The first light of pre-dawn

The first light of pre-dawn glowed through the opening of the cave, filling in the triangular space. She slipped quietly out of bed, quickly threw on a wrap and some foot coverings, and moved silently towards the entrance.
She took a deep breath as soon as she stepped beyond the cave’s mouth. Her relief was so great, she didn’t care that icy rain soaked through her leather wrap. She slogged through the mucky quagmire in front of the cave towards the stream,, shivering from a sudden chill. Patches of snow, blackened by soot sifting out from the many fires, sent muddy runnels of water down the slope adding their small measure, to the drenching downpour that swelled the ice locked channel.
Her leather foot coverings gave small purchase on the reddish brown ooze, and she slipped and fell half way down to the stream. Her limp hair, plastered against her head, hung in thick ropes extending into rivulets that cut through the mud clinging to her wrap before the rain washed it away. She stood for a long time on the bank of the watercourse, struggling to break free of its frozen keep, and watched the dark water swirl around chunks of ice, finally break them loose, and send them careering to some unseen destination.
Her teeth were chattering when she struggled back up the slippery slope watching the overcast sky grow imperceptibly lighter beyond the ridge to the east. She had to force herself through an invisible barrier that blocked the mouth of the cave, and felt the sense of uneasiness again the moment she entered.
From the book ‘The clan of the cave bear’ by Jean M. Auel

Brun threw up his hand in a signal to stop

Brun threw up his hand in a signal to stop, then pointed ahead at the monstrous shaggy bruin rubbing his back against a tree. Even the children sensed the awe with which the clan viewed the massive vegetarian. His physical presence was impressive though. The brown bears of their own mountains, and these too, averaged about three hundred and fifty pounds; the weight of a male cave bear, during the summer while he was still fairly lean, was closer to a thousand. In Late autumn, when he was fattened for winter, his bulk was much greater. He towered above the men of the clan by nearly three times their height, and with his huge head and shaggy coat seemed even bigger. Lazily scratching his back on the rough bark of the old snag, he appeared unaware of the people frozen on their tracks so close by. But he had little to fear from any creature and was simply ignoring them. The smaller brown bears inhabiting the area near their own cave had been known to break the neck of a stag with one blow of a powerful foreleg, what couldn’t this huge bruin do? Only another male during rutting season, or the female of the species protecting her cubs, would dare to stand up to him. She was invariably successful.
The bear tired of his activity – or his itch was satisfied – and he stretched to his full height, walked on hind legs a few paces, then dropped down on all four legs. Muzzle drooping close to the ground, he loped ponderously away with a lumbering gallop. For all his great size, the cave bear was basically a peaceful creature and rarely attacked unless he was annoyed.
From the book ‘The clan of the cave bear’ by Jean M. Auel

For two days

For two days they struggled through putrid, mosquito infected swamps of brackish water, broken through by occasional channels, before they reached the mainland. Scrub oak and hornbeam quickly led to the cool, welcome shade of parkland oak woods. They passed through an almost pure stand of beech, relieved by a few chestnut, and into a mixed forest dominated by oak, but including boxwood and yew, draped with clinging ivy and clematis. The lianas thinned out, but still climbed an occasional tree when they reached a belt of fir and spruce intermixed with beech, maple and hornbeam. The western part was the wettest of the entire range, and carried a dense cover of forests, and the lowest snowline.
They caught glimpses of forest bison and the red deer, roe deer and elk of wooden landscapes; they saw boar, fox, badger, wolf, lynx, leopard, wildcat and many smaller animals, but not a single squirrel

The travellers settled into a monotonous routine

The travellers settled into a monotonous routine, one day blending into the next with weary regularity. The advancing season changed so gradually, they hardly noticed when the warm sun become a scorching ball of flame searing the steppes, turning the flat plain into a jaundiced monochrome of dun earth, buff grass and beige rocks against a dust laden yellowish drab sky. For three days their eyes smarted with smoke and ashes carried by the prevailing winds from a sweeping prairie fire. They passed massive herds of bison, and giant deer with huge palmate antlers, horses, onagers and asses; more rarely, saiga antelope with horns growing straight out of the tops of their heads slightly curved back at the tips; tens upon tens of thousands of grazing animals supported by the extensive grassland.
Long before they neared the marshy isthmus, that both connected the peninsula to the main continent and served as an outlet for the shallow salty sea to the northeast, the massive mountain range, second highest on earth, loomed into view. Even the lowest peaks were capped with glacial ice to halfway down their flanks, coldly unmoved by the searing heat of the plains. When the level prairie merged into low rolling hills, dotted with fescue and father grass, and red with a richness of iron ore - the red ochre making it hallowed ground - Brun knew the salt marsh was not far beyond. It was a secondary and more tenuous link . The primary connection of the peninsula to the mainland was the northern one that formed past of the western boundary of the smaller inland sea.

