One man’s wilderness (4 page)

It was good to be back in the wilderness again where everything seems at peace. I was alone. It was a great feeling—a stirring feeling. Free once more to plan and do as I pleased. Beyond was all around me. The dream was a dream no longer.

I suppose I was here because this was something I had to do. Not just dream about it but do it. I suppose, too, I was here to test myself, not that I had never done it before, but this time it was to be a more thorough and lasting examination.

What was I capable of that I didn’t know yet? What about my limits? Could I truly enjoy my own company for an entire year? Was I equal to everything this wild land could throw at me? I had seen its moods in late spring, summer, and early fall, but what about winter? Would I love the isolation then, with its bone-stabbing cold, its brooding ghostly silence, its forced confinement? At age fifty-one I intended to find out.

My mind was swarming with the how and when of projects. Could I really build the cabin with just hand tools to the standards I had set in my mind? The furniture, the doors, the windows—what was the best way to produce the needed boards? Would the tin gas cans serve as I hoped they would? Was
the fireplace too ambitious a project? The cabin had to be ready before summer’s end, but the cache up on its poles? Surely that must wait until next spring. There were priorities to establish and deadlines to meet. I would need the extra daylight the summer would bring.

The most exciting part of the whole adventure was putting self-reliance on trial. I did not intend to break any laws. No meat would be harvested until hunting season. Until then fish would be a mainstay of my diet, along with berries and wild greens. I would plant a small garden more out of curiosity than actual need. Babe would supply those extras that provide a little luxury to daily fare. He would be my one contact with that other world beyond the range.

I looked around at the wind-blasted peaks and the swirls of mist moving past them. It was hard to take my eyes away. I had been up on some of them, and I would be up there again. There was something different to see each time, and something different from each one. All those streamlets to explore and all those tracks to follow through the glare of the high basins and over the saddles. Where did they lead? What was beyond? What stories were written in the snow?

I watched an eagle turn slowly and fall away, quick-sliding across the dark stands of spruce that marched in uneven ranks up the slopes. His piercing cry came back on the wind. I thought of the man at his desk staring down from a city window at the ant colony streets below, the man toiling beside the thudding and rumbling of machinery, the man commuting to his job the same way at the same time each morning, staring at but not seeing the poles and the wires and the dirty buildings flashing past. Perhaps each man had his moment during the day when his vision came, a vision not unlike the one before me.

A strange possessiveness seemed to surge through me. I had no right to call this big country mine, yet I felt it was.

I examined my heap of gear on the gravel. There were 150 pounds to be backpacked along the connecting stream and the upper shoreline to Spike’s cabin. Many times I had gone over in my mind what to take. I knew what was available in the cabin but didn’t want to use any more of Spike’s gear or supplies
than I had to. Things were valuable out here and hard to replace. Spread before me were the essentials. I organized the array into three loads.

I was sure I could pack two loads today, but just in case it was only one, I included in the first trip a .30-06 converted Army Springfield, a box of cartridges, a .357 magnum pistol with cartridge belt and holster, the packboard, the camera gear (8mm movie and 35mm reflex), cartons of film, the foodstuffs (oatmeal, powdered milk, flour, salt, pepper, sugar, honey, rice, onions, baking soda, dehydrated potatoes, dried fruit, a few tins of butter, half a slab of bacon), and a jar of Mary Alsworth’s ageless sourdough starter.

The second pile consisted of binoculars, spotting scope, tripod, a double-bitted axe, fishing gear, a sleeping bag, packages of seeds,
A Field Guide to Western Birds
, my ten-inch pack, and the clothing. More bulk than weight.

The third pile held the hand tools such as wood augers, files, chisels, drawknife, saws, saw set, honing stone, vise grips, screwdrivers, adze, plumb bob and line, string level, square, chalk, chalk line, and carpenter pencils; a galvanized pail containing such things as masking tape, nails, sheet metal screws, haywire, clothesline, needles and thread, wooden matches, a magnifying glass, and various repair items; a bag of plaster of Paris; and some oakum.

