Three Against the Wilderness

by Eric Collier

  One of the boys would hoist up on a stone wall that in his mind quickly became a castle’s rampart and run along the top of it, thumbing his nose at his playmates trying to catch up to him and wrestle him back to earth. Man child or beaver child, make-believe is for both.

  Five years have brought changes around our wilderness home. They have brought changes to the bit of a hill that slopes away from the water behind where I sit. Five years ago cottonwood trees grew so high and thick on the slope of the hill, one couldn’t see the sun when it was nooning, at least not when the trees were in leaf. And almost all of them were mature trees, ten inches through at the butt.

  The good earth on which they stood produced little vegetation but a cover of sour timber grass that nothing seemed to eat. The thirst of the cottonwoods themselves took all nourishment and water from the soil, leaving none for anything else that might have a mind to use it. And how can the richest soil produce edible crops if the sun is denied a peek at it when young life wants to grow? The sun and the wind and the rain, and the heavy winter snows—it takes a combination of all for earth to produce its finest.

  Now not a mature cottonwood is still standing within thirty yards of water’s edge. The beavers mowed them down as the binder mows a wheat field. At first it didn’t make much sense to us, since the trees were mostly left windrowed one on top of the other with little or none of their bark or limbs being eaten. Waste, that’s how it looked to us when the beavers first massacred those cottonwoods.

  But five years brings understanding too. It wasn’t waste at all, it was part of a grand design. With the cottonwoods down, the sun was now able to take a long look at the soil, putting some sweetness into it. Juicy pea vines pushed up through the sod where before there was only the sour timber grass. Blackberry bushes sprang to sudden life too, and black bear and ruffed grouse came to eat their fruit. Deer moved down from the conifer forests to browse the purple-flowered vetches, and when the pea vines podded out, Canada geese and ducks waddled out of the water to feast on the laden pods.

  None of this could take root so long as the cottonwoods stood there, draining all that the soil could offer. But the beavers felled them, and since the soil was rich to begin with, soon a half-dozen species of tender deciduous shrubs were sprouting where before there had been but a single cottonwood.

  Now these many shrubs were shoulder high to a saddle horse, providing capital winter feed for the moose when they trailed down from the higher country. In summer their leaves provided both breeding place and food for insects, which in turn fed many a half-fledged bluebird and other feathered youngsters. Thus had the activities of one form of wildlife—the beaver—provided both habitat and food for a great many others. Perhaps before Columbus was born the watersheds of the North American continent were once so richly endowed with wildlife that the lands adjacent to them had to be continually farmed if all were to be assured an adequate food supply. And perhaps the beaver was the agent Nature employed to go about such farming. His dams held and conserved the water upon thousands of major and minor watersheds, subirrigating the soils around them and keeping them cool and moist during the hottest days of summer. Nothing was wasted that might contribute to the welfare of life moving through the forest or swimming in the water. No rich topsoil was borne away to an ocean, but was instead deposited upon the floor of lake or stream to nourish and fertilize the beds of aquatic plants that were food for the fish and the waterfowl. No deciduous tree at water’s edge was allowed to thrust its upper limbs up so high that members of a deer family beneath were unable to stretch their necks and reach them. All water that could possibly be conserved behind dams was conserved, for wet cycles are followed by dry cycles, and enough water had to be conserved in the kind years to last through the lean. Ever were the watersheds and forests able to support the wildlife they harboured, and such calamities as erosion of soil and dry, stinking creek channel were never felt at all. Then onto this tranquil scene walked Man.

  I can no longer see the old mother floating in the middle of the pond, for over there all is shadow. She’s there somewhere, though, nose diagnosing the air for the possible presence of a predator. So long as the little kits are at play, mother is close by watching.

  Somehow or other, three of the youngsters have managed to hoist up on the rock at one time, and fists are flying, arms tugging, and there’s many a hostile grunt as the free-for-all gets underway. Then all three gladiators tumble head over heels into the water and the fourth, who has been patiently biding his time, climbs up on the rock and sits there proudly—the victor.