The freshness of early summer

The freshness of early summer in the temperature zone near the cave changed character on the open plains of the continental steppes to the east. Gone was the rich green foliage that filled out brush and deciduous trees and still betrayed the new season' growth of conifers with needles a shade lighter at the tips of branches and spires. Instead quick-rooting and sprouting herbs and grasses, already chest high, whose youthful verdancy was lost to the drab hue indeterminate between green and gold, stretched to the horizon. Thick, matted, old season growth cushioned their steps as the clans wove their way across the illimitable prairie, leaving his contemporary ripple behind showing the way they had come. Clouds rarely marred the boundless expanse above except for an occasional thunderstorm, more often seen from a distance. Surface water was scarce. They stopped to fill water bags at every stream, unsure if they would find any conveniently close when they camped for the night.
From the book 'Theclan of the cave bear' by Jean M. Auel

Spring was in full flower

Spring was in full flower the day she decided to hunt ptarmigan for Creb’s favourite dish. She thought she would look over the new growths and begin re-stocking Iza’s pharmacopoeia while she was at it. She spent the morning ranging the nearby countryside, then headed for a broad meadow near the steppes. She flushed a couple of the lowing flying fowl, brought down quickly by swifter stones, then searched trough the tall grass looking for a nest had hopefully some eggs. Creb liked the birds stuffed with their own eggs in a nest of edible greens and herbs. She uttered an exclamation of joy when she spied it, and carefully wrapped the eggs in soft moss and tucked them into a deep fold of her wrap. She was delighted with herself. Out of sheer joyful exuberance, she sprinted across the meadow in a fast run, coming to a halt, out of breath, at the top of a knoll covered with new green grass.
Flopping to the ground, she checked her eggs to make sure they were undamaged, and took out a piece of dried meat to lunch on. She watched a bright yellow-breasted meadowlark trilling gloriously from an open perch, then taken to wing and continue his song in flight. A pair of golden crowned sparrows, warbling their woeful tune of descending pitch, flitted among the blackberry canes at the border of the field. Another pair of black capped, grey coated birds named by the chick-a –dee- dee of their call, darted in and out of their nesting hole in a fir tree near a small creek winding its way through the dense vegetation at the floor of the knoll. Small, vivacious, browns wrens scolded the others as they carried twigs and dried moss to a nest cavity in an ancient, gnarled apple tree, proving its youthful fecundity with its flock of pink blooms.

Ayla's days were busy

Ayla's days were busy filled with activity to ensure her survival. She was no longer the inexperienced, unknowledgeable child she had been at five, During the years with the clan, she had had to work hard, but she had learned in the process. She wove tight waterproof baskets to carry water and for cooking, and made herself a new collecting basket. She cured the skins of animals she hunted and made rabbit fur for linings for the insides of her foot coverings, leggings wrapped and tied with cord, and hand coverings made in the style of foot coverings - circular pieces that tied at the wrist in a pouch, but with slits cut in the palms for thumbs. She made tools from flint and collected grass to make her bed softer.
The meadow grasses supplied food, too. They were top heavy with seeds and grains. In the immediate vicinity were also nuts, high bush cranberries, bear berries, hard small apples, starchy potato like roots, and edible ferns. She was pleased to find milk vetch, the non poisonous variety of the plant whose green pods held rows of small round legumes, and she even collected the tiny hard seeds from dried pig weed to grind and add to grains that she cooked into mush. Her environment supplied her needs.
From the book 'The clan of the cave bear' by Jean M. Auel

After Ayla made herself a new sling

After Ayla made herself a new sling out of Zoug’s scraps to replace the old one that had finally worn out, she decided to look for a place to practise away from the cave. She was always afraid someone would catch her . She started upstream along the watercourse that flowed near the cave, then began ascending the mountain along a tributary creek, forcing her way through heavy underbrush.
She was stopped by a steep rock wall over which the creek spilled in a cascading spray. Jutting rocks, whose jagged outline were softened by a deep cushion of lush green moss, separated the falling water bouncing from rock to rock, into long thin streams that splashed up, creating veils of mist, and fell again. The water collected itself in a foaming pool that filled a shallow rocky basin at the foot of the waterfall before it continued down to meet the larger waterway. The wall presented a barrier that ran parallel to the stream, but as Ayla hiked along its base, back towards the cave, the sheer drop angled up in a steep, but climbable, grade. At the top, the ground levelled out and as she continued , she came to the upper course of the creek and began to follow it upstream again.
Moist, grey-green lichen draped the pine and spruce that dominated the higher elevation. Elevation. Squirrels darted up the tall trees and across an underlying turf of variegated moss, carpeting earth and stones and fallen logs alike in a continuous cover that shaded from light yellow to deep green. Ahead she could see bright sunshine filtering trough the evergreen woods. As she followed the creek, the trees thinned out, intermixed with a few deciduous trees dwarfed to brush, then opened out to a clearing. She emerged from the woods into a small field whose far end terminated in the grey- brown rock of the mountain, sparsely covered with clinging growth as it soared to higher reaches.
The creek, which meandered across one side of the meadow, found its source in a large spring gushing out of the side of a rock wall near a large hazelnut clump growing against the rock. The mountain range was honeycombed with underground fissures and chutes that filtered the glacial run-off which appeared again as clear, sparkling springs.
From the book “The clan of the cave bear”, by Jean M. Auel