Cache Lake Country

by John J. Rowlands

  May is like a wide-eyed fawn

  The Green Tide Flows North

  WHEN MAY comes to the north country it reminds me of a fawn walking out of the woods alone for the first time, wide-eyed and uncertain about what to do next. A timid month is May, and not sure of itself, for though the days may be warm, the nights are often sharp with frost and sometimes windowpane ice comes on the coves. Once in a while we have a snow flurry—“robin snow,” we call it.

  Out in the shady place back of my cabin snow still lies under a shaggy spruce like a dingy white collar on a man who needs a hair cut. Spring is gaining, to be sure, but the tattered white patches in the woods on the north slopes of the Cache Lake hills show that winter is not leaving without a fight, In places the ice in the ground is like black flint, but where the sun strikes down through the branches water is running under the matted needles like a frightened little critter trying to get away without being seen or heard. Once it makes its way into the open, though, the trickle picks up strength and talks out loud to itself as it snakes through the moss and stones. Then, free at last from the thongs of winter, it hustles on down the hill to the lake, leaping over the ledges, ducking under logs and racing with all the excitement of a brand new brook. That’s how May shows up at Cache Lake.

  When I came to the big woods years ago I used to get letters from a friend down south. In the spring when the ice on the lake was gray and just starting to honeycomb and I was still poking wood in the stove to keep warm, he would write that where he was summer had come. The trees were all dressed in new leaves and he was picking lettuce from his kitchen garden. Once, I remember, he wrote that a mockingbird was singing in a dogwood tree and the scent of honeysuckle and the drowsy droning of bees came to him through the open window. But here the wet, soggy snow of late winter still lingered in the forest.

  Coming to me from time to time, first by rail and then by the hand of some trapper or prospector who passed my way, those letters started me thinking of spring as something more than just a time of the year. I began to think that if I could rise high in the sky and had eyes that could see a thousand miles or more to the south and as far east and west, I would look down upon a mighty tide of fresh new leaves bursting from brown shields, meadows covered with new grass and bright with the color of wild flowers. That would be spring on her journey out of the south, a tide of plant life moving into the valleys, spreading along the rivers and around the lakes, and rising up and over the hills to ripple quietly across the gray flat lands. A wonderful sight!

  But that was not all I pictured, for behind the edge of the land’s green flood and high in the sky I would see another tide—millions of migrating birds of every size and color moving in a straight, strong current of hurrying wings from their wintering places hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles away. Out of the tropics they would come, flying across the Gulf of Mexico or from island to island in the blue Caribbean, picking up others from the bayous and rice fields of Louisiana, from the swamps of Florida, the pine forests of North Carolina and the waters of Currituck Sound and Chesapeake Bay, all driven by a common instinct toward their nesting places in the north. Some would stop along the way; others would fly on, sweeping across the Great Lakes or winging up the Atlantic Coast until they looked down upon the lonely Barren Lands and the bleak waters of the Arctic Ocean north of Canada.

  And so it was I came to think of spring and autumn as two great tides rising and ebbing, one bright northing green, the other a crimson and gold flood that begins to flow toward the south when the clear crisp nights of late tember give the signal to start.

  All nature is now wide awake and alert, and neither frost nor a late flurry of snow will change her plans for long. Our season is short and summer, hot from hurrying, comes bustling along to get on with the business of growing things. All of a sudden the leaves are out, the tender plants that hid during the cool weather push up through the dark earth without fear, flowers unfold and soon the seeds begin to form.

  From the doorway of my cabin at this time of year I can see a swamp maple, red against the dark wall of the forest across the narrows between Cache and Snow Goose Lakes. The tops of the birches make a feathery pattern against a sky that only May can show, and down by the water’s edge where the tracks of deer are sharp in the sand, a pair of black ducks are pretty sure to be sunning themselves. Their nest is probably in the marshy place across the cove.

  The crest of the tide of wings reaches Cache Lake this month. One day all is quiet and then some morning the woods are filled with song and birds are feeding all about. I like them all, but somehow I think I listen hardest for the notes of the first eastern song sparrow. While the flight is at its height I give all the time I can to watching for the travelers that stop off for a snack on their way still farther north. It is worth getting up before the sun lifts over Hunting Wolf Ridge to catch just a glimpse of a fox sparrow and hear his morning song. He may not end his journey until he has found a mate in the wild lake country of Labrador or maybe over Hudson Bay way. And on warm evenings in the twilight I can hear the beautiful silvery chorus of the vesper sparrows. Sometimes they are called ground birds or grass finches.

  I recall that when I was a boy I stood in the moonlight on a spring night and heard the faint chirpings of birds high above me. That was when I learned for the first time that migrating birds fly mostly during the night and stop to rest and feed by day. Storms or head winds may delay them for a day or so at a time, but if the weather is fine they gather in great numbers at twilight, talking among themselves, and then as if by signal they lift into the sky, circle, and head away on their course. Some of the small birds make their long night flights at heights of a mile or more and all follow well-established sky trails year in and year out.

