He started by whittling out a tapering birch stick about two feet long with a tip that is flat on one side and about three quarters of an inch wide. The handle was a little smaller than a broomstick. He told Hank that hickory, ash, or maple make good sticks, but that pine or spruce is too soft. The lighter the stick the better. The Chief cut notches on the narrow edges of the tip and just below made a shallow hollow to hold the stone.
When he finished the handle and smoothed it down with the sharp edge of a scrap of broken glass, he tied a flat moose-hide thong to the notched tip and made a loop on the end just opposite where he would hold the stick. To load the sling the Chief put a small stone in the hollow under the thong at the tip, holding the loop down with the thumb of his throwing hand. He then swung the stick back over his shoulder in much the same way a fisherman handles a bait rod in casting. At the end of the cast when his arm came up high he let go the thong and the stone sailed far out on the lake.
The Chief says you can use sling sticks to shoot arrows, too. The only change is to tie about ten inches of strong cord with a knot in the end to the loop. The arrows are exactly the same as you use with a bow, except that you cut a little notch in the shaft about six inches below the head to catch the knotted string. To shoot arrows you throw from the side at hip height, holding the end of the arrow with the left hand and pulling it back hard before snapping the stick forward with the right.
While the Chief was working on his stick, Hank sat on a log twisting grass blades. I couldn’t make out what he was up to for a while, but soon he got down on his hands and knees and began crawling around with his nose to the ground and holding something to his eye. It seems that when he was young he used to twist a grass blade into a little loop just big enough to hold a drop of water, which makes a fairly good magnifying glass. Hank claims a drop of dew, which is sure to be clear and clean, makes the best kind. The loop should be about an eighth of an inch in diameter. If you don’t get just the right amount of water in the drop it produces the opposite effect of a magnifying glass and makes everything look very small. I think a paper clip twisted up to a loop would make a good one.
Getting back to that canoe trip I mentioned before I got off the trail talking sling sticks, we generally go when the black flies and mosquitoes thin out. Before we start this year I have to make myself a new stern paddle. Canoe paddles are just like shoes—they work best when they fit right, and I like to make my own. Spruce is best for open lake work where you have plenty of water, but maple or ash are the woods for rapids and shallow water where you may hit rocks. The best length for a stern paddle is the height of your shoulder, and for the bow one that comes up to your eye level. Because you steer with the stern paddle it helps to have the blade a little wider than the bow paddle. The lighter they are the better, because in steady traveling a good canoeman dips his paddle about twenty-five times a minute and that is over 1,500 strokes an hour. When you are working like that for hours at a stretch just an ounce in weight makes a big difference. I have a favorite spruce stern paddle that weighs just fourteen ounces and I have worked it all day without being tired at sundown.
Paddles remind me of people: some of them are stiff and don’t seem to want to help a fellow, but others are light and lively and bend just enough to give you that extra thrust at the end of the stroke. A good one slides out of the water as quietly and smoothly as a beaver. Paddles can be light yet very strong if you know how to shape them. The section of the handle where it joins the shoulder of the blade is a spot that takes a lot of punishing strain. That is why you should carry the thickness of the shaft part way down the center of the blade, tapering off gradually toward the edges. This gives strength in the center and at the same time lets the blade cut the water cleanly.
I have seen men paddle as though they were trying to churn the lake into a froth. A good canoeman leaves only a smooth oily whirl of water and a wake that dies out quickly. He hardly makes a sound. He keeps his right arm fairly straight and stiff, with the left arm slightly bent, and swings his body forward on the driving stroke, which gives power that can’t be got any other way.
What I’m trying to say is that you make your body from the waist up do most of the work, using the arms almost as if they were fixed brackets to hold the paddle in the right position. If there is no canoe handy you can practice by sitting on a log or box. The short Indian stroke is the secret of handling a canoe with the least labor.