  Five years have brought changes to the pond too. Much of the water is hidden by the broad leaf of the water lily beds, now in yellow blossom. Five years ago there was an isolated stalk here and there, but no really profuse beds as there are now. The floor of the pond is kept in a state of continual cultivation by the activities of the beavers. Tons of mud have been dredged up from the bottom to seal the long dam tight, and in fall the lodges too are plastered by a thick coating of mud to seal them off from the nip of the sub-zero temperature shortly to come. This continual scuffing of the subsoil of the pond results in a well-farmed bed for any aquatic seed deposited there.

  Not only do the beavers plow, disc and harrow, but they also plant too. The pod of a single water lily plant holds within its rind a goodly number of seeds, but how can they be broadcast in other waters if there is no one there to carry them? In late summer, when the seeds are fully ripe, the beavers float slowly from plant to plant, eating a pod here, another one there, until their bellies want no more. Several hours later the seeds are again given back to the water, but at a spot perhaps a mile or more from where they were consumed. If the soft rind of the pod has been digested, the seeds remain to be cast away with the droppings of the beavers. Embedded in the manure, they sink to the bottom and lie there dormant through the winter, to thrust out tiny networks of roots in the spring. Thus is a bed of water lilies established where not long ago there wasn’t a single plant.

  Spank! Mother floats idly on the pond, scouting for lurking danger. Spank! Now her tail has sounded the tocsin, and so mighty is the splash it can be heard far off in the conifer forest. The little kits slip silently off the rock and scurry off through the water. They’ll not be back tonight. But still I sit there, wondering what was bothering the mother that she had to break up the game and call the kits back to the lodge. I haven’t long to wonder. There’s a quick cleavage of water up-pond slightly from where I sit. No beaver or muskrat is responsible for those wide, swift ripples, of that I am sure. Someone is coming who can glide silently along through the water at twice the speed of any kit beaver. Beneath it too, for that matter.

  A dark, velvety, snakelike head comes in sight, and I see the thin line of rich brown fur where an inch or two of the back protrudes above water level. Then I see the thick, tapered bullwhip of a tail, and it tells me who the intruder is. He’s an otter, an old dog otter, one who could break the back of any kit beaver with a single snap of his jaws.

  But he’ll not dine on beaver meat tonight. The long arm of experience has taught him that if he tackles any mature beaver, all he’ll get for his troubles is a slashed and bleeding hide. And now the little ones are safe in the lodge, mother guarding its entrance, for even as the otter was nearing the rock, her sensitive nose detected his presence. The splash of her tail on the water warned the kits of the danger, and they were quick to heed its warning and get back to the safety of the lodge.

  On my way back to the cabin, carefully picking my way through the litter of fallen cottonwoods, I stopped at one such tree with a stump girth of almost two feet. Though the beavers had gnawed off a little of its bark and pruned a few of its limbs, most of the tree was intact. I squatted down on its trunk, wondering, “How many years will it lie here before time and the elements completely destroy it?” Then, answering my own question, “Forty or fifty, maybe.” But eventually every shred of bark, every grain of wood, would be gone from the eyes of man, the
cottonwood again an organic compost of the soil whence it had first sprung to life. And that’s how it was all around the pond, and in the conifer forests too—a blowdown here, a beaver-felled tree there, slowly rotting away, until eventually nothing would be seen of them. Yet maybe the trees still lived. They lived on in the form of the humus that their own rotting flesh had created. And soon, and from out of that selfsame humus, a tiny shoot would peep upward, and another tree be born. Unless man himself signs the death warrant, the wilderness never altogether dies.

