Cache Lake Country Page 14
These are days when an afternoon nap is pleasant, and that reminds me of barrel-stave hammocks. Hank made one with hay wire woven in and out between the staves on both sides and in the middle, with loops at the end to hang it. Some bore holes in the ends of the staves and weave the wire through them. Also good sash cord can be used in place of the wire for such a hammock. To my way of thinking this type is more restful than other kinds of hammock where you are doubled up most of the time.
A friend of mine who lived down in the jungles of Brazil for a while brought home one of the hammocks that the people down there use. It is nearly seven feet long and five feet wide, and looks much the same as our old-fashioned woven hammocks. It is the extra width that counts, for the Brazilians sleep in it catty-cornerwise and lie almost as flat as if they were in a bed. These hammocks are hand-woven and some have extra fancy edgings. He says they are very cool for sleeping so I asked him to get me one to try out on hot nights up here.
Hank loves to stretch out in his stave hammock between two pines close to the shore of the lake and watch the young ducks feeding along the lake shore. Some of them are so tame we can feed them by hand. One day a family of mergansers came by, the mother in the lead, with six little fellows paddling along behind and one riding on her back. And in the woods you see other kinds of young, especially the half-grown whiskey jacks and chubby little bluebirds. You can hear them calling to their parents for food; it seems they are always hungry and a young bird often eats more than its own weight in a day. Hank always has his binoculars handy and he lies back as comfortable as you please and studies the birds by the hour.
These long and sultry July days I relish a glass of raspberry shrub, or raspberry vinegar, a mighty fine hot-weather drink. The way I make it is to crush two and a half quarts of raspberries—wild if you can find them for best flavor— and drop them into a quart of good cider vinegar. Some say wine vinegar makes it better. Anyway, you cover the berries and vinegar for about four days, stirring now and then. After that you strain the mixture through a flannel bag, but cotton sheeting will do, and boil the liquid for fifteen minutes. Before you start the boiling, add half a pound of sugar to a pint of liquid. Skim the froth off as it boils and then pour into clean, boiled bottles and cork until you use it. If you want your drink sweeter you can add sugar when you mix. About a tablespoonful of shrub to a glass of cold water is right for most folks. Ice makes it extra nice.
With one downy youngster riding on her back
It is getting close to the time for our camping trip, so I have been putting my canoe in top condition for traveling. It is built of cedar strips an inch wide with ribs every three inches and is finished with spar varnish in the natural color of the wood. Best canoe I have ever owned—broad and flat bottomed at the center to carry a heavy load, with a fine clean-cutting bow which is not so high as to catch the wind and make paddling hard. She weighs just seventy-five pounds.
On long trips I always carry a six-foot square of oiled balloon cloth with brass grommets set in the edges. Its main purpose is to give me a leg-o’-mutton sail for the canoe when the wind is right, for I’m not one to paddle all day if a friendly breeze will let me sit back and take it easy. This combination sail and tarpaulin also serves as a waterproof cover for wrapping my blankets while traveling and comes in handy as extra bedding on cool nights. By folding it in half and lacing the grommets along the two edges I get a light duffel bag.
Used as a sail the square is folded diagonally and the sides laced together with a light cord. The peak is fastened to a mast made of a light spruce or balsam sapling by means of a half-hitch so that the sail can be dropped instantly in case of a dangerous squall. I use another very light sapling for a boom and with a length of line for a sheet I can handle the sail nicely. When I’m alone I use the sail only for running before the wind, but if I have a partner with me I get him to hold his paddle over the side to act as a leeboard and while it is impossible to head very close to the wind, long reaches can be taken to work up-wind pretty well. To be sure that little square is another thing to carry, but it weighs less than two pounds and it never fails to earn its keep.
Once in a while when we are traveling with two canoes and have a long stretch of fair sailing ahead, we lash them together a few feet apart by means of saplings across the stern and the forward thwarts, rig a couple of saplings in the bow of each canoe and hoist my tarpaulin sail full size between them like a square sail. Canoes securely lashed this way are very seaworthy, and it is good sport sitting back taking it easy while the wind carries you along.
If you haven’t done much sailing and are new to canoes and north woods waters leave sails alone and stick to your paddle. If you go over in the cold waters of a wilderness lake there is no one to help and you won’t last long.
The same thought holds true for outboard motors, which are mighty handy if you can get fuel without too much trouble, but the tendency is to drive them too fast, and in strange waters, particularly in lumbering country, you may smash a canoe on a submerged tree or a “dead man” (wandering water-logged piece of timber) not to mention the rocks that lie just under the water in many shallow lakes. What is more, you will have a chance to see the country better for a good workout with a paddle at a slower pace.
For portaging a canoe I favor a yoke. Paddles can be lashed to the thwarts, which is always good enough, but they are hard on the shoulders. Some woodsmen like the kind of yoke used for carrying pails of water, but my portaging frame is simple—just two pieces of spruce or pine two and one-half inches wide and one and three-quarters inches thick, held apart at the ends bv crosspieces to fit on the gunwales. On this frame can be riveted leather or webbing straps four inches wide. The straps must fit loosely to slip them side ways for a comfortable spot on your shoulders. Where the ends of the frame fit on the gunwales cut a notch three-quarters of an inch deep, which keeps it from sliding off. One side of the frame is then lashed to the thwart. For the shoulder straps I got some discarded machine belting from a machine shop. It is a fine rig and makes a long portage seem short.
