A Good Compass 🧭

Between long torpor sessions in cave lockdown, Mousie and I have been working through Teddy Yeti’s Travel Journal, whilst maintaining online correspondence with the author, Teddy Yeti. As you may recall, Teddy Yeti left his travel notes in my cave for translation last year, however, Mousie and I have only begun to grasp the broadest strokes of his pictographic writings.

While the whole journal decoding process began quite painstakingly, and even involved Yeti receiving online English lessons from Mousie, Teddy Yeti’s instinctual ‘Protect Tribe’ response to current events has caused his focus to shift from exacting linguistic precision to simply conveying his primary message. Pointing us yesterday to written entries listing essentials to include in an emergency backpack, and to his wall calendar labeling September as ‘National Preparedness Month’, Teddy Yeti suggests there is no time like the present to get on building a basic bug-out bag. In one journal passage, Teddy Yeti lists some of the contents of his own Travel Pack as follows:

• Yeti sleeping bag

• Yeti watch

• Yeti WALKing stick

• Yeti tools

• Yeti climbing gear

• Yeti first AID kit

• Yeti drinks and snacks

• Yeti notebook and pencil

Teddy Yeti recommends tailoring personal go bag contents to individual preparedness needs. Following news of COVID-19 and the growing severity of wildfires, Teddy Yeti upgraded his own travel pack to contain PPE, to limit the transmission of airborne germs and illness, and to filter out particulate matter from burning forests. Teddy Yeti now double masks when venturing outside the confines of his and Boo Bear’s cave. Following Mousie’s recommendations from ‘The Great Dr. Fauci’ (Mousie’s words), Teddy Yeti also stresses that proper masking involves total snout coverage, i.e., covering one’s mouth AND ‘button nose’.

For both practical and symbolic reasons, Teddy Yeti’s most valued travel item is his Yeti Compass. The following maxim, which Mousie and I did manage to decipher from Teddy Yeti’s journal, aptly explains his affinity for this navigational instrument: “Traveler without compass always get lost. Good compass always show traveler right way.” Mousie now glows with gratitude, knowing that Teddy Yeti’s compass somehow led him to us.