A spruce board that has a good straight grain and is free of knots is the right stock for a light paddle. Have it plenty long, eight inches wide and near the bottom about two inches thick so you will have lots of room to work. Lay out the shape of the paddle and set the proper measurement for length according to who is to use it. Then saw out the rough outline, leaving room on all sides for finishing to the right size. A vise is a help and a drawknife makes the job a downright pleasure. You can finish off with a small plane and then sandpaper to a glass-smooth surface. It can’t be too smooth, for a fine finish makes for easy paddling. Then varnish with two coats of spar varnish, using very fine sandpaper between coats when the first is two days dry. If you follow that plan you will have a good paddle, and if it is maple it ought not to weigh more than two pounds.
Just a word about caring for paddles. Don’t abuse them by pushing against rocks or the bottom, which spoils the clean, thin edge that means so much for quiet and powerful paddling. Always have an extra paddle for you can’t tell when one will break. In rough water, shallow streams, or rapids use your maple paddle. Spruce is not tough enough for that kind of work. And don’t leave your paddles lying in the sun. Just remember a good workman has the right kind of tool for each job and if he loves his work he’ll take good care of his tools. That’s the idea with paddles, too. I almost forgot to say that I like the way some Indians cut little grooves in the handle to fit the three middle fingers, which gives a firm grip. I have one paddle I decorated with the tracks of moose and wolf, and another that has a drawing of an unmapped lake.
I got so interested talking to Hank and the Chief about our trip that after they left I began going over my gear, checking on supplies and the like. I guess I don’t have to tell you that the most important thing in the woods is having something to start a fire with. Matches are the first thing I think of and how to keep them dry is the next. Of course at home, here in the cabin, I keep them in covered tin cans so the mice can’t get at them and start a fire. In the woods you can carry them in tightly corked bottles, which is all right except that the glass is apt to break. The best trick I know is to waterproof the matches. The way to do it is to melt up old candle stubs or wax in a can set in boiling water so the melted wax won’t catch fire, and pour the liquid wax over layer after layer of matches in their box until finally the matches are sealed in a cake of wax. After that you could drop them in the snow or the lake and still have good dry matches to be dug out when you need them most. Being waxed they burn longer and are fine in a wind or wet weather. But they ought to be kept in a covered tin even on the trail, for if there is anything mice, squirrels and chipmunks love, it’s wax.
Sitting around the campfire one night while I cooked some biscuits we got to talking about a fine outdoor oven I learned to build, when I was a young fellow, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. Many of the French people who live in that part of the country like the old ways of doing things and some still bake their bread in outdoor ovens.
The French Canadian ovens, made of clay or mortar on a foundation of stone or cedar logs, are built waist-high for easy working. On top of the foundation they make a floor of the same clay or mortar that is used for the roof of the oven. Being several inches thick, the floor can be laid on a log foundation without danger of fire damage, though I figure a stone is best and not so likely to sag and crack the oven.
After the floor is dry you are ready to begin work on the oven, which is about four feet long, two feet high and maybe two and a half feet wide at the bottom. To form the arched roof you can eit
her pile up sand to the right shape or cut a barrel in half and lay on the mortar to a thickness of about eight inches. Before doing that, however, you place a short smooth log about as big as a stovepipe at one end of the form to keep an opening for the chimney. The ends of these ovens are closed in with thick walls of mortar, leaving an arched or oblong door eighteen inches wide and a foot high at the front. While in use this door can be closed with a flat rock or board sealed with clay so that none of the heat will be lost. A fancy oven can have an iron door on hinges. The chimney log, by the way, is pulled out while the mortar is still slightly soft.
When the mortar has dried thoroughly, which requires several days, the inside form can be removed. If sand was used it can be pulled out through the door with a hoe. In the case of a half barrel, you just light a fire and let it burn out the barrel, being careful to start with a small fire and let the barrel catch on slowly after the wood is well heated through. This is to prevent cracking the roof if any dampness is left in the mortar.