Another help on a portage is knowing the trick of getting a heavy packsack on your back. The Chief showed me how when I first began traveling with him years ago. Put the packsack at your feet with its back toward you and take hold of the shoulder straps with both hands. Then bend your right leg so that you can pull the pack up and rest it on your knee. The next step is to drop your right shoulder down so that your right arm can slip through the shoulder strap, the one on your left as you face the back of the pack. Then swing your left arm behind you and grasp the other shoulder strap, give a quick heave, and the pack swings into place on your back and your left arm slips through its proper strap with ease. Small as he is, the Chief can still beat Hank and me at lifting a hundred-pound pack.
One piece of gear I couldn’t get along without is a tump line. Don’t know who invented it, but it is about the handiest thing you can have on the trail and the fellow who thought of it discovered another way to put your head to work. Mine is made from two straps of moose rawhide eight feet long riveted to a headband three inches wide and eighteen inches long. With a tump line you can carry a load of firewood as easily as you can a blanket roll or pack, and it can be used to track a canoe up a rapids or lash the load on a sled. I have even tied one short on the thwart of a canoe to take some of the weight off my shoulders on a long portage when I had no yoke. You can’t afford to be without one.
Food needs careful watching these hot July days and I make good use of the cooler in my spring to keep things fresh. I use a box with several one-inch holes bored in each end and set it in the little stream that flows from the spring so that the water runs through the holes in the box. In the bottom are several large flat stones to hold it down and to set the dishes of food on, for the stones hold the chill of the water and that box is almost as cool as a regular refrigerator. It is in the shade of a big spruce so the sun never hits it. The lid is held down by a heavy stone so the small animals ca
n’t get at my victuals, but one night while I was away a bear got in and ate up everything I had. By the way, I keep two small trout in my spring, an old trick to keep the water free of bugs and clean. They are so tame I almost have to push them aside when I dip up a pail of water.
I once had a very practical cold room which I copied from one I saw in a French Canadian village. This kind is built in a hole in the ground six feet deep, six wide, and eight long, has double walls of rough boards separated by two-by-four inch uprights, and the space between the walls is filled with sawdust for insulation. The floor is dirt, and the room is divided in half by a partition of boards with one-inch spaces between them. On the food compartment side are shelves with doors that close to a snug fit, while on the other side ice is stored in the winter, packed down in sawdust. On top there is a board cover with straw, sawdust, and maybe some earth on top of it.
The roof is built on a slant with a door opening into the food room and narrow stairs to go down. The roof next to the door is tight, but the section over the ice is laid up of loose boards like shingles to give free ventilation. Make sure that the partition comes right up to the roof, and it should be double from the top of the shelves up so no warm air will drift through.
It is surprising how cold the food compartment gets— around 45 degrees! Since cold, moist air is heavy and sinks, it doesn’t warm up much when the bulkhead door is opened. In regular refrigerators with side-opening doors the chilled air pours out like a stream heading down a pitch for a lower level. I have a notion I may build one at Cache Lake, even though my spring box is pretty cool. I can’t get sawdust, but I figure pine needles and sphagnum moss would make very good insulation for packing the ice.
Another kind of camp refrigerator which, while not as cold as the iceboxes, does a very good job, can be made of a small open wooden frame with shelves between the four uprights and covers on all sides with a large bag made of cotton or some openweave fabric that will take up water evenly. Place a pail of water on top of the framework and tuck the closed end into it in such a way that the open end can be drawn down on all sides and draped over the frame. Acting as a wick, the bag draws the water downwards toward the bottom of the frame. As the breeze blows on the damp cloth the temperature inside is lowered by the principle of cooling by evaporation. People in hot countries use the same idea in porous jars which sweat and thus lower the temperature of the water.
I have been working on my front porch lately, for the frost heaved a corner post last winter and I wanted to level it up before fall. I dug the hole deeper and set in a new cedar post to make sure of a good job. I didn’t have a level when I started, but I soon made one of a small medicine vial tied to a three-foot straight board about four inches wide. It worked fine, too, for after I tied on the vial I tested it by carefully placing the edge of the board on a pool by the lake. You can always be sure that a pool of water is level.
Fill the vial just about full so that when it is corked and laid on its side the bubble is no more than a quarter of an inch long. When you put it on the water to get the exact spot when the bubble is in the middle, get someone to make a mark at the center of the bubble and then later make a scratch with a file to make the mark permanent. You will be surprised how useful a level can be. But remember that the piece of wood you use, whether it is three, four, or five inches wide, must be that same width for its entire length, otherwise it won’t give you a true level.
