by Pete Fromm
I felt as if I’d just hatched or something, and though they were the only people I knew, it was so uncomfortable rubbing shoulders with their acres of knowledge I could hardly wait for them to leave. But when they said they’d be heading out by noon I wished there was some way to make them stay. At least one more day.
Back at Indian Creek my boss showed me the telephone stuck to a pole a hundred yards or so from my tent. It had a crank on the side I thought was pretty neat, like old time telephones. A single cable strung through the trees all the way from here to West Fork Ranger Station, forty miles away in Montana. He called it a land line and said to use it if there was any kind of emergency. “Crank the handle around,” he said. “Two long and one short for the ranger station.” As he explained it he demonstrated, but nothing happened over the phone.
“Tree must have dropped on the line,” he said. Careful not to look me in the eyes, he said. “There’s another one at Magruder. Maybe the break’s between here and there.”
They had a long drive back to Lewiston that day and were in an awful hurry to get out. I drove them to Magruder, where they’d left their truck and they stayed long enough to try that phone. It still worked and my boss said, “Great. Anything bad comes up this winter, use this one.”
“If no trees fall on the line?” I asked, and the warden nodded. There was nothing out here but trees. I didn’t ask how I was supposed to cover the ten miles between my tent and here once I’d cut my foot off with an ax. I was feeling pretty small, and maybe it was really more obvious than it seemed.
We stood around the two trucks in the pretty meadow in front of the old Magruder station and my boss went over clutch tricks with me again. Then he started talking about firewood. With the sun warm on us I wished he’d talk all day.
“We left you plenty of gas, and the saw. The gas is already mixed, you don’t need to add oil. But don’t forget the bar oil. You’ll burn it up fast if you forget that.” I kept nodding, as if I’d cut down whole forests before I ever met him.
“You’ll probably need about seven cords of firewood,” he told me. “Concentrate on that. You’ll have to get it all in before the snow grounds your truck.”
Though I didn’t want to ask, it seemed important. “What’s a cord?”
That seemed to be the one that broke their backs. They didn’t even look at each other that time, and they sure didn’t look at me. They’d been leaning against their open doors and they both got in and sat down. My boss rolled down his window. “A cord’s how you measure firewood. It’s a stack four feet deep, four feet tall, and eight feet long. You’ll want at least seven of them. Ten would be nice if it gets to be a hard one. Nothing like dragging firewood through snow to ruin your day.”
He reached out then and handed me a key to the ranger station and another for the gas pump. “You’ll probably burn a tank just getting your firewood.” Then he shook my hand suddenly and said, “Good luck,” promising to try to get back in once before the road closed for good. As he let the clutch out he added, “You’ll do fine,” and they drove off.
I wasn’t very sure of that myself, and when it took me three tries to get the truck up the hill without stalling, I was positive it was a lie.
4
I sat on the sloppy pile of supplies for a long time that first evening in my tent, stunned to actually find myself there. Had my stumble into swimming and a hunter roommate reading about mountain men really led to this? I kept scratching Boone’s ears, remembering my first day ever in Montana, how the adventure had turned suddenly to loneliness and confusion. I’d retreated to the pool then, to the safe, familiar routine and discipline of workouts. I looked down at the pile of stuff beneath me, at the dingy gray light filtering through the canvas, and I knew there was no place to retreat to here, no pool to jump into, no coach who would shout instructions to me.
Finally I had to get out of the tent. I couldn’t stand another second. I pushed myself up and walked down to the channel I was supposed to watch. The day was still warm, a notch in the mountains allowing the sun to touch the branches of cedars and firs for the last seconds before dusk. I reached out to touch the strands of yellow light filtering through the branches. It seemed I could nearly feel it. Not warmth, but as if each ray would have its own weight. Like it would be silky between my fingers. But it was not like that.
When the sun dipped below the mountains I climbed up the steep, open, southern face of Indian Ridge, just far enough to get out of the darkness of the canyon.
I sat down under a large ponderosa pine. Boone crawled into my lap. I thought of how dumb a name it was for a girl. I didn’t feel too friendly toward A. B. Guthrie right then. It was The Big Sky and the rest of the mountain man books that had gotten me into this mess.
I watched the sun set again from up there, and had a view of one short twist of the river below me. A plane’s contrail cut the air far, far above me and I wondered what the hell I was doing. I glanced upriver, to where Magruder was, with its phone. Ten miles away. I wondered again about crawling ten miles along that dark, damp river bottom after cutting my foot off with an ax. Nobody had ever seen Hugh Glass make his crawl, and he suddenly seemed as great a liar as Jim Beckworth.
Boone gave out on the return trip and I had to carry her the rest of the way. I slept that night in my sleeping bag, next to the pile of stuff I didn’t have the heart to unpack. For a long time my throat was so tight and dry I thought I might suffocate if I drifted off to sleep. But sleep was a long time in coming that night, and my throat eased, more from exhaustion than any slacking of loneliness.
Although I woke beside the same unpacked pile of boxes, things didn’t look so grim in the morning. I started a fire in the stove and the smell of the smoke and the chill in the air reminded me of every camping trip I’d ever been on. I fried a pair of eggs on top of the wood stove and ate them with pride. I was cooking. With that great success behind me I strolled down to get to work, Boone nipping at my heels.
