One man’s wilderness (33 page)

“Only that much,” he grinned, holding his thumb and forefinger about three inches apart. He said Mary would be tickled with the big wooden spoon, the stirring spoon, and the fork I had made for her.

“That is a pretty little strip from the air,” he said, “and them spruce tips make the landing easier.”

On the first flip of the prop the T-Craft engine started. “May bring the mission girls next trip,” he shouted, and off he whirred, climbing fast toward the ridge.

I looked at my fancy mittens and mukluks. The challenge of keeping warm at Twin Lakes is gone even though the temperature may drop to seventy below. These hand and foot coverings have plugged the weakness in my protection.

I don’t know why I waste time worrying about the squirrel. He’ll probably die of old age. I saw him bounce across the woodshed roof today. He must have been smart enough to move out just ahead of the weasel moving in.

Somehow I never seem to tire of just standing and looking down the lake or up at the mountains in the evening even if it is cold. If this is the way folks feel inside a church, I can understand why they go.

I wish brother Jake could be here to see the red logs glowing on the cast-iron rack.

February 27th
. Plus twenty-six degrees and driving snow.

While the kettle of lima beans was bubbling on the fire, I opened my tin-bending shop. I made some covers out of gas cans for my pans.

I noticed that a piece of moose meat I had put out for the magpies was gone. While working in the woodshed, I heard a sharp little bark. It was the weasel in the woodpile trying to scare me away from the moose meat he had dragged there. Many times he barked, stabbing his head out from different places in the jumble of split spruce. When I left, there he was, sitting upright like a fence picket.

February 28th
. No wind. Plus twenty-eight degrees and overcast.

February gone. That didn’t take long. Still the snow depth stays at twenty-seven inches at my checking station. It settles between snows.

March 2nd
. Plus eighteen degrees. With a full moon, I don’t understand why it continues so mild.

Last night before turning in, I went out on the ice to cover the water hole and check the baited hook I had left dangling just off the bottom. The line pulled heavy with throbbing tugs. The gas lantern lighted the water to the bottom of the ice three feet down, and beyond. The fish was struggling down there, eyes aglow, a pale lake trout, fins and tail nearly white and the spots on its sides barely visible. It was icy to the touch as I flopped it out on the snow.

I was anxious to see what the trout measured so I hurried to the cabin. A good sixteen inches. I spilled water into my dish pan and put the fish into it. It struggled to swim, trying to turn end for end. I decided that a beautiful trout like this belonged sixty feet down in the clear, cold water of the lake. I couldn’t see it browning in the skillet.

Gently I slipped the trout through the thin skin of ice covering most of the waterhole. Around and around it swam, attracted to the bright light. I left, and when I returned a while later it was gone. No doubt as the trout descended once more into the blackness, it felt as if it had been to the moon and back.

The snow was in good shape for a trip and the weather was fairing up, so off I went on the webs, down the lake. I could barely see the weave of my last snowshoe trail, and it was important that I follow it. Save the effort of breaking a new trail in the deep snow. I soon came upon the tracks of a wolverine crossing from Low Pass Creek over to Emerson Creek. That animal covers a lot of miles. No doubt it had come from the valley of the Kigik.

I found some caribou, too. They were in single file crossing a slide of loose rock that the winds had blown bare. Very few antlers in the bunch. One of them had only one antler. I saw him shake his head as if trying to get rid of it.

The connecting stream was nearly closed. This was surprising when it was wide open at fifty below. It must have been the big wind after the last snow that did it. The water was cold enough to freeze, and did when wind blown snow choked the flow.

Two sheep were etched sharply on a crag against a salmon-colored sunset.

My birds greeted me when I returned. One took a meat scrap out of my hand, then pecked me on the finger as much as to say, “Who’s afraid?”

March 3rd
. Overcast and plus twenty-seven degrees. Snow curling from the peaks like smoke.

Sunlight bathing my cabin at ten-fifteen. This had not happened in several months. There was that big golden ball breaking through the overcast, high enough to shine through the deep gunsight notch on the shoulder of Cowgill
Peak. Soon it winked out again behind the slant of boulders. At twelve-ten it came out again just below the peak. A few more days and there will be sunshine on the logs from ten o’clock to five-thirty.

Tonight the full moon is trying to find holes in the cloud cover.

March 4th
. Plus twenty-four degrees.

A trip up the lake on this very clear day. Rocks rattling down the mountains now and then were the first hints of spring. I glassed the slopes for bear tracks but saw none. A fresh wolverine track was headed my way. Running his circuit probably on both sides of me. Maybe I will catch sight of him yet. Very warm in the sun but cool in the shadow of the mountain as I snowshoed back to the cabin.

A stranger was perched near the top of a spruce. Gray and round headed, big yellow eyes—a hawk owl. He dropped silently from his lookout, and in a long swoop, glided up country with a camp robber in hot pursuit.

March 5th
. Plus twenty-six degrees.

The track of the wolverine again, this time behind the cabin at the foot of the hump in the spruce timber. Headed up country in his usual sidewise lope. I followed him for a spell. Here he would slow to a walk to investigate beneath low hanging branches or a blowdown, and then off again on the trot. He makes his living on what others leave behind. He leaves his sign but I never see this phantom of the wilderness.

A strong wind makes this evening a good one to appreciate my shelter.

March 10th
. Plus thirty-two degrees. This weather will mess around until it is too late to get cold again until next winter.

I was washing dishes when I heard a warbling call, like a cabin robber but much louder. It was a bird I had never seen before, light gray over all, with darker back and tail. A black strip ran from the base of its slightly curved beak right through its eye like a mask. My bird book says it’s a Northwestern shrike.

Easy pickings for the sheep now, as much of the big pasture is free of snow.

The sound of a plane interrupted my wood splitting. Slipping into Twin Lakes International Airport was the little black plane. I hadn’t expected Babe for a week, and my clean-up of the cabin not complete!

Where were the mission girls? He would bring them next trip. Lots of mail and packages.