Over the last two piles I spread the tarp and weighted its edges with boulders. Then I shouldered the first load, buckled on the .357, slung up the rifle and went off, swishing through the buckbrush with the enthusiasm of a Boy Scout setting out on his first hike.

The stream tinkled as it moved past its ice chimes. I saw an arctic tern dipping its way along the open place where the stream poured from beneath the ice. A wren-type bird kept flushing and flitting daintily ahead of me. His tiny body had a yellowish green cast to it, but he wouldn’t sit still long enough for me to catch a good field mark.

A thin film of ice covered yesterday’s open water between the edge of the lake ice and the shore. There had been a dip in the temperature last night. It was tricky going as I picked my way with quick steps over the patches of snow and ice and through stretches of great boulders and loose gravel. The pull of the
packboard straps felt comfortable against my woolen shirt, and I could feel the warmth of the spring sun on my face. I wondered if at that moment there was anyone in the world as free and happy.

I crossed the single-log bridge over Hope Creek. Another hundred yards and I broke out of the brush to my pile of cabin logs. At first glance, disappointment. They seemed badly checked, but they were going to have to do. I leaned against them, resting the packboard, and took a little parcel wrapped in wax paper from a pocket. It was a piece of smoked sockeye salmon, a sample from some Babe had in the T-craft. Squaw candy, the Natives called it. I bit off a chunk. It was rich with flavor, and while I chewed, my eyes wandered over the peeled logs.

That had been a big job last July, hard work but I enjoyed it. It was cool in the timber, and there were mornings I could see my breath. I had harvested the logs from a stand of spruce less than 300 yards from where they were now piled. The trees could have been dropped with a saw but I chose to use a double-bitted axe. Pulling a canoe paddle through miles of lakes had put me in shape for the work.

Learn to use an axe and respect it and you can’t help but love it. Abuse one and it will wear your hands raw and open your foot like an overcooked sausage. Each blade was nursed to a perfect edge, and the keenness of its bright arc made my strokes more accurate and more deliberate. No sloppy moves with that deadly beauty! Before I started on a tree I carefully cleared obstructions that might tangle in the backswing. It was fun planning where each should fall, and notching it for direction.
Snuck! Snuck!
The ax made a solid sound as it bit deeply into the white wood.

There is a pride in blending each stroke into the slash. A deft twist now and then to pop a heavy piece from the cut. Downward swipes followed by one from a flatter angle, the white gash growing larger as chips leap out and fall on the moss of the forest floor. Then the attack on the other side, the tree tipping slowly toward the aisle selected, gaining momentum, hitting with a crash. Moving along its fallen length, slicing off the limbs close to the trunk.

Then the peeling. Easier than expected. A spruce pole tapered into a
wedge-like blade was worked under the bark until the layer gave way to expose the wet naked wood. Then the hauling. Green, peeled trunks, some of them twenty-footers, had to be moved to the site. I fashioned a log dragger. It was nothing more than a pole like a wagon tongue, a gas-can tin shoe on the end fastened to the log butt with a spike, a crossbar on the other. Back up to the rig like a horse, grab the crossbar in both fists, and take off with legs driving. The log, all slippery with sap, skidded over the moss, and with bent back I kept it going until I reached the piling place.

The sharp smell of spruce in the air, the rushing, powerful noises of the creek, the fit feeling of blood surging through the muscles. That was the way it was with all fifty of them. About a week’s work—real bull work but I never felt any better. Folks say that axemanship is a lost art, but I like to think I found it again in those cool spruce woods.

The logs were a great deal lighter now than they were then and could be handled easily enough. I wrapped the smoked salmon in the wax paper and put it back in a pocket. It was time to be moving on. I was anxious to get to Spike’s cabin to see if it was the way I had left it last September. About 500 yards more through the spruce and the willow brush and there it was, its weather-grayed moose antlers spreading just below the peak of the roof, a tin can cover on its stovepipe, and its windows boarded up. It had a lonesome, forlorn look. It needed someone to live in it.

