Cache Lake Country

by John J. Rowlands

  For a short trip where comfort is not the main thought the wedge or A-tent is a handy shelter, but it ought to be large enough so that if you get weather-bound and have to stay under cover you will have room enough to sit up. Never will I forget two cold, rainy days one fall that I spent on an island in what is called a pup tent. A good name, for it was a dog’s life!

  Some folks like a bottom sewed into a tent and to be sure it helps to keep out insects, but walking on the canvas floor soon gets it dirty, and if the weather is wet and you come in dripping it holds the water. I would rather have a good tarpaulin ground cloth which I always have anyway to keep the dampness from striking through, and if the insects are bad I can tuck it in around the edges of the tent and hold it tight with small logs. Rubberized ground cloths are good, too, but heavier than oiled tarpaulins. If you are in country where the flies and mosquitoes are bad, which is almost everywhere in the north, a mosquito net across the front of the tent is worth its weight in gold. Instead of having it split down the front I like one made in one piece with plenty of room so that it can be hoisted up out of the way. The kind with an open front is hard to make tight against the pests.

  For use in winter, you can get tents with stovepipe openings made of asbestos or metal. I like the kind that takes the pipe out through the back wall rather than through the roof, where there is apt to be leaks. The tent stove I like best is the plain box type which gives room for cooking as well as providing heat. I have noticed that some people build their balsam beds too close to their stoves which often get red hot. A balsam bed in a few weeks becomes so dry and inflammable that it takes only a spark to start it blazing, and once it is on fire there is not much you can do to stop it before your tent is gone. I always have a piece of wire netting to put over the top of my stove pipe to keep sparks from falling on the tent, for even if they do not set your shelter on fire they are apt to burn holes in it.

  Getting burned out in the woods in cold weather is a serious business and if a tent catches on fire while you are asleep you may have a time escaping with your life. I make it a practice never to go to sleep with a fire in my tent stove. But I always have plenty of dry twigs, birch bark and small pieces of wood so that I can start the fire quickly. Another thing to remember is that if you move a tent in winter when the temperature is low and the duck is stiff or frozen it may crack when you try to fold it. The answer to that is to get it warm and as dry as possible before you begin to handle it.

  A tent can be waterproofed with plain paraffin, which should be chipped into small pieces and spread evenly on the fabric with a moderately warm iron. This method is effective, but it also makes a tent very inflammable. A safer method is to make up a waterproofing solution of powdered alum and sugar of lead. Dissolve approximately one pound of alum in a water pail—about four gallons—of boiling water. The softer the water, the better, and rain water is ideal. Meantime dissolve one-half pound sugar of lead in about four gallons of water. When the ingredients are dissolved and the solution has cleared, pour the alum water into a large tub and then add the sugar of lead solution. Let this mixture stand four or five hours and then carefully pour off the water, being sure to keep all the sediment. It is in this soupy solution that you soak the tent thoroughly, working it around until every inch is saturated. Then wring it out very lightly and hang it up loosely to dry. If you do not want to take the trouble to make your own waterproofing solution you can buy several types ready for use.

  In good weather when the flies are not a problem I don’t bother with a tent. Sometimes I throw up a few poles in the form of a lean-to and tie my ground cloth over it and have made many a trip with no other shelter than my canoe turned on its side, which is a pretty good makeshift roof. If you know your country you will place the bottom of your canoe toward the direction from which the storms come and after making a balsam bed, pile up boughs around the ends of the canoe for a wind break.

  When you spread your ground cloth on the bed, roll up the extra length at the back of your shelter where the side of the canoe touches the ground and then pull it through and turn back over the top and peg it down in front of vour bed. If it rains in the night you will be well protected. To be sure, it is not a shelter for a long spell of bad weather, but for a short trip where weight and time count, it is handy.