My sole responsibility out here was the salmon channel: an eight-yard-long ditch, six feet wide, filled with two feet of loose river stone. In early October the eggs had been brought from Idaho hatcheries and sifted down through the stones.
Salmon are born up here, or were anyway, before the Northwest dammed all their rivers. After wintering in the creeks they start a year-long trek to the ocean, over a thousand miles for these fish. Then, after three or four years in the Pacific, they return to where they were born, to spawn and die. Most don’t make it, of course, what with the dams and the fishing. This whole program was just to try to get enough for fishing. The wardens had explained all this to me. I was still only taking core classes in Missoula and while I was pretty knowledgeable about the double helix of DNA, I knew as much about salmon as I did about half hitches.
Since Idaho had started their hatchery programs they’d had pretty poor returns. They figured the salmon might better imprint where to return to if they hatched in the creeks and spent the entire winter there, rather than being dumped from the hatchery into the creeks every spring. My job was to give them a sporting chance.
In the fall, a small floodgate at the head of the channel was opened wide to get as much flow as possible, making it harder for it to freeze. In the spring the flow had to be nearly cut off since the silt from the runoff was heavy enough to bury the fish hiding in the rocks. They’d have to swim all the way to the Pacific that summer, but they wouldn’t yet be strong enough to keep from being buried alive by silt.
Every morning my job was to walk to the channel, a few hundred yards from my tent and, if ice had formed on the end, where there was a small drop off, chop it away. The theory was to let ice and snow build up over the channel, insulating it, while keeping the water beneath from being blocked and freezing solid—along with all those tiny fish.
That first morning I inspected the channel, full of the great responsibility entrusted to me. But my boss had already set the headgate the way he wanted it for the rest of the winter
and there wasn’t a hint of ice anywhere. I looked at the crystal clear water. There was no trace of my fish, all hidden deep down in the rocks. There was nothing for me to do.
That was my job. That’s all. If there was ice it would take fifteen minutes a day, including the walk. The rest of the time was on my hands, but I had to be at that channel every day. For seven more months. Taking care of fish I couldn’t see, somehow filling up the other twenty-three and a half hours of each day.
I called it a day and started back to the tent. I took the long way, knowing I could spare the time, inspecting the island the channel formed between itself and the river. I hopped over the headgate but stopped when Boone whined. She was hopping from foot to foot, crouching and standing, not quite able to make the leap. I started back to her, calling her name at the same time and slapping my thigh, and she made the jump, coming up just short. I heard the scrabble of her claws against the concrete wall of the gate, then the splash.
She fell on the creek side, rather than into the slow, shallow water of the channel. By the time I saw her bob up her legs paddled wildly at air and water alike, not unlike the ladder-climbing look of a drowning person. I hopped from rock to rock until I was able to haul her out by the scruff. She looked cat-like with her hair slicked down, and she was already shivering. She burrowed into my chest, too small to really soak me much. I held her there, wrapping my arms around her to give her warmth and again started back to the tent where I dried Boone off and stoked the fire for her. She lay down on a towel next to the stove and was asleep so fast I wondered if she’d wake up.
I didn’t want to leave her but realized I’d go crazy just sitting there. So while she snoozed I began to unpack my stuff. I settled into the tent, deciding where the little spring frame bed would go, where the plywood table would go. I fidgeted restlessly with every choice, knowing it was important to make good decisions but beginning to suspect that the very act of keeping busy might be the most important part of all my tasks.
Down to the right side of my tent I set up the old wooden cabinets we’d found at Magruder. My bed and the kindling pile filled up the left, and the table stood between them at the far end, opposite the door. The wood stove sat in the corner, the table to one side, bed to the other. I filled one cabinet with clothes, the other with food. In the short space behind the cabinets I hid the bulky stuff—dog food, beans, and rice. Occasionally I’d glance over to make sure Boone’s side was still lifting and falling with her breaths.
When Boone was up and about again we walked out into the meadow. There was really nothing to do there but look at the few sticks of firewood I’d collected with the wardens. I looked in the back of the ruck to make sure the chainsaw was still there and I hopped in, Boone scrambling over my lap. The hunt for firewood would eat up a lot of time.
Before they’d left the wardens had cut down one tree, to show me how. To warm up I went to its great fallen hulk and started sawing off branches. Then I began cutting it into chunks that would fit into my stove, about a foot and a half long. Bucking it up, the wardens had said. I was bucking up a tree.
Later, when I cut my first tree down (it was a snag, I’d learned, not a dead tree) I picked one that was leaning so far over it couldn’t help but fall that way. I made the wedge cut and then double-checked to make sure it was still leaning the same way. When I began cutting across the rest of the tree I’d cut an inch or two and then glanced up, making sure the tree wasn’t going to try and pull anything sneaky. Finally I looked up even as I sawed, and at the first indication of a shake I turned the saw off and ran like a rabbit.
