One man’s wilderness (39 page)

When I opened the door this morning, she scrambled out and picked around here and there. Her neck is barely long enough to reach the ground without spreading those front legs. I measured her. Two feet tall, level with her back, legs sixteen inches, two and a half feet from nose to tail, and width an amazing four inches!

I was soon off to Low Pass with her. She didn’t want to ride in the pouch so I turned her loose. She trotted along behind like a dog, those long legs tangling and untangling on the slippery rocks of the beach. I picked her up in my arms and walked the lake ice. When she began to struggle, I put her down again. She slowly tagged along, but before long her mouth sagged open. In a small snow patch she lay down and licked the ice from her tiny hooves in true caribou fashion.

Ride and walk, ride and walk. At the foot of Low Pass she curled up in the snow and closed her eyes. It would be a hard climb up the trench. I put her into the front pouch. As I climbed, she didn’t make a sound, not even a move. Now and then I scooped up a handful of snow and she licked at it.

Through the saddle and finally to the scene of yesterday. Sure enough, caribou tracks backtracking the trail of yesterday right to where the little doe had collapsed. I should have left her as she lay. The cow had returned and had checked the surrounding bare spots. I glassed the slopes and the basin thoroughly, but not a caribou was in sight. The mother probably had headed for the Kigik. She hadn’t found her calf so she had given up and left. There was only one thing for me to do—bring the little girl back to the cabin and hope for the best.

On the trip back, my passenger was quiet. Now and then she licked my hand and rubbed alongside my ear with her nose. She was not too lively when I unloaded her, probably tired from the long trip. I put her down in the warm sun and fed her. She lay quietly, nibbling weakly at some small brush. But she didn’t call out as before. She just wasn’t acting right. She lay stretched out instead of curled up as before. When I checked her again, she was warm but stiff and dead. How I wished I had left her on the mountainside!

May 13th
. New snow on the high peaks. Thirty-two degrees.

I skinned the little caribou, fleshed and salted the hide, and puttered around the cabin wondering what the cow was doing.

Spring is coming on fast. The slopes are showing tinges of green. Some flowers are in bloom, and the cottonwoods are budding out. Mosquitoes are beginning to appear.

I set up the spotting scope for an inspection of Falls Mountain across the lake. New lambs, six of them with nine ewes. I studied them through the 60-power eyepiece and finally talked myself out of climbing up there among them to see them at close range. I had a cache to build.

I finished the postholes and set in the big stilts for the cache, along with a set of two braces for each post to get them all in place at the proper angle. I backfilled and tamped the gravel and rock around the butts with a pole stomper. Then I packed water and poured it around the bases. When it was all solidly in place, the braces were removed. I’m now ready to square off the tops of the big stilts.

Many flocks of geese, like hounds driving overhead. No real evidence of a caribou migration yet.

May 14th
. The camp robbers were early for breakfast this morning.

A mighty roar from Crag Mountain startled me. I looked up in time to see tons of snow unloading from a high, narrow wash and spreading down the slope to blanket my cranberry patch. To be below when all that broke loose would be enough to frighten a man.

Time to saw my cache stilts to just the proper length and pack more gravel, sand, and rocks to heap around their bases. Mosquitoes were busy but no little gnats yet. They are the worst pests of all.

Lots of cabin chores today. A big wash was strung on the line, flopping and snapping in the breeze from down country. My sleeping bag was aired with all the scents of spring in the mountains.

May 15th
. Hope Creek is running a good stream into the lake but it has not opened a channel in the lake ice yet.

Made some large deposits in the woodpile savings account today. Noticed some rosettes of rhubarb pushing through. Checked the thickness of ice at the waterhole. Thirty-two inches and solid. I formed a huge O.K. with spruce boughs in a place where Babe could easily see it and know the ice was still safe
to land on. I hope he comes before it leaves a question mark in a man’s mind. I would hate to have him land and sink out of sight. He probably wouldn’t mind though. Says he’s ready to go anytime at all.

May 16th
. Twenty-four degrees. New ice on the open holes along the lakeshore.

Learned a valuable lesson today. I took a long tour down to the lower lake, three hours one way. After traveling over a low saddle of loose rock, I came upon a grass-covered valley and saw caribou, many cows and newborn calves. I had stumbled on the caribou maternity ward.

Those little ones fed every hour or less and they moved very little. I got so carried away at what was going on in the pasture, I forgot all about time. It was now late in the afternoon and I had at least three hours of travel ahead of me. On my way, I broke out into a stand of small spruce trees whose bark had been stripped last fall by caribou bulls rubbing the velvet from their antlers. I wish I had known they were there.

A strong wind was blowing when I reached the cabin. I got a fire going. It seemed sluggish so I rapped the stove pipe a few times and the fire came to life. Soon a strange odor came to me. I went outside and saw smoke pouring from the roof. I ran for the water bucket and sloshed it on the trouble spot.

That took care of the emergency, but not before the fire had burned through the polyethylene and the tar-paper. Let that be a lesson. Never rap on the stove pipe with the fire going. The draft had carried a chunk of hot soot up and dropped it in the dry moss. After this there will be fire inspection before I leave the diggings. And the moss will be kept damp. It would really shake a man up to return and find the cabin burned to the ground.

May 17th
. Strange to wake up before three in the morning and feel that daylight is being wasted.

Today I repaired the roof. Found three damaged, spots which I covered with new pieces of polyethylene and tar paper, making it better than before. The stovepipe was badly burned and rusted out, nearly the full length of one joint
open along the seam. I got out the new sections of four-inch stored in Spike’s cabin and installed them upside down to keep them free of creosote. I needed a spark arrestor, and the one-eighth-inch mesh screen that brother Jake had sent for sand screen would be just right. I made a tube of it four inches in diameter and eighteen inches long, and put the Chinese hat on top of it.

There is a narrow strip of open water next to shore due to the lake rising from the melting snows. How much longer will the lake be safe to land on? No big cracks in the ice yet.

This afternoon I prepared to build my cache. I packed all the peeled logs to a good, level spot on the beach. Here the chips would be easy to clean up. I put down a couple of planks I had ripped earlier, for a level foundation to build upon. Center to center each way, forty-seven inches and sixty-eight inches. I am anxious to see it up on the stilts.

May 18th
. Who can go back to bed after the sun is up?

The camp robbers rattled the spruce buck-horns time and time again until I got breakfast going.

The first course of logs was notched and nailed to my foundation planks. I cut notches for four floor stringers and hewed the stringers to fit. I will add the floor when I take the whole structure apart for moving and assembly on top of the stilts.

I spotted a bear with three small cubs as I was glassing the mountains after lunch. With the spotting scope mounted nearby, I checked on the family at intervals while I worked. Those little fellows really love to play and mix it up in the midst of all their grubbing activities on the mountainside.