  My canoe is a pretty good makeshift roof

  Maybe you think it queer that three men who make their home in the woods enjoy a camping trip every summer, but it is just as much a change and adventure for us to explore some new part of the north as it is for other people to visit a strange city in a different part of the land. To be sure we have seen a lot of the north country, but if we lived a hundred years longer we would not have time to visit the thousands of lakes, big and little, that have never known the ripple of a canoe. So when we travel we are adventurers exploring new territory, never being sure what we will find. The days, the weeks, and the months are ours and we live by the sun and pay no heed to clocks.

  This year we traveled across country by way of a chain of lakes and streams to Lake Waweashkashing, which means “a grassy place in the water.” And that’s what it is, for the west shore of the lake is shallow and there the grass and wild rice grow thick. In the fall it is a regular stopover for geese and ducks. The Chief can remember when Indians came there to lay up a store of smoked waterfowl for the winter. From the head of the lake we portaged to a stream that brought us to a clear, deep lake up on the height of land. Two-Ways-Out Lake, they call it, and the Chief says that in the spring when the water is high it flows from two outlets, one stream heading north and the other south. Anyway the fish think it is a fine place to live and we had some rare good sport. Never saw such fighting squaretails as I hooked in that little lake, which is spring-fed and cold enough to suit any trout. We made our camp on a fine little spruce-covered island near the north end of the lake and, in addition to fishing, took some trips so the Chief could look over the country for possible trapping come winter. He found a deserted cabin where he can camp if he decides to trap in those parts.

  I am just a plain fisherman, not very skillful at fly-casting, and only a little better with a bait rod, but I am expert at trolling! When I need fish somehow I catch them. There was a time when I believed in all the notions that many fishermen have about the weather, the kind of day, and exactly the right kind of fly, but after I had lived with Chief Tibeash a few years I got over most of that. The Chief doesn’t pay much attention to the weather if he wants fish and he is not too particular about special flies or certain baits. One thing he is fussy about is going to places where he knows there are fish and why they ought to be there. He says that it is knowing the water and the feeding habits and what to expect during the various months of the summer that has a lot to do with getting what you are after.

  I have seen him working up a strange brook on a hot July day when the trout lie deep in the dark cool water, dipping his hand in the stream every once in a while and moving on. That is his way of hunting a spring hole. I have seen him pass pools that made your mouth water to think of the trout that should be there, but he would shake his head and go on. Then, further along, dipping his hand into the stream again he would nod and I knew we were near a cold spring-fed pool. I do not believe I ever saw him fail to get fish once he has found the right water conditions.

  It took me a long time to learn the Chief’s trick of testing the temperature of the water, but once you get the hang of it you can detect a spring quite a distance off and it is downright surprising how you can follow a cold current to its source.

  I have watched the Chief pick up a caterpillar along the bank, fix it on a hook and drop it into a pool to get a strike almost before it hit the water. Once I saw him pick up a bright feather dropped from the wing of a moosebird, quickly tie it on a bare hook and land a trout in no time.

  The Chief does most of his fishing early in the morning or late in the day, although that is not always so. I have seen him catch trout in a heavy summer thund
ershower at midday, and he pays no attention to a little sunshine on a brook. Furthermore, if the Chief ever heard that “fish will not bite when the wind blows from the east,” he never lets on, for I have seen him take fish in an easterly wind many a time. I suspect that a lot of those superstitions about fishing conditions came about because they describe the kind of weather that fishermen, rather than fish, dislike.

  The difference between the Chief and most fishermen is that he fishes when he needs food, but that doesn’t mean that he does not enjoy it, and I might say that he is fond of fish right often. An old prospector friend of mine says that fishing is like panning for gold: you never know what is going to come out of the stream on the next try, and it is the lure of the unexpected that keeps you at it. It is a harmless form of gambling that once you start is apt to keep you dreaming of fast water and dark pools for the rest of your days.

