Did you ever walk out on a February night in the north when the moon is bright? You can actually read by its light, and the outlines of hills miles away can be clearly seen. Up here there is what is called a dry cold, and even when the temperature drops below zero you can walk out in your shirt sleeves for a look around without even feeling it. That shouldn’t fool you though, for you can freeze your nose or ears in a mighty short time and not even know it.
Sometimes you meet a traveler on a winter trail and have to tell him his nose is white. Woodsmen used to think that the best way to thaw a frozen nose or ear was to rub snow on it, but people who have studied frostbite now say that the best thing to do is to warm the frozen part. If it’s your nose, warm your hand inside your shirt next to the skin and then cup it around your nose, but don’t rub. Warm water is also good for getting the frost out.
I wish you could step out with me and look at the sky one of these February nights. The stars are sparkling blue-white. It makes you think of flashing jewels hanging in beautiful designs on a dark background. Looking to the south the Great Hunter, Orion, seems to be watching Taurus, the Bull, and to the southeast of Orion is Sirius, the big Dog Star. Canis Major, they call him, and he’s the brightest of them all. I always like to look at the Big Dipper, part of Ursa Major, the Great Bear constellation, with its pointers lined on Polaris, the North Star, that age-old friend of men who know where to look for a true guide on the trails of the world.
The hush of the north woods in winter is often so heavy that you begin to think of it as something more than silence. At times it is like a strange kind of mist just beyond the power of eyes to see, yet so real you want to reach out to push it aside to let sounds come in. The quieter it is the harder you strain your ears without knowing why you’re listening. But when the hush is suddenly broken by a sound—the bark of a dog fox far away in the hills, the ring of an axe on frost-hardened birch, or maybe the scream of a lynx—you realize that in the still, clear air the range of your hearing has increased tenfold. The voices of men, the sharp whine of sled runners on dry snow, or the falling of a tree, which seem nearby, may be from five to ten miles away. Quiet enough it is many a night to hear a deer mouse snore.
Sometimes when it is so still you think there’s no breeze, the air is actually moving. At such times I can stand in my cabin door and hear the thunder of Indian Chutes fifteen miles away. And I often hear the Chief chopping kindling at his place over on Shining Tree Lake two miles away, and once in a while I hear Hank singing to himself. You have to be careful what you say about your neighbors in the northern winter. What is more, in the clear cold air you can see over greater distances than almost anywhere else. A hill that looks to be three miles away may be twenty miles distant.
On my way back from the Chief’s not long ago I saw a great horned owl sweep down through the pines and disappear across the lake. It is the largest and most powerful of its kind and a savage killer. The snowy owl, which often shows up here in the winter, looks larger than the horned owl because it has a much thicker covering of feathers. As a matter of fact it is smaller and weighs less.
These night hunters have to work hard for their food this time of the year, for the field mice, their favorite fare, are safe in their tunnels deep under the snow. They eat almost any small animal, such as rabbits and the like, not to mention grouse and other birds if they can get them. The horned owl even eats skunks, but I never heard of the snowy fellows going that far. When the lemmings, which look something like a mole, are scarce in the Arctic, the snowy owls head south in search of better hunting grounds. Sometimes they even go into big cities where there are usually plenty of rats and mice. I often wonder what a snowy owl would think about the way human beings jam themselves into one place where, if somebody didn’t bring in their food everyday, they would not know what to do to keep from starving. I have seen many of the big white birds, so I suspect this is one of those years when, for some reason nobody understands, the lemmings are scarce. The same thing happens with rabbits every so often, and then the wolves, foxes, and other meat-eating animals, as well as the owls, go far afield in search of new food supplies.
The great horned owl nests late in February and often the mother sits on her nest, which is usually the old home of a hawk or a crow, through zero temperatures and driving snow. The young are covered with a cream-colored fuzz when they hatch and need to be kept warm so they spend most of their time under their mother’s wings. Owls gulp their food whole and later on after it has digested they spit out fur and bones in neatly rolled pellets. You can often spot a horned owl’s nest by finding those little pellets under a large tree in a lonely part of the woods.
