If you get a blister on your foot don’t pull off the skin. Doing so may cause a serious infection. I have known woodsmen to take a clean needle and run a thread through a blister cutting off the thread after it is through, which helps the water to drain off. The Chief very seldom has any trouble with his feet, which are toughened by years of walking, but once when he got a blister he spread balsam pitch on it and wrapped a clean piece of cloth over it. Pitch is also good for corns.
Every year in September a friend of ours comes up for a little late trout fishing and as he always wants to take some home to his folks we smoke them for him. The squaretails are at their best now, hard and fat, and the sport is good. Smoking fish is a job that cannot be rushed and if you do it well the results are mighty satisfying. There is a flavor to smoked fish that leaves you craving more, especially if you freshen them for an hour or so in cool water and then cook them slowly in milk. Before starting to smoke fish split and clean them and then rub salt on the inside. If you are going to eat them right away very little salt is needed. For keeping any length of time soak them for a night and a day in brine, which is made by adding salt to water until it will float a small potato, before smoking begins. The old Chief loves to work the smokehouse. First he builds a good hot fire, then puts on a lot of damp or green wood. Birch punk is best to my way of thinking. In time the fire just smolders along giving off a thin smoke. The Chief digs himself a lot of fine spruce roots and ties the fish by their tails to short green saplings to hang in the smoke flue. Then he lets them stay in the smoke for two days. You can smoke fish and meat over a smoldering open fire, on mesh wire over a barrel, or even in the throat of a fireplace chimney, but I have a smokehouse which does a better job.
Fish is not the only thing you can smoke, for the Indians smoke geese and ducks, as well as deer and moose meat. You can also smoke partridge. As a matter of fact when I get a side of bacon chat I have to keep for a while, particularly the mild-cured kind, I hang it in my smokehouse for a couple of days and make sure that the blowflies don’t get at it. Before I put it in the smokehouse I rub on a syrup made by melting maple sugar in just a little water—honey would do just as well—and I daub it on because sugar makes meat tender while salt is apt to toughen it. One thing about smoking that you must remember is that you do not want too much smoke. It is not only smoke, but a little heat that does the job.
Every fall the Chief smokes quite a few geese. He plucks and cleans them, rubs a little salt on the inside, and hangs them up in a smokehouse made of birch bark laid over a sapling held up by short shears and blocked at each end with pieces of bark, leaving vents at both ends near the peak. Last year I saw him use an old hollow log buried in a trench to carry the smoke from the fire. In the old days the Indians built a little staging near the top of their tepees where they hung strips of meat and whole fish to cure slowly in the smoke that drifted up from the fire in the center of the shelter. In many ways that was a fine method, for slow smoking is good smoking.
When the Chief smokes venison or moose he cuts the lean part of the meat into strips about an inch thick and hangs them on a wire in his smokehouse. Usually in the early fall when there is not much rain he keeps a slow smudge going for about four days. The Indians do not use much salt, which, generally speaking, is right, and when their dried meat is done it is about as hard as rawhide; but if you cut it up in small pieces and boil it a while it’s mighty tasty and nourishing. That is what they used to call “jerked meat.”
As I said, rotting birch is a good wood for smoking. The main thing is to keep away from pine, balsam, and spruce, which give an unpleasant and bitter flavor. If you have any hickory handy that is fine, and I know that down in the farming country apple wood and pear are used, not to mention corncobs.
Smoked partridge to my way of thinking is wonderful eating. I like to skin the bird, rub a little salt and pepper inside after cleaning it, and hang it up by its feet in the smokehouse for twenty-four hours. It is the white meat of the partridge when smoked that tastes the best.
I have been smoking meats for years and I have discovered certain little tricks that are mighty handy in a pinch. Supposing you have a chicken and you are hankering for the smoked flavor. All you have to do is to boil it for the usual time until it is tender, set it aside to cool, and then hang it in the smokehouse for about an hour. When you bite into the meat it will have that wonderful smoky flavor that people will go a long way to find.