To bake a batch of bread the first step is to start a hot fire in the oven with the chimney open. The fire is kept going for several hours until the oven is heated through. Then the fire is raked out and in goes the bread, which bakes best in single-loaf pans. The chimney is then sealed with a close fitting board or flat stone and the oven door closed. The heat stored in the heavy floor and walls of the oven does the rest. According to Hank you can’t beat that kind of bread. I will take his word, for he knows good food. It makes my mouth water to think of a thick brown crust fresh from a hot loaf and spread thick with good country butter.
Partridges—the Indians call them Ben-asee—are drumming and I hear them almost every day and now and then after dark. It begins with a thumping sound and then the drumming begins, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until it becomes a strange rolling beat. The sound is made by the quick motion of the wings against the air and it’s a wonderful sight to watch a cock partridge standing on a mossy log in dappled sunlight with his tail spread wide and low, his head high and the ruff lifted, flashing his wings in the wild drumming ceremony. One of the strange things about partridge drumming is that it fools the best of woodsmen. Often when you go straight to the place where you think the sound starts you find that it is either to one side or the other, and like as not much farther away than you thought.
The best partridge country around here is close to Jumping Sand Spring, which is just off the trail on the way to the settlement. Chief Tibeash showed it to me years ago and I never fail to stop by that clear cold spring on my trips out. The Indians have used it for generations and the great canoe birch that rises above the spring is covered with messages and marks they left on their travels.
When you come to a stand of pine where the trail joins an old tote road along which pale green grass grows between two red lines of dry pine spills that have settled in the shallowed ruts, you are near Jumping Sand Spring. I never have known what it is about a spring that makes a man want to keep its location to himself. Maybe it’s just because he wants to feel that it is his own. But that’s the way it is with most of them, so the path to Jumping Sand Spring has no blaze to mark it. You know it by an old pine, where you turn sharp left, and walk down a short slope into a clearing where the fireweed blooms in August. Right there you are more than likely to flush a partridge, be it spring or fall, for the cover is right for them and the feeding is to their liking. Standing there by the spring where the woods thin out toward a swamp, you can look west across Caterwaul Creek to Lobstick Hill, which is close to the portage to Megusee Lake. It is fine country.
Soft Twilights and Fireflies
DAWN is the best hour of a summer day and every now and then I get up early and walk to the rise back of the cabin to watch the sun ride up over the edge of the dark forest that stretches mile after mile to the eastward. The air at daybreak is as cool and sweet as spring water and is fragrant of the earth—the good strong smells of wet and rotting wood, balsam and spruce, and the aromatic scent of bracken drenched with dew. And like as not I catch the faint sweetness of pipsissewa blossoms and come on shinleaf flowers, the lily-of-the-valley of the deep woods, nodding on their slender stalks.
By the time I get to the top of the ridge the gray light of the false dawn has passed and the shadows, like the night animals, are seeking the dark places of the woods to hide until twilight comes again. Soon the sky is flooded with color and little clouds float low over the broken line of the tree tops.
Ever since I was a boy I have enjoyed shaping clouds into pictures. One morning recently, as I watched the day breaking, the golden sky took the form of a lake and the little dark cloud streaks were canoes—the big six-fathom birch bark canoes of the fur brigade that every spring long, long ago glided past the shore of Cache Lake. It took eight to ten voyageurs to paddle those big fellows and their high bows were painted with pictures of animals and birds. They could carry three tons of freight apiece. Chief Tibeash says the crews would paddle steadily for about two hours singing songs of the great north country, and then rest for one smoke.
The bowman was the most important member of the crew and the steersman came second. Once they had been chosen for the coveted place the bowmen had the right to choose their crews. Rivalry was strong among the canoes of the fur brigade and often the men would grease the bottoms of their craft with pork fat to make them run faster. When the wind was favorable spruce masts were lashed to the bow gunwales and tarpaulins or blankets rigged for sails and then for a few hours the men would lie back and rest while the canoes sped along. When the wind failed or changed, the crew went back to work and the rhythmic thumping of the paddle shafts against the gunwales broke the stillness of the north.