  The Chief and I have certain choice pools spotted all over these parts and there is not a time during the season that we cannot go out and get a mess of trout when we need it. Once in a while we go after the big-lakers, which give quite a tussle, especially in surface fishing in the spring with a good lively spoon. As you know, the lake trout is a lover of deep water and, although he comes into shallow places to feed, you will not find him anywhere where there is not deep water close at hand. Reefs or boulder-strewn shoal places that run out toward deep water are likely spots.

  We have done some deep-water trolling with a hundred yards of copper wire and a pound sinker, but you have to know where to fish if you don’t want to waste a lot of time and it is not as much sport as casting. It is what the Chief calls “provision fishing.” I am partial to bass, which give a wonderful fight, but I don’t care much for pike or pickerel fishing, though I do not mind holding my end of a line with a mad muskellunge on the other end.

  When you are back in the woods you may not always have all the special flies and lures that you read so much about. The only thing to do then is to make the best of what is at hand. As I said, the Chief can catch fish with almost anything, but there’s a lot of woods knowledge behind what he turns out, even though it may look crude. I have seen him make a little spinner out of a piece of mussel shell, but it was not just any mussel shell. He would look over a lot before he got just the color he wanted. That is one way to make a spinner in an emergency, and it often brings surprising results. Once I saw the old man cut off a little forked twig with arms about an inch long, bore a hole through the main stem and whittle the arms into the form of propeller blades so that when he pulled it through the water it whirled. Then he spread it with spruce gum and glued on some tinfoil and went to work in bass water. We had fish for supper! He whittles out all sorts of wooden plugs, decorating some with paint, and others by tying on bits of feathers and dyed deer hair. I have also seen him cut up a tomato can and fashion whirling or wobbling lures that were sure-fire killers, although they didn’t last long and weren’t meant to.

  Most of the time we eat our fish soon after they are caught, but if we want to keep them a day or maybe two while in the woods, the Chief places them in the sun for a very few minutes. When the skin has dried to a point where it feels stiff he removes the eyes and gills and wraps them in dry moss well separated from each other. If you need to keep them several days, clean the fish and rub salt along the backbone, wipe as dry as possible and wrap in paper or dry cloth. Cleaned fish also keep well if they are hung tails up in a cool place where the air circulates freely. They should be enclosed in a piece of mosquito netting, if possible, to keep the blowflies away. To let fish die slowly spoils the flesh, to my way of thinking, and so I kill them at once by tapping them over the head. Bending the head back quickly is another way of doing it.

  Our tent on the little island in Two-Ways-Out Lake was pitched in the shelter of a big spruce and we lived in comfort and took life easy. Hank brought along his canvas bed. It is quite a contraption. Just a piece of canvas seven feet long with the sides stitched together to make it about three feet wide. It looks like a big bag with both ends open. At each end he sewed strips of canvas with open ends to the top to put small saplings through so the head and foot won’t sag. If you don’t want to use it on a sapling frame you can stuff it with grass or balsam tips. On the trail Hank folds his blankets and stuffs them inside the canvas and then rolls it up and carries the whole thing on a tump line. One sharp night last fall when we were on a two-day trip, Hank made a sleeping bag of his canvas bag by putting the blankets inside and laying it on top of a balsam bough bed. So, as you can see, it is a pretty useful rig.

  Night in the forest is a time of mystery and adventure, for with darkness come sounds never heard at any other time. To be sure we all know the cheerful song of the tree frogs and the snowy crickets in the branches overhead. But to this day I am not certain what some of the others are. The crash of a falling tree in the night is pretty sure to mean beavers at work and once you hear it, you never mistake the sharp slap of a beaver’s tail on the water when one gives an alarm. A moose can walk like a mouse and there are times when a mouse makes sounds like a moose. You never can be sure, and there are always new noises to make you wonder.

  Lying on a deep bed of balsam boughs, I love to listen to the voices and the sounds of the night. Now and then you hear a squeak and the rustlings of a traveling white-foot. And once in a while something—maybe a bear—thrashes through the woods like a logging team breaking a new road. You never forget the scream of a bobcat.

