expect the unexpected. What you didn’t think would get you, would get you. Plan on the worst and be happy when it didn’t come.
  But he had done one thing right: He had tied the canoe to a tree. He dragged the tent to the canoe, crawled underneath and lay on the tent the rest of the night, listening to the wind and rain, wincing now and then with the pain in his leg and feeling stupid.
  It was a long night.