  Chapter 23

  In winter, weather was the master, we its slave. If weather said, “No, you’re not running any traplines today, you’re staying put in the cabin,” we didn’t run any traps, and stayed put in the cabin. And read a book, or combed and brushed the mink pelts, or made another dozen muskrat stretchers, or, for plain want of exercise, went outside to take a reading on the thermometer that had said fifty-two below at sunup but now said forty-five below. That was just five degrees too cold. At forty below we could tell one another, “Yes, weather says we can run the traps today providing we don’t squat down on a windfall and rest for more than a minute at a time,” but from forty downstairs we knew that weather intended that we stay put in the cabin and see what the book said, or shine up the mink pelts, or whittle away at a bit of board and make another muskrat stretcher.

  From the fall of 1937 on, we could, when weather said stay home, move a couple of knobs and at the twitch of a squawfish’s fins be in San Francisco, or Seattle, or some place in New Mexico that we’d never before heard of. Or if we wanted to get away from Meldrum Lake but still be in Canada, we could move a knob an inch to right or left and land on our feet on the prairies, maybe at Regina, Saskatchewan, or Calgary, Alberta, or some other place boasting those mysterious somethings called transmitters.

  The radio, an RCA Victor, cost us four mink and a coyote pelt. By the fall of 1947 we’d been a part of the wilderness for so long, trapping for almost all that we possessed, that instead of saying, “That’s going to cost us forty-one dollars and fifty cents,” we said, “That’ll be four coyotes and a weasel.” And the coyotes and weasel were ever there in the woods, sometimes within a hoot and a shout of the cabin.

  But when weather got really mad, and slapped us back whenever we ventured outdoors, we rubbed the magic lamp, turned on the radio, and music from a thousand miles away soothed our troubles away. And of course just before Christmas, it came right into our cabin and sang for us “O Holy Night.” A radio may seem an awfully common and ordinary thing to a city family, but to us it was often our only tie for months on end with the outside world.

  We seldom tried to buck weather, to quarrel with it, for we knew that we’d always come out on the losing end of the stick if we did. Instead, we tried to get along with it, to understand it, and if possible figure out its shifting moods in advance.

  Though November’s moon had been a kind moon, with little snow on the game trails, we knew that December’s would probably usher in a condition that all trappers dread but that so far none have been able to do much about: day after day of intermittent snow driving in against the windows of the cabin, and when once again the stars and the moon came on in the heavens, a bitter cold snap to hold the wilderness in its grip.

  Now, few fur-bearers move above ground, all having sense enough to stay down in the bowels of the earth, where even if empty of belly they are at least shut off from the foul sting of the weather above. And at a temperature of forty or more below, we stayed in the bowels of our den, but if the mercury hovered around thirty-five below we were out tending our traps, Lillian taking care of her line, Veasy his, and I mine.

  For the surge of arctic air now worrying at the land could not last forever. Eventually the polar air must retreat, and some measure of warmth return again to the wilderness. When this came to pass the fur-bearers would again move freely above ground, seeking food for their ravenous bellies. But to take full advantage of opportunity while it was there, our traps must be in proper working order and baited with fresh scent before the movement got underway.

  Weather was the deciding factor. We have long since reconciled ourselves to the near certainty that December’s moon will bring ever deepening snows, January’s the prolonged cold snaps that usually follow them. We might forecast with some degree of accuracy that February’s lengthening days are likely to be punctuated with slightly more warmth than cold, a warmth that sometimes puts such an iron crust on the snow that the hoofs of cow or bull moose will not puncture it as the big deer wander in search of browse.

  But of March we are not so sure. March is the erratic month of the winter, cunning and deceptive, kind and cruel. Sunshine today, storm tomorrow. Warm south wind at the dawning, snow-laden northwester come nightfall. Twenty above zero when we go to bed, twenty below when we awake the following morning. You can never tell about March.

  Of all the months of the year, March is the one I dread most. For March is the time of the muskrat harvest, when the leather in the pelts is heavier than at any other time of the year, the fur at its finest sheen.

  Now, no matter what be the moods of the weather, Veasy and I must be out on the windswept ice, placing our traps in the houses, fumbling with fingers that have lost almost all feel of everything among the floating mass of aquatic weed forming the floor of the feed bed. Through the years I had my moments of adversity running the traps in December, January and February, but to March belongs the day whose events will be fixed crystal clear in my mind perhaps to the end of my time. Though spring and the cry of a wild goose were just around the corner, it’s the day I’ll never forget.