  Far back in the woods where they seldom see human beings, the northern rabbits often play around the camp all night. That’s when you may hear a sudden swish of wings and a quick high-pitched scream when a great horned owl dives for a catch. If it misses and the ground is hard and dry you may catch the drumming of the rabbit’s feet running in fear of winged death in the darkness. There is no other sound just like it.

  Once in a while on a still night when the moon is full you may hear the call of a loon and more often at this time of year the soft quacking of black ducks resting on a lake. I like best to listen to a brook talking to itself. And if you are within ten miles of fast river water you will hear the thunder of the rapids, rising and falling, now far away, now very close and clear, as the night breeze stirs, drifts, and dies. Often in late August you will hear the faint chirping of roosting small birds telling each other that all’s well. After a while the night sounds of the woods blend into a slow, soft song of sleep and the first thing you know the night is over. Another day is breaking!

  The cheerful song of the tree frogs overhead

  I guess I made one mistake on our trip. I got to bragging about food, and Hank and the Chief let me talk until, before I realized it, I was elected cook. What could I say? But just between you and me and the frying pan I like to cook, and if I do say so we had good food—and they washed the dishes!

  One dish Hank and the Chief always enjoy is a pot of baked beans. So after we had settled down I dug a bean-hole. In case you are interested this is how I make baked beans:

  Two cups of beans (I like the white California kind, plain white or yellow-eyed)

  Half a pound of bacon (salt pork will do if you boil it a while first)

  Two teaspoons of salt

  One small onion

  Half a cup of brown sugar or light molasses.

  For baking beans in a hole you need a pot with a fairly tight lid so dirt won’t get in, but not so tight that it won’t let the steam escape. To begin you soak the beans in the pot overnight. In the morning drain off the water and set them to boil slowly in fresh water. Let them simmer until they begin to break out of their hides. Then drain off the water again and put several pieces of bacon in the bottom of the pot. Add the salt, onion, and molasses, stir them in a little, and finally add part of the bacon cut up into cubes, poking it down in the middle of the beans, but keep several chunks to put on top. Now you are all ready for baking in the hole, after covering the beans with water and bringing them back to boiling.

  The
trick is to get the hole heated while the beans are boiling. The hole should be about a foot and a half deep and just about the same square. If you can find some rocks to put in the bottom and line the sides it makes a better hole, to my way of thinking. Some people don’t bother with the stones. Anyway, you start a fire of dry twigs in the bottom and keep on firing with large dry pieces until the hole is filled with fire. Pile more on top so the burning embers fall into the hole and keep it up for an hour or so. By that time the earth and rocks should be good and hot.

  Now step lively! Dig a place deep in the hot ashes for your pot, put it in very carefully and pile the ashes back around it. I usually put a chunk of sod on top of the pot and then pile on more hot earth and ashes until the hole is full. If it rains you will have to cover the hole with boards, a box, or pieces of bark to keep it dry. Let them cook overnight and if you don’t think my baked beans are the best you ever tasted I will be disappointed. You can try it in your back yard.

  One night Hank said: “How about trout baked in clay tomorrow?” Then the fun began, because you can’t find clay everywhere. But Hank paddled over to the mainland and after a while came back with hunks of gray clay and put it to soak so I could work it down like dough. Cooking fish in clay is easy. One thing to remember is to clean the fish through a small cut. Don’t slice him the whole length as you generally do. The next step is to build a fire of dry wood that leaves a bed of hot coals. While you are getting the fire just right cover the fish with clay to a thickness of about half an inch. If the clay is soft like putty it goes on easily. When that is done and the fire is a glowing bed of coals, hollow out a place for the fish and cover it with hot ashes and coals. The fish will cook in thirty to forty minutes, according to size. When you lift the fish from the fire if you break the clay off carefully it will take the skin with it, leaving your fish white and clean, steaming hot and ready for salt and pepper. A few slices of bacon go well with baked fish.