This is a time of year when everyone has to be mighty careful of fire in the big woods. Everything is as dry as tinder and once a fire gets started you are in a fix. A forest fire is a terrible thing to face. I know it firsthand, for once years ago I got caught. First saw signs of it nearly a hundred miles away with smoke billowing to the clouds. That fire was seventy-five miles wide, so there was no way to get around it, and it was coming too fast for me to keep ahead of it. Once they get going in heavy growth, fires generate their own wild gales, and race on at great speed with a deep roaring sound that can be heard miles away.
I happened to know of a lake with a clearing part way around, half a day’s travel to the east, so I made for it by way of a portage and got there just in time. The fire was then only a few miles away. Less than half an hour later I was as ready as a man could be in such a fix. I dug a hole in the beach and buried all my outfit, including my coat, watch, and compass. Then I sank the canoe with rocks near shore and sat in the water beside it. I don’t mind telling you I was scared plumb to death.
Not long before the fire reached the edge of the lake the animals began to appear, hundreds of rabbits, porcupines, deer and two bears, running for their lives. All except the rabbits and porcupines plunged into the lake and stayed there with their heads just above the water. Then with a frightful roar the fire hit us. I ducked my head over and over again. I could hardly breathe the air was so hot. Then in a flash a great sheet of flame arched over the lake, which, mind you, was half a mile wide, and the air was filled with burning pieces of wood lifted by the great wind. As I ducked again and looked up I saw the deer standing with terror in their eyes. Close beside them were two moose that I hadn’t seen before, and not fifty feet away were the bears. The fire was their enemy and they had lost their fear of each other and of me. An hour after the fire leaped across the lake the heat was not so bad, but when I went out to dig up my outfit the sand was still so hot I had to wait for it to cool off. The rabbits were lost, for they were afraid to go into the lake. Little by little the deer, moose, and bears came out of the water and wandered away along the beach frightened and bewildered for the forest was still burning. I had to camp that night right there for the woods were covered with burning trees and I couldn’t cross the portage.
That is what a forest fire is like and you can bet I am careful about building my campfire in safe places, such as on a beach or flat rock, and I keep away from any moss or dry sod. That is the worst stuff for carrying a fire underground where it creeps along before you realize it. I use a small fire for cooking—not much bigger than your hand—feeding it dry twigs which make hot flames and don’t smoke up your pots. The only time you need a big fire is when the weather is cold or rainy. Before you break camp be sure to wet everything down, scattering the embers carefully so you are sure all hot coals are thoroughly out.
Only a while back I noticed a haze in the air and in a day’s time I got the first faint whiff of that smell we all dread. I took a canoe and my pack and started for the timber country to see what was up, but when I was crossing Thunder Lake I spotted the company’s plane about the same time that the pilot saw me and he came gliding down to tell me that the fire was west of Bent Pole Lake seventy-five miles northwest of us, and that we were safe unless the wind changed. Airplanes are wonderful things for in an hour he can fly over a section of country it would take us two weeks to cross in a canoe.
On the way back on the Thunder Lake portage I met a prospector on his way up. Somehow when you are on a portage with a pack on your back and you meet a fellow and stop to speak, you just naturally lean forward on your paddles to ease the load of your pack, and so the blades cross between you making what we call “the cross of the north.” He was more than glad to get the location of the fire, for he was on a short grub stake and wanted to keep going.
The lightning that is sometimes blamed for starting fires in the woods often comes from the bowl of a pipe, a cigarette, or a glowing match. Any way you look at it, smoking in the woods is dangerous and we make it a practice not to light up when we’re traveling. When we want a puff we stop for a rest as the old-timers did and make sure that when we knock out the ashes there are no sparks left to start trouble. Cigarettes are the most dangerous because they smolder for a long time and a fire may not start until you are some distance away. Another reason for not smoking on the trail is that while you are walking or paddling it is bad for your wind. What you need then is plenty of good clean air with lots of oxygen in it.
When I was a youngster in the woods with my Dad one of the things h
e taught me was to break a match in two before I threw it away. The first time I tried it I burned my fingers and quickly learned why it is a good method of preventing fires, for you can’t break a match in two while it is hot.
When you are looking for a camping place, especially during dry spells, pick if possible an open rocky site handy to water. One of the worst battles I had with fire was when I was camping alone and a blaze got started in the dry moss and sod that grows in open evergreen woods. Before I realized it a spark from my fire had got into the moss and worked underground, spreading out in a network and coming to the surface in a dozen different places. You would hardly believe that I had to work for two hours carrying water from the lake and wetting down every spot that smoked before that fire was out. No sooner would I get one place wet down than another fire would crop up somewhere else. I learned a lesson right there, for I had been burning tamarack which is a wonderful wood in the stove and good for campfires too, but it shoots sparks ten feet without any trouble and you have to watch it every minute.
While we are on the move we try to pick a place for our campfire close to the water’s edge so that when we are ready to start on our way all we have to do is to push the whole fire into the water. Often enough when you wet a fire down and think it is out you may miss a stray ember that gets going later on. If we are on a lake where there are lots of islands, which are mighty pretty anyway, we often choose one for our camp. For one thing the insects are not apt to be so bad out on the water where the wind has a chance to get at them, and another reason is that you feel safer with a fire on an island where at least it can’t burn up miles of timber.