You may think I’m jumping the gun a mite, but, be that as it may, after the middle of February my mind just naturally turns to thoughts of fishing. You are right, spring is a long way off, but I can’t help it and so I either tie myself some flies, take apart my reels and oil them, or read fishing stories.
This year I made a rod and you’d be surprised to know what it was before I started. Well, this is the way it all began. Last summer a couple of young fellows came up for a vacation and brought along some fencing foils to have a little fun, both being pretty good at the sport. They were old foils and when my friends left they gave them to me, thinking Hank and I might try it this winter. I didn’t say anything, but I knew that the only kind of fencing Hank and I will ever do is with an axe around our garden to keep the deer away from the beans. Until recently those foils have been standing in the corner, then just for fun I picked one up and began whipping that fine steel blade around. Suddenly an idea came to me. There right in my hand was the makings of a fine bait rod!
From that time on I couldn’t rest until I had the thing worked out. First I filed off the end of the handle where it was riveted outside the pommel, the little knob on the end, and then slipped off the hollow grip and the guard. I found that the handle end of the blade was slightly curved, so I hammered it straight very carefully and then filed it round to fit the handle socket of my regular bait rod. By that time I was getting mighty excited, for I could see the idea was promising.
The blade of a foil as it comes is too stiff for fishing purposes, so I decided to take off some of the metal by filing. To make sure of doing a good job I nailed a board edge-up on my bench and cut a groove in it to fit the foil blade snugly. With a pocketknife to score the outline and a narrow chisel to dig out the wood, that was simple. I then laid the blade in the groove and with a fine-toothed file began to thin it down. You have to be careful to file evenly with long, diagonal strokes to keep the proper taper, taking off more at the butt end than near the tip. The idea is to file each side until the blade has just the right whip. That is where you need patience, for you can’t hurry it. I worked for several evenings until it seemed just right. Then I cut the little button off the tip of the blade, fitted an agate tip in its place and wound on a guide about halfway between the tip and the handle.
The night I finished the job it was snowing hard, but early the next morning it was clear and if anybody had seen me out there on snowshoes doing a little plug casting with what was once a fencing foil they would have good reason to think I was out of my mind. But it worked! Yes sir, I could send that plug fifty feet as nice as you please and just where I wanted to drop it, too. When I started making the rod I figured it would be good only for trolling, but a few casts convinced me it would also be fine for bait casting. As a matter of fact, I tried it on light plugs and then reeled in a five-pound stick of wood as a test and it handled nicely.
Speaking of making things reminds me to tell you that Hank has been carving animal tracks lately. He just takes blocks of white pine, draws the outline of the track which he copies from the casts he has made from real tracks, and then carves away. It’s surprisingly easy and they certainly make interesting decorations on the wall. All you need is inexpensive carving chisels which you can buy all made up in sets. Bird tracks are just right to practice on. If you have a dog
rub a little soot on his paw, press it down on a block and then start hollowing out the impression of his track.
When Hank was over here a while ago he made me a split log shelf for some of my souvenirs. Nothing new about the idea, but somehow it always pleases me to see how such a shelf fits into the rough log wall. Simple as can be, yet strong and useful. Looks especially fine if you oil the wood.
I wouldn’t have you think I am given to bragging, but all in all my cabin is snug and has a fit-to-live-in look. By the table where I read in the evening I have a big barrel chair, softened with turkey-red cushions made by my sister, and it is cut to fit me and tilted for comfort. The only trouble with these chairs, as you usually see them, is that they stand too straight and tire your back after a while. I remedied that fault by screwing two tapered birch strips to the bottom. This gives the chair a comfortable tilt and at the same time prevents it from going over backwards. Very pleasant it is to sit there on a winter’s night when the wind is fingering at the cabin windows and listen to the kettle singing to itself over the slow fire. Once in a while it seems to doze and then wakes up and starts again on a high key that brings the dogs’ heads off the floor to see if there is a mouse about.