If you are fond of smoked cheese cut it up in small chunks and spear them on twigs to hang in your smokehouse for about an hour. Don’t have much fire when you smoke cheese, for heat melts it. All you need is a whiff of good smoke from damp wood.
Salt is another thing I smoke because it gives a fine flavor to my foods. It is especially good in soups and stews. What I do is take a cup of salt in the bottom of the bag it comes in and hang it up in the smokehouse. I wet the bag, for the dampness seems to carry the smoke through the salt better than if it is smoked dry. By the time it is smoked through the salt is a hard lump but it breaks up again easily by running a rolling pin over it. I have no wooden rolling pin but a bottle does the job for me in all my cooking very nicely.
If you want to try smoking things you can easily do it in your own back yard; and a friend of mine who lives in an apartment in the city smoked his in the flue of his fireplace and got fine results once he located some hickory which he had to soak in his bathtub before it gave off enough of the right kind of smoke. If you want to build a temporary smokehouse all you need is a few flat stones and a little ground flue to carry the smoke to the bottom of a stack which can be made of a piece of stovepipe or even wood if you make your ground flue long enough so it won’t catch fire. Then you can hang your salt and other things to smoke on a wire across the top of the stack.
The Indians who have spent the summer on Snow Goose Lake are heading north for their trapping grounds and most of them have already passed up Cache Lake with their canoes riding low with heavy loads of winter supplies which are chiefly flour and salt pork. Their traps, snowshoes, and hunting sleds have been cached all summer on stagings at last winter’s camping places for they are not needed during the summer and to cache them saves a lot of heavy packing.
The Indian women generally take back with them quite a lot of cotton goods for making dresses, especially the brightly colored calicoes. One of the most important items of the trappers’ supplies is ammunition for their guns, although any Indian worthy of the name could live on the land without ever firing a shot.
As they pass Cache Lake they nod to me, for Indians don’t show their feelings very much, but the children wave and shout as all children do. No matter, I am proud to know that I would be welcomed as an old friend in the lodges or cabins of any of the Indians who pass my way.
I remember one Indian I called Joe who came to me last summer and told me without complaining that his wife was sick and he needed a few supplies until he could replenish them. What he wanted most was tea, which the Indians love, salt, sugar, and for himself, a little tobacco. I started to make up some packages for him, but he shook his head and spread out his red bandanna on the floor. Then he asked me to pour about a half pound of salt in one corner, some tea in the other, sugar in the third and tobacco in the fourth corner. He knotted each corner to make a little bag, rolled up the big kerchief into a ball and left without a word. Not that he wasn’t thankful, but that was his way. On the trip north sometime later he paddled up to the shore, called me to come down, and handed me one of the finest pairs of snowshoes I have ever owned. His wife and little boy smiled at me and then he nodded and pushed off without further conversation.
The Indians are heading north
Sitting around the stove one night when it was chilly enough outside to make the fire feel good, we got to talking about our experiences in the woods. I recalled the time years ago when I capsized while running rapids in a strange stream when I was traveling alone. I had a ten-foot birch bark trapper’s canoe, the kind th
e Indians use, broad and flat in the middle with the ends drawn in pretty fast. They are light and small, but carry a lot of freight. I was on my way south and in a hurry to get home so I decided I would rather take a chance on running the rapids than carry around them. I was almost through when the canoe swung sideways, hit a hidden rock and over I went.
I made shore all right, for my clothing was light and I had moccasins on. I never wear anything else in a canoe for if you go over with boots on your chances of landing are pretty slim. When I began to round up my belongings in the dead water below, all I had left was the canoe with a hole in the bottom, a little can of tea and about a pound of prunes that I had wedged up in the bow to keep them dry during a rainstorm. But the important thing was that I had a little watertight bottle full of matches in my pocket, so I knew I could get along.