  The food needed by those millions of traveling birds is one of nature’s big problems, which accounts for the fact that most of the birds keep behind the front of the spring tide line. If they arrive in the north too early there is no food for them. First the plants must grow to produce seeds for the seed eaters and the insects must hatch. The birds that can find food despite cold and even snow, start north far ahead of the first sign of spring and a few extra tough fellows spend all winter with me.

  Almost any evening at twilight when not even a leaf stirs and the lake lies like a dark mirror, I will hear my first wood thrush singing back in the thickets. Later when darkness comes and the water turns to silver in the light of the full moon, the whip-poor-will begins calling from the ridge over toward Hank’s place. I can make a fairly good imitation of the call so I sometimes try to bring them a little closer.

  It is about this time of spring that the white-footed mice are raising their first young. They will have two or maybe three more families before snow flies again. And the bats are busy with small ones too. Speaking of young, I have seen the first baby rabbits of the year out by the path to the spring.

  With the water high and spread out over the marshes, the pike and pickerel are spawning in the shallows and if other fish didn’t eat many of the millions of eggs they lay, there wouldn’t be much fishing for any of us. The pike and pickerel are killers and the less of them the better for the game fish. I might also mention that the bass and the sunfish are making their nests in the sand in warm clear water near the shore. The male fans out the sand with his fins to form a hollow, then drives the female in to spawn. He guards the nest with great devotion, swimming back and forth over it, and woe it is to any other fish that comes near.

  Every spring Hank and I go up to the beaver dam on Otter Stream to see how they’ve wintered. It is a caution how a few small animals can build a dam strong enough to control the waters of a large pond even when the spring freshets throw all their weight against it.

  Beavers work just like human engineers, for some of their dams have rounded fronts while others are straight across. Now, an engineer would build a rounded front where he wanted to hold back a lot of deep water and maybe take care of quick floods. The straight dam
s are for quiet places where there is not much danger of extra pressure. Whether the beavers know the difference, I can’t tell you, but they build both kinds of dams and somehow I have a notion they have a pretty good idea of what they want in the kind of places they build.

  I did quite a bit of whittling during the winter and the things I made include a brown bear—the kind you find in Alaska—a black duck, and a doe. However, there is nothing just like sitting out on a warm May morning and carving a piece of fragrant white pine. It must be dry so it won’t crack, and as clear of knots as can be found. Spruce carves nicely, too.

  I have enjoyed whittling ever since I was a boy and have learned a few things that help to make it easier. As a matter of fact, once you get started it is not hard, and it is one of the pleasantest things you can do. Take a duck, for example. The grain should run lengthwise with the body so that the head and bill can be carved without having them break off. That is important, and the same rule holds true in carving a bear. The feet of a bear are important in making him look what he is, and if the grain is up and down the toes are apt to snap off. Take my word for it and have the grain running lengthwise from nose to tail because the legs are heavy and the snout thick, so there is not much danger of breaking them off. Now when it comes to carving a deer, horse, ox or such animals, the grain should run up and down in line with the legs, which are slender, and need a lot of fine work.

  The pike are killers

  Most whittlers make the mistake of trying to carve with a dull knife. I keep a good whetstone right beside me and about every fifteen minutes I freshen up the edge and then hone it on a piece of leather or the sole of my shoe. What I want is a razor edge that will cut across the grain almost as smoothly as it does along it.

  In carving an animal, getting it blocked out in the rough form of the beast is half the battle. If you can’t see the animal in real life, pictures help a lot. Learn to draw outlines and then shape up the heavier parts, leaving slender legs, ears and tails to the last. Some tools that help a lot in carving are a coping or jig saw, a sharp rasp, a good medium-coarse half-round file about ten inches long, a small rat-tail file, and the best quality pocketknife you can find. With those tools and plenty of sandpaper to finish off, you have everything you need to carve the finest pieces. Some carvings look best if you leave the knife marks as they are without any sanding, but this finish requires more skill for sandpaper rubs off many mistakes.

  In carving a bear some folks like a smooth finish. I prefer to show the fur. That can be done by using the edge of a file or making fine knife cuts to get the little marks running the way the hair does. The effect, to my way of thinking, is very lifelike. It’s just a matter of how you look at it.

  In case you want to try some whittling, don’t make your animal too big. A bear four and a half inches long and three inches high at the shoulder is plenty of work for any man. What is more, it is not always easy to come by good, dry carving wood. Up here I use white pine, spruce, and some birch, but there are other woods that are fine for carving. Apple wood is always treasured by experienced whittlers, and pear and cherry and mahogany are very choice, too. You can finish carvings with wax or rub them with boiled linseed oil. I’m partial to a little beeswax rubbed on with the palm of the hand, which warms the surface and gives a nice polish.

  As soon as I get around to it I’m going to carve an otter out of a piece of white hawthorne that was sent to me by a friend. It seems that he had a tree that had to be cut down and knowing it was a beautiful wood he had it sawed up in chunks and dried very slowly so it didn’t check. It’s extra fine grained and almost white. Once I carved a piece of white holly, which is just about as precious as gold, and I have always wanted to glue thin strips of dark wood and white holly together to make a block for carving a zebra. I figure that would be something to have.