Wherever men boil water the song of the kettle is a song of peace and contentment and home. It always takes me back to the warm kitchen in an old farmhouse where after supper my grandmother would sit by the table and read to me from Swiss Family Robinson. The singing of the kettle was always part of it and once in a while when she stopped for a moment you would hear a beetle working under the bark in a stick of stovewood in the box close by. And after a while I would hear her saying, “My land! I do believe you’ve been asleep all the time I read to you.” Then I’d go upstairs and make haste to get into the billowing folds of a deep feather bed.
Strong Winds in the Sugar Bush
Down in the swamps where the black spruce and cedar have sheltered the moose and deer through the long winter, the damp snow is crisscrossed with tracks, for the animals are moving out of their yards by day, returning to the safety of thick cover when darkness comes. Twigs and bark and cedar tips no longer satisfy their gnawing hunger for green food, particularly the tender water plants they will find in the lakes later on. Lean and restless, they range toward the hills, eagerly reaching for the reddening maple buds and pawing the snow in search of new shoots. The bucks are shedding their horns now and soon they will roam the woods alone, leaving the does to family cares.
It is not spring yet, not by three feet of snow and a lake full of ice. And high winds as cold and damp as a dog’s nose and just as searching, whine through the woods. Yet there is something in the air that stirs the blood and you can’t help lifting your eyes to the sky to look and listen for the first geese, although you well know they will not arrive until the lakes show open water. The moose-birds are livelier now and doing a lot of talking among themselves, and the first of the tree sparrows have shown up.
Another sign of the slowly changing season is the chatter of red squirrels in the maple tops. They are getting ready to build nests for their families and are making an awful fuss about it. I can’t say that I like the little critters, for they rob birds’ nests and often kill the young. But they are spunky rascals and you can’t help admiring them in a way.
Slowly, very slowly, nature is waking up from the long winter sleep. Even now the sap is rising in the trees to nourish the buds and I have already seen bear tracks at the south end of the lake. The young coons will be arriving soon and the first thing you know I will be out listening for the best and finest of all spring sounds, the song of the peepers in the bogs. To be sure, we are still melting ice for our water, but it won’t be long until my spring is open and I can again take that pleasant walk in the morning to get a pail of clear, cold water.
The minute I spotted squirrels in the sugar maples I knew the sap had started, so I told Hank and the Chief that we should get going. They hiked over the next day and we started tapping the trees and putting in the little wooden pipes—spiles, we call them—to guide the sap into our pails. The Indians used alder because the pithy center can be pushed out easily and it makes very good spiles. They gathered the sap in bark utensils and before they could get metal pots the syrup was made in bark or wooden containers by dropping hot stones into the sap until all the water evaporated. The Chief says they sometimes let the sap freeze and in that way the water separated from the pure syrup. That’s why the little golden drops on the end of an icicle of maple sap are so sweet and the squirrels know it well.
We collect the sap in cooking pots, pails, and even tomato cans. When the sap is running freely you get from two to three gallons a day from a good tree. But it takes anywhere from four to six gallons of sap to make a pound of sugar and thirty or more to produce a gallon of syrup.
Sap runs best on a warm, sunny day after a frosty night with a chilling northwest wind. Sugar maples are very sensitive to weather changes and the flow of sap slows down with strong winds and changes in temperature, such as an extra warm day or a freezing night. Sap starts flowing earlier on the south and east sides of a tree than on the north and west. Some old-timers say to tap a tree on the north side to get the longest run. The best syrup is made from sap gathered soon after it begins running. Late sap has a peculiar woody taste, but otherwise it is good sweetening.
Sugar maples are not the only trees that give sap, for you can get a good sugar or syrup from other trees. Not all of them yield as much sap as the maples, and some of them, especially the shagbark hickory, are hard to get started, but if you can get a hickory to give up its sap you have got the makings of very fine syrup.