After I had patched up the canoe with spruce pitch and bark and got under way, it took me five days to get back to civilization. On an island in one of the lakes I found gulls’ nests and, not being a man to turn down anything edible in case of need, I took some of the eggs. Once I got myself a mess of trout by damming a little brook with close-set stakes and driving the fish down into a small pool. Another time I got a single fool hen, knocking it off a spruce by swinging my paddle edgewise so she couldn’t see it coming. As luck would have it after I lost my outfit I never laid eyes on a porcupine, the starving man’s meat, although usually there are plenty of them around. What I missed most was a little salt on my victuals. As all my pots and pans were gone I had to boil my tea in a little birch bark rogan. I roasted the gulls’ eggs which, I can tell you, do not please a man’s appetite, since they are so fishy in flavor.
I am not a superstitious person, but from that day on I have always kept some tea and prunes and a little salt wedged high up in the bow of my canoe, and I lash my packs to the thwarts before going into lively water. I also learned from that experience that a long portage is often the safest and shortest way home. When going into new country a man should make allowance for what people tell him about traveling conditions. A woodsman who knows his country may overlook the fact that a rapids he can shoot without any trouble may be dangerous for a stranger. A river can be safe during times of high water and just the opposite when the level drops.
I have started Tripper’s training as a sled dog. He is not very big yet nor very strong, so I made him a little deer hide harness and I am teaching him to get used to the feel of it by pulling a little piece of dead spruce pointed at one end so it will not catch on roots and discourage him. As I have said before, he is a smart little fellow and already he is getting so used to the feel of the drag that he doesn’t even turn around to see what he is pulling. It weighs only a few pounds and in a month I will have him ready to hitch to my hunting sled for the next step.
The Chief and I have been clearing out a few trees down in front of the cabin so I can get a better view of Faraway See Hill. To make sport of it we had a contest to see which one of us could drop a tree exactly where we wanted it. One thing is to size up a tree and if it is leaning more in one direction than another the wisest thing is to drop it on that side. The wind also has something to do with where you drop a tree. The notch or kerf on the side on which the tree will fall should be cut first and must be a little lower and deeper than the notch on the opposite side. The Chief taught me long ago to make sure before I started chopping that all nearby brush is cut away, for you can have a mighty dangerous accident if your axe catches on anything when you begin to swing it. The Chief won the contest by dropping a tree across a piece of birch bark which he had laid down as a target.
Frost on Scarlet Leaves
UP IN the timber country they are putting the camps in shape for the winter cutting and I have to go there every so often to make plans with the bosses. Logging is not what it used to be forty years ago when big horses, the pride of the tote teamsters, did all the heavy hauling. Only a few horses are seen in the camps these days, for tractors have taken their place. They do a fine job, but I miss the horses, the shouts of the drivers and the sight of fine teams with vapor steaming up from their shining backs in zero weather. It was grand to see them snaking logs out to the skidways where the sleighs picked up their bunk loads and hauled them down to the banking ground by the river. Those were days when the push had to be a man who not only knew logging, but could knock down any lumberjack in the camp and keep order. They call him the foreman now.
There is no finer picture of teamwork than to see two good men making a sharp crosscut saw sing its way through a big stick. And for handling a double-bitted axe you can not beat those fellows in the logging camps. To watch one of them balanced on a downed tree, his axe flashing in the dazzling winter sunlight as he slashes off the limbs, is worth seeing. They used to spend a lot of time whetting the edges of their axes and I have seen a man prove an edge by shaving himself. When the trees fell the swampers got busy clearing away the limbs and brush so the teams could drag logs to the skidways.
Keeping the tote roads in good condition was important and all day long road monkeys were busy repairing places that broke down under the heavy loads. On cold, quiet nights when the frost cracked in the trees and the zero air burned in your nostrils with every breath, the sprinkler, a sleigh fitted with a big wooden tank, would go out over the roads, water trickling from two holes over the ruts to fill them in with new ice.