  Now that summer is coming on I am busy making a small saddle-pack for Tripper. Wolf has been helping me carry loads in the summer for several years, so I figured Tripper should carry his share this summer. By saddle-pack I mean little canvas bags laced to a wide strap of canvas or hide that can be tied around the dog just back of his shoulders, so he can help to lug supplies. It is necessary to be careful about overloading a dog, although I have known some big fellows to carry as much as twenty pounds. Ten is load enough, and the trick is to be sure that the weight is balanced on each side of the dog so the saddle won’t slip one way or the other.

  I still laugh over the time years ago when I had a big dog named Nipper who loved to chase rabbits. We were on a trip and in Nipper’s saddlebags were several pounds of white beans in paper bags. That was a mistake in the first place—no paper bags in the woods. All of a sudden Nipper spotted a rabbit on the trail ahead of us, and away he went. The flaps on the saddlebags got loose, the bags broke, and old Nipper sowed white beans all over the north country, or that’s what it seemed like to me. I spent half a day picking up individual beans, because they were precious food. I was thankful they were white.

  It is getting on to the time when we will be out in the woods more, so I have been looking over my outfit and one of the things I made is a new sheath for my hand axe. For years I have used one made of heavy moosehide, but this time I decided to try something new. I got my friend the pilot to bring me in a sheet of sixteenth-inch aluminum from which I shaped a sheath the like of which has never been seen in these parts. It is no heavier than the old leather one and to my way of thinking it gives much better protection. Aluminum shapes easily and my sheath is simple to make once you cut a cardboard pattern to the size of your axe. It goes together with four rivets and has slots on the open side to hold it in place with a thong.

  I’ll still use the heavy leather sheath for the large axe, for it has a copper insert on the blade side to keep the edge from cutting into the leather. It is nothing more than a strip of thin copper that fits about halfway up the inside of the sheath with small holes to lace it snug along the upper edges. Being soft metal, copper never dulls the edge of the axe and is a very effective guard without adding much weight to the sheath.

  Although it is chiefly for home use, another thing I made is a long-handled bacon turner fashioned from an old kitchen fork. It is just the thing to keep your hand out of reach of the hot fat when it splatters from a pan. All I did was to file off the rivets on the fork handle and replace the handle with one sixteen inches long. I used maple and rubbed it down with boiled linseed oil. It’s the most useful thing to have around the kitchen you ever did see, and it is good for meat cakes and the like, too.

  We have been talking about having an “eat-out” soon, which recalls a little grill I once saw up in northern Canada. Just two horseshoes joined by two rods welded to the sides of the shoes. Mighty fine for broiling or holding a pot over a picnic fire, but too heavy to carry on a trip where weight counts.

  Every year about this time I make a trip up river to see what’s going on at the bear den on Skeleton Ridge. There has been a bear family in that den off and on for many years. I hiked up to the carry on a nice warm day about the middle of the month and found a good spot on a rise that looks straight across to the ridge and on beyond to Faraway See Hill, standing clear and sharp high above the dark forest. Expecting to see some action, I took along the old spyglass that used to belong to my grandfather who was a seafaring man. Sure enough the first look gave me a chuckle. The old mother bear was sunning herself at the mouth of the den and out in front where the earth was warm the two little cubs were playing. Not much bigger than good-sized ground hogs, they were, and having a good time romping around. Once they got so wild they walked all over their mother’s head and quick as a flash she gave them a cuff that sent them rolling over and over. But that didn’t bother those young fellows more than a minute. In no time they were at it again and one knocked the other over the edge of the bank and he slid down only to come scrambling up for more.

  Standing on their hind legs they boxed and wrestled for a while and then all of a sudden quit that ga
me and started climbing a little pine tree, one nipping at the heels of the fellow above. The way they played out on the end of a limb looked like sudden death to me, but never a fall did they have. After a spell they got tuckered out, scrambled down and curled up in a sunny spot near their mother, one with his little black head on the neck of the other.

  On my way home I went down to the river to catch a mess of trout for supper. I nearly always have my rod along at this time of year and never take more than I can eat in a day. I got one two-pound squaretail that made my mouth water. I tap fish on the head when I pull them out, which is the right thing to do.

  On the way back to the cabin I spotted a nice patch of cinnamon ferns and picked a hatful for supper. Mighty good food when they are young and tender in the fiddlehead stage. You just boil them with a little salt, the way you cook spinach. I like a touch of hot bacon fat on mine, and a few drops of vinegar. They’re good cold, too, for salad.

  As soon as I came out into the clearing I saw Hank and Chief Tibeash sitting down by the lake. They had come over to talk about the canoe trip we take every summer so that the Chief can look over the trapping country for next fall. The Chief always likes to be doing something, so while he and Hank waited for me he made a sling stick, a very old Indian game, to show Hank that it was better than a slingshot. It seems the Chief was a champion sling stick shot when he was a boy and the way he can throw a stone with that contraption is something to see.