I lifted the bar of the cabin door and pushed inside. Close quarters with the canoe in there. Spike’s note was still a prominent part of the entrance. It read, “Use things as you need them. Leave things as you found them.” From the looks of the place no one had been inside. If anyone had, he had been very neat about it.

The cabin had everything needed to set up housekeeping until my own place was completed. A good stove, two bunks, a roof that didn’t leak, a table, and a small supply of cooking staples and the necessary tools to go with them. A small stack of dry wood inside, in addition to the supply outside that I had cut last fall. When my cabin was ready and moving day was at hand, I would leave behind a little more than I had found.

Including the brief stop at the log pile, the trip had taken an hour and three quarters. Not bad time with a load. I unslung the ought-six and set down the packboard. My shoulders felt as though they wanted to float to the rafters.

First thing was to move the Grumman canoe outside and make some room. Next I uncovered the windows to get rid of the gloom and climbed a ladder to take the tin can off the top of the stovepipe. When I got back with the second load, I would make a fire.

If I could travel the lake ice, I would use the canoe like a sled. I shoved the canoe onto the ice and found it was too rotten and thin. A strong wind would break it up. It was back along the beach the way I had come.

My second load was about sixty pounds. I huddled together what was left and spread the tarp over it, again weighting the edges with boulders. If the weather changed, the gear would be well protected. This time with the binoculars along, I would have an excuse to stop now and then and glass the slopes for game. With the naked eye you don’t often see the big animals unless they are fairly close, and might think there are none in the country. Through the lenses, with the high slopes drawn into sharp definition, you can spot movement or something that changes shade.

On Black Mountain I saw six Dall sheep. Farther on against the skyline of Falls Mountain, there was a big band with lambs among them. Just before crossing the log bridge on Hope Creek I spotted a lone caribou feeding along the Cowgill Benches. I could make out the stubs of new antlers. As I plodded along I knew many eyes were watching me. Was the word being passed that I was back?

At the cabin, once more unloaded, I opened a jar of blueberries I had picked and put up in September. The winter had been hard on them. Juice was two-thirds the way up the jar with the shriveled berries on top. They had a strong aroma and a sharp taste.

I decided to save the last load for morning. I distributed what I had brought so far into readily available places. I placed the ought-six on wall pegs. I didn’t figure on getting the barrel dirty for a long time.

With the fire going, the cabin took on a cheery atmosphere. A few fat flies awakened and buzzed about sluggishly. When I went outside to get an armload of wood, I stopped to look at the thin blue smoke pluming against the green darkness of the spruce. It began to look and feel like home.

Supper was caribou sandwiches Mary Alsworth had packed, washed down with a cup of hot beef bouillon. Then I got ready for morning. I uncovered the jar of sourdough starter, dumped two-thirds of it into a bowl, put three heaping teaspoons of flour back into the starter jar, added some lukewarm water, stirred and capped it. If I did this every time, the starter would go on forever.

To the starter in the bowl I added five tablespoons of flour, three tablespoons of sugar, and a half cup of dry milk, mixing it all together with a wooden spoon. I dribbled in lukewarm water until the batter was thin. Then I covered the bowl with a pan. The mixture would work itself into a hotcake batter by morning.

Babe did me a real favor flying me in today. I hope he’s a better businessman with others. He’s never yet charged me the going rate of $30 for his mail and grocery runs from Port Alsworth to Twin Lakes. He makes me feel like it would be an insult to question him about the price. “We are not piling up treasures on this earth,” he says. I hope I can make up the difference in other ways.

My first evening was clear and calm. I wish some of those folks who passed me in my camper and waved could see this place. Mosquitoes are out and working on the sunburn I acquired while packing this afternoon. Listen to them singing a tune. Brings to mind a comment Babe made one time. “Can’t be very good country,” he said, “when even a mosquito wouldn’t live there.” By the sound I allow this is prime country. I wonder if there are any mosquitoes in heaven.