Coming up to a portage they always started a race to the landing place and the water was lashed to a white froth by flashing paddles as the fleet sped like a great brown wedge toward the shore. The canoes were never beached, but were unloaded while still floating in shallow water so that the bottoms would not be damaged, and not until they were empty were they lifted out. Each crew had a supply of birch bark, pitch, and spruce roots to close leaking seams or mend tears in the hulls.
At night the voyageurs camped on the shore, eating huge amounts of bannock and fried pork washed down with strong tea. In fair weather they wouldn’t bother with tents but just rolled in their blankets on deep beds of balsam boughs. Long before daylight their breakfast fires would be going and the brigade was on its way by sun up. About ten o’clock they usually stopped for a tin of tea and a rest. Those were good days!
June is a great family month in the big woods. The Indians call it Wawe Pesim, the Egg Moon, for this is the height of the nesting season and the birds are wearing their most colorful feathers and singing their sweetest songs. There is a great difference between the songs of the birds in June and their calls in other months. As for plummage, some of the most brilliantly colored males will not even look like the same birds next winter.
The young animals are big enough to go out with the old folks now, and I have already seen a family of skunks, the mother leading the way followed by five little fellows about the size of small kittens. Skunks make good pets, just as gentle as can be if you get them young enough and don’t scare them while they are getting used to you.
Over by Snow Goose Lake not long ago I saw four fox pups in front of their burrow. Nice little fellows they were and full of mischief. Most of the time they were playing with feathers that were left from their meals, for right now they depend on food their parents bring them but pretty soon they will begin to hunt their own as nature planned.
The little black pincushion children of the porcupine are now about six weeks old and the old ones have come down from their perches in the trees and now spend a lot of time in the meadows feeding on new grass. At night they often go down to the shores of the ponds to eat the tender young shoots of the arrow plant and lilies. The young muskrats are still keeping pretty close to the houses though the mothers may let them out to loo
k around on warm days. They will soon be swimming and learning the ways of muskrat life. The baby weasels and minks are already going out with their mothers to learn the ways of these savage little hunters. I hate to think of the number of birds’ nests they will rob as they hunt day and night, for they never seem to get enough.
Soon after I got up one morning I noticed a wood thrush carrying a good-sized shred of birch bark to a bush just outside my cabin. After a while the bird came back with another piece of bark and placed it a mite distant from the other. Well, by nightfall that thrush had started building a nest between the two pieces of birch bark, and by the next afternoon the job was finished. I was curious about the pieces of birch bark beside the nest, so during early evening when the birds were away I went out and lifted them off the limb and dropped them on the ground. To my everlasting surprise, when I got up the next morning the pieces of bark were back on the limb beside the nest. I can’t for the life of me understand why the birds wanted them there, but I didn’t touch them again. It is a privilege to have a pair of wood thrushes build their nest beside my cabin.
The robins break the dawn for me these days and a mighty pleasant way to be wakened it is. Almost always the next thing I hear is a phoebe bird, and then like as not a big flicker begins to drum on a dead birch limb up on the ridge. What’s more he has to talk about his job and I can tell you there’s no sleeping once he starts.
One of the pleasant things about June is watching the bull bats gliding about in the still air at twilight. I envy them, it looks so easy. Though their common name is nighthawk, they are really not hawks at all, but much more like whip-poor-wills and about the same size, though their wings are pointed and their tail forked. Some folks call them mosquito hawks, pork-and-beans bird, burnt-land bird, or chimney bats. In flight you can tell them from whip-poor-wills by the white spots on the underside of their wings. They tell me some of these birds go as far north as the Arctic Ocean in the summer and then winter in South America. Like whip-poor-wills, they have very big mouths which open wide to scoop up insects.
Cache Lake Country Page 11