Teams often left the camp soon after three o’clock in the morning and in an hour there wouldn’t be anybody left there but the cook and his crew, the wood butcher, who built and repaired the sleds, and who could shave out a toothpick with an axe, and the barn boss who had charge of feeding the horses.
Nowadays most of the heavy work is done by tractors and in the silence of the woods you hear the roar of their engines that leave a trail of smoke that taints the good north air. That’s the way it has to be, for things have got to move ahead, and if there is a better and faster way of doing a job I am for it. Be that as it may, I will always be glad of my memories of men and horses working in the woods in winter and the great spring drives when the logs that were piled on the ice crashed through and started on their way down stream.
Sometimes the Chief comes along on my trips to the timber limits and on the last one we went up by way of Faraway See Hill to look over the country. We do that almost every year about this time, for in the fall the view from the top just about takes your breath away. It is a mite over four miles as the herons fly, but seven by the trail from my cabin.
When we got to the top of the hill where the winds of winter blow too hard for trees to live, we looked down on a giant-colored map made up of the scarlet of the maples and the bright yellows of the birches and poplars laid out on the dark green background of spruce and pine, with patches of lighter green where the tamaracks stand in the swamps; and in between lay the rivers and the lakes, blue in the sunlight, silver when a cloud passed across the sun.
Just before sunset we made camp by a brook at the foot of the hill and I cooked some flapjacks, bacon, and tea while the Chief built a shelter. Bending down a slender birch sapling until the top was about his own height, he lashed it with our tump line to a stake, and against it on both sides at intervals of a few inches he slanted dead spruce saplings. These he tied at the top with spruce roots and then beginning at the bottom shingle-wise, he laid on pieces of birch bark stripped from a dead tree, spiking the strips over the stubs of the spruce branches to hold them in place until he could pile on a thatch of balsam boughs. A long strip of curving birch bark laid along the ridge finished the job. It was as snug a shelter as a man could want, tight and warm.
Close by our camp was an out-cropping of iron pyrite, Fool’s Gold, and although I had not tried it for years, I made fire by striking two chunks of it together. When struck a sharp, glancing blow pyrite gives off sparks which can be used to kindle a fire. It is not as easy as it sounds, for there’s a knack to it, and you have to have good dry tinder. The Chief shredded some birch bark, but
I failed to light it, so he got a piece of fungus, the kind that grows on dead birch logs, and scraped it with his knife until he had a little pile of powder on a strip of birch bark. Then after several tries I got it glowing and by blowing on it gently, we got a fire going. To be sure, matches are handier, but as pyrite is pretty common in these parts it is a trick worth knowing. It is an easier way of starting a fire than striking sparks with flint and steel.
To an Indian the woods furnish nearly all he needs for living, be it shelter, fire, or food. It was not by chance that we came upon that camping site with plenty of dry birch bark and saplings ready at hand. The Chief’s roving eyes had been watching for what he wanted. And it wasn’t just luck that there was a brook to give us water and a stand of heavy timber to the northward to shelter us in case the cold wind came in the night. Yet we had not gone out of our way nor wasted time in coming to the place.
On the trail the Chief walks as quietly as a lynx and his eyes see everything. Not an animal track is missed and he can pick up scents like a wild creature. “Moose not far,” he said soon after we had started on our way the next morning. Sure enough in a few minutes he pointed to fresh tracks crossing the trail, for this is Wisac, the Mating Moon, and the deer and moose are roving the forest. While stopping to study the tracks, the old man pointed out a stalk of grass slowly lifting from the soil into which it had been pressed by the hoof of the animal, and because the ground was dry little specks of soil crumbled from the edges of the hoofprint. Without saying a word, but by holding up his hands, touching his nose, and indicating direction he told me that the moose had passed not ten minutes before; that the animal had wind of us and was hurrying was shown by the distance between the hoofprints and their depth in the damp earth.
Cache Lake Country Page 18