  It was tolerably warm when Veasy and I set out the traps. We left the house at daybreak on horseback, snowshoes resting across the pommel of the saddle, pack horse trailing behind with its load of a hundred-odd traps. The lake we intended to trap lay six miles to the east, with never a shank of trail between it and home. When crossing open meadow the snow was chest deep on the horses, and travel was frustratingly slow.

  I knew that the lake would still be covered by close to two feet of snow, with possible flood water beneath it and the old ice. That’s where the snowshoes proved their worth. Ice is treacherous stuff when hidden by a mass of snow, and if in places it might support the keel of a battleship, in others, where hidden air holes force water into the snow, it might give under the weight of a man unless he moves delicately from rat house to rat house on skis or snowshoes.

  It was crowding 9:30 when we broke away from the jack pine timber and came in view of the lake. I tied my horse to a tree and began kneading some softness into the leather of my snowshoe harness. I then took the traps from the pack saddle and began laying them out in piles of a dozen each. Then, stepping onto my shoes, I stared out across the lake.

  Though the fringe of bulrushes around its edge was now pretty much hidden by snow, it didn’t matter. The black tips of our markers were still visible to lead us to where each muskrat house was. Without those markers we wouldn’t be able to locate one house in four. They had been stuck into the roofs of the houses in early November last, when sufficient ice had formed to support our weight on foot. They were slim wands of willow, axed along the shoreline, and now only their tips protruded above snow level. But anyway enough there to tell us where our shovels would lay bare the muskrat house beneath.

  I took three dozen traps and slung them in a gunny sack over my right shoulder. Veasy hoisted another three dozen across his back, pushed back his parka and commented, “Think we can get seventy-two set by noon?”

  “Can try,” I replied. “You start setting at the south end of the lake and I’ll begin at the north.” And as he shuffled off I sang out after him, “Bank the houses good with snow after you set because—” But then he was out of earshot, and probably hadn’t heard me anyway. So I shrugged my shoulders indifferently. He’d been setting muskrat traps since he was thirteen, so why should I bother to tell him about the banking? Veasy hated your telling him anything that
he already knew anyway. “Waste of good breath,” he’d grumble.

  Banking the houses with snow was a prime essential of the trapping, for of March we knew so little. Though maybe fifteen above zero at the moment—it might possibly have been twenty—a very slight shift in the wind at nightfall might plummet the mercury to twenty-five below by morning. But if each muskrat house was heavily insulated with snow after being opened up for the trap, even should the mercury skid to thirty below, the water on the feed bed would remain free of ice and the trap in proper working order.

  By four in the afternoon one hundred and ten muskrat houses had been opened up, a trap set on their feed beds, then closed and banked with snow. Beating the snow from the webbing of my snowshoes, I hoisted them into a tree. I retightened the cinch of my saddle, tossed an unuttered query to Veasy, and at a nod of his head we swung up into the saddles and began the homeward journey.

  Night was shutting down when we got back to the house. After stabling the horses I took a peek at the thermometer. It had dropped eleven degrees since morning. The wind too had veered from east to north. “Below zero for sure by morning,” I muttered to myself, kicking the snow from my overshoes so that Lillian wouldn’t scold me for leaving puddles of water on her linoleum.

  Eric sets a trap in a muskrat push-up. (Push-ups are “mini-lodges” that the muskrats build beyond their main lodge. They serve as resting places or feeding stations.)

  But that thought didn’t worry me too much. If the morrow dawned clear and bright with promise of sunshine through the day, we could open up the houses, take the overnight catch from the traps and reset, at a temperature of anything down to ten below, providing, that is, that there was no north wind. From ten below down, we’d squat tight in the house and let the traps sit too, secure in the knowledge that all would remain in proper working order.