When I didn’t hear any mighty crash I stopped, keeping another tree between me and my victim. My snag was still standing, swaying more freely than it had before, but still standing. I hid behind the tree, feeling stupid and wondering what to do now, when a beautiful gust of wind set a great crack through the snag and it began to pitch. When it hit the ground I let out a war whoop I didn’t know I had in me. I started to buck her up. Soon I had my shirts off, glad to feel the fall air drying my sweat.
On my third pickup full I found a downed tree that looked good—they all looked pretty good to me, but this one was uphill of the road. I moved the truck into position beneath it and carried my saw up and started bucking. My back hurt from all the bent-over work, and curled shavings clung to my sweating arms, but this was great fun. It kept my mind off everything else.
When I was finished bucking I rolled the first log down the hill and it landed perfectly behind the truck. I grinned, thinking of how long it would have taken me to carry that log all the way down there. The next overshot the road and went a little ways down the hill on the other side. Still it was better than carrying them all, and I didn’t stop till one of the logs hit the truck, smashing the taillight and lightly crushing the side of the bed. I ran down the hill to inspect the damage, already sweating the chilly, nervous sweat of embarrassment and fear, so much different from that of work. I couldn’t believe what an idiot I was. I stood at the truck swearing, my thrill for firewood cutting instantly gone, wondering how well the wardens knew the truck’s collections of dents and dings.
I went to bed that night exhausted, replaying the muffled bounce of that log through the moss and needles right into the side of the truck, hearing the plastic of the light shattering. I swore I’d think before doing anything as stupid as rolling logs right at the truck. The wardens would think I was the world’s biggest moron.
5
There were three weeks left in the Idaho elk season when I moved in and there were still elk hunters on the little strip of road surrounded by the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area. In the last days of the season they grew unbearably curious why anyone would keep stacking up more and more firewood, with the season nearly over. When the curiosity finally overwhelmed them, one hunter wandered over to where I worked the splitting wedges and asked what was up.
The story leaked through the hunting camps. Over the next few days, as the camps pulled out, unshaven, woolly, orange-clad men stopped by now and then, offering leftovers from their camps. I collected quite an odd store of staples and nearly empty liquor bottles, mostly different flavors of brandy (apricot, peach, blackberry); stuff that I had never tasted. It was their way of offering condolences, I think. But I could tell they thought I was doing something they didn’t have the guts for and I liked to sit in my tent at night and dwell on that.
With all those hunters I was hardly isolated but, knowing so little about anything, I didn’t openly seek company. I was pretty hard up for it, but all the hunters looked so much like they knew what they were doing.
And there was the wood gathering. With that to throw myself into I was still able to stave off the long silent winter that lurked ahead. I worked to exhaustion every day and slept as soon as I finished dinner; usually some mix of potatoes and canned ham. One day when the thought of hauling another log was too much to take, I went into the trees behind my tent and started digging a food cache pit, following instructions from one of the Angier books. I dug a hole four feet by four feet by four feet deep and covered it with old planks and dirt, insulating it with hay from the hunt camps. The main thing was to stay so busy there’d be no time for anything else.
So, surrounded by the last people I would see on a regular basis for the next half a year, I did what they did, nodded and waved sometimes, only occasionally being invited over to a camp for a meal and some drinks. I accepted those, but feeling I had nothing to offer, did not reciprocate. And I loved those chilly nights in the warm, smoky tents with the drinks and the lies and the laughing. Boone would sit underfoot, filling out slowly, and I tried not to wonder what it would be like when the only tent on the river was mine.
I made two trips into Missoula before the road closed. There were more of the same send-off parties, even more determined, and I returned to my tent more scared each time.
After my last trip out Rader and several other friends followed me back in the Deerslayer. We spent two days dr
opping more snags and hauling wood back to my pile, which Rader assured me was approaching ten cords.
We worked like dogs, mainly because that’s all I’d done here. But finally they revolted and we went hunting grouse, cooking up a gourmet meal of roasted grouse stuffed with canned corn (one of my staples). We all thought it was delicious and we drank and wrestled like nineteen-year-olds on spring break. I laughed frantically at the smallest jokes, knowing my time was running out, and if they noticed they pretended not to.
It started to snow while they were there, a storm that looked serious this time, though the steep walls of the Selway cut off most of the sky. They decided they’d have to leave a day early, to make sure they’d get over the pass before it snowed shut. I tried talking them out of it, but Rader had made up his mind, and I knew what I was arguing for. When the Deerslayer disappeared I went and sat on the edge of my bed, unable to believe how big and empty that small tent seemed. I hurried outside and walked to the channel, but, as always, there was nothing to be done there, the ice having not yet shown. Instead of going back inside the tent I began to fix the hammer handles they’d shattered at the chopping block. It was busy work and something I’d never done before. I’d already learned not to leave an idle moment, especially in the down times. And if I could pull off something new, the elation over the success could carry me past most of the rough spots, for a little while anyway.
The storm continued in fits and gusts and I had dinner the last two nights of the season with one of the few remaining hunting parties, two brothers, farmers from Idaho. They treated me like a hero for doing what I was doing. I would have given anything to leave with them. If I could have thought of anything, made up any reason that would get me out of there while saving face, I would have lunged at it. But I couldn’t. I was in it now.