The sap of the black walnut tree, the silver maple, red maple, black birch and the sycamore makes syrup. It is interesting to try it, but unless you strike it right usually you don’t get enough to make it worth-while.
Soon after we started getting sap the three of us had a sugaring-off party. We took some of the boiling syrup and dropped little pools of it on the snow. In no time it was maple candy, sticky to be sure, but mighty toothsome. Hank made us some doughnuts to go with the sugar and we had a fine time. I might say, too, that Hank’s doughnuts are about the best I ever ate, for they are dry and mealy without a trace of grease. He says the secret is to keep the fat at just the right temperature. Hank also brought along a jar of pickles his sister sent him, for after eating a lot of sugar you crave something sour.
We make most of our sap into sugar, which keeps better than syrup, and rare good eating it is, especially if you drop a chunk into hot boiled rice. We make a few gallons of syrup apiece and store it in jars in a cool, dark place. Heat molds it.
Working out among the maples we saw many of the birds that stay around here most of the winter. This is a good time to study them, for being a little short of food they come close to your house if you put out something for them to eat. Just now they are not as shy as they will be later on when they begin nesting. With only a few birds about, you quickly learn to recognize them. To my way of thinking, it is more satisfactory to learn everything you can about a few than to know very little about many.
Now is the right time to build birdhouses, and Hank and I have already started ours. It’s a fine way of keeping these friends close by and we take particular pains to make the kind that please the birds we like to have nesting in our woods. I am always sure to have a family of house wrens and usually bluebirds. Birds are choosey and know just what they want in the way of a home, so you must build your boxes the right shape and size before they show any interest in starting housekeeping. Having birds for neighbors is more than a pleasure, for they help to keep down insect pests that ruin your garden.
Before March is over I get out my tackle to inspect the rods and oil the reels against the day when I can use them. It’s a good idea to check the wrappings on the guides and make sure all joints are in good condition. I lent my fly-tying vise to a friend last fall thinking I wouldn’t want to use it for a while, but I could not resi
st the temptation to tie a few flies. First I tried my big bench vise, but that was too clumsy for small trout hooks, so I did a little thinking and came up with a fly vise made of a long three-eighths inch bolt and a wing nut that works surprisingly well.
I first slotted the bolt with a hacksaw to a depth of about an inch and a half and then, after screwing on the nut with the wings down, I pried open the jaw slot slightly, inserted a small nail about half an inch from the end and then pressed the jaws together again in the bench vise. This leaves a slight bulge in the bolt and when the wing nut is turned up the jaws of the vise clamp tightly. To finish the job I tapered the-jaws with a file to leave plenty of clearance for working on the smallest hooks. I don’t know anything so small in the making that makes a man feel so big as tying a trout fly.
The bolt I used happened to be threaded from end to end so I fastened it to my bench with two nuts. If a fellow had a bolt threaded at one end only, he could file the other end flat on four sides and wedge it into a hole on a bench. That would keep it from swinging.
A bobbin for your spool of silk can be made from a scrap of fairly stiff wire, bending the sides so that they fit snugly against the sides of the spool. By pressing the ends of the crossed wires beneath the spool it turns freely. Whether it be an axe or a pair of hackle pliers, I favor the best equipment I can buy, but I also enjoy those little emergencies when you have to make a tool that will serve your purpose well from the odds and ends that come to hand.
The snow is wet and heavy and you no longer hear the sharp crunch that snowshoes make and the whine that comes from sled runners on the dry, cold snow of January and February. The ice on the lakes is already getting old and gray, which is a sign to keep on shore. When we have no choice but to cross weak ice in the spring we cut ourselves a green birch sapling about ten feet long and hold it across the body in front of us. The idea is that if you break through, the pole will catch on the edge of the hole and give you something to hang on to and help you to climb out. The best way of saving yourself, if you go through the ice, is to move slowly and flatten out as much as possible to distribute your weight.
Cache Lake Country Page 6
