One man’s wilderness (30 page)

December 31st
. Clear, calm, and minus thirty-four degrees.

The squirrel slept in until eleven. I checked his quarters and his moss ball door was closed, almost as if he had put out a sign, do not disturb.

Where do the birds go in these low temperatures?

When I opened the door, a cloud of vapor would rush in through the lower half and roll to the fireplace. Then a cloud would rush out the top half and cover the overhang of the roof with frost.

Thirty-two degrees below zero during the heat of the day.

I sawed up a log to restore the dent I was putting in my wood supply. I wrapped the saw handle with paper and my hand didn’t get too cold.

Toward evening I hiked a couple of miles down the lake. I was dressed in two sweaters, shirt vest, insulated coveralls, stocking cap and Navy foul weather cap, wool gloves and lined buckskin mittens, heavy Navy scarf, and my sheepskin hood. I found the hip pockets of my coveralls good protection for my mittened hands. It was minus thirty-six degrees when I returned to the cabin, my hood a mass of frost.

For my waterhole I had cut a six-inch chunk from a big log and set it over the hole, filling around it with snow. No more than a half-inch of ice had formed under it. That saves a lot of chipping.

January 2nd
. Forty-five below. A land without motion. In the dead of winter nothing seems to move, not even a twig on the willows.

The thickness of the ice is now a strong twenty-eight inches. In this very cold weather the hole in the ice gradually closes in from the sides until it is a hole no longer.

A pan of hot water tossed into the forty-five-below air turns to a cloud of steam with a loud hissing noise.

January 3rd
. Doldrum-still and minus forty-five degrees.

Today I would go up the canyon to Low Pass 1,600 feet above the lake to see what problems a man would have to face at this temperature.

What did I learn from my four-hour round trip? With no wind I could travel all day in minus-forty five-degree cold and be comfortable. A few mountains in the way might help. If a man carried an axe, it would be no problem to camp in thick timber, dry out, and sleep warm in a down sleeping bag. On such a trip snowshoes are a must, and climbers would be needed on the hard mountain crust.

Brush breaks in the extreme cold as if dry and dead.

It is warmer on top of the pass than it is along the lake. Moisture must make the difference. My face and fingers felt the bite of the cold as soon as I reached lake level.

I found frost from top to bottom between my outside and second layer of clothing. My pacs had snow inside to the tip of the toes, and I was covered with frost. I had a heavy feeling in my chest and wondered if I had hauled too much of that forty-five-below air into my lungs.

January 7th
. Plus seven degrees and calm. A half inch of fluffy snow fell during the night.

More fox tracks than I have ever seen. I think my moose bait is beginning to bring out the hungry ones.

I hiked down to the connecting stream. It was still open. I doubt it will ice over this winter. The trees and brush along its banks are feathered with frost from the vapor rising from the open water. Tracks and a slide announced that an otter had traveled the stream. Run and slide, run and slide. He slides a great distance after only a step or two.

No sign of caribou or any other game.

January 9th
. What do you know? Here comes Babe in the T-Craft on skis, his exhaust stacks streaming out two vapor trails!

“Cold down here,” he greeted. It was thirty-five below. “Lots warmer up high.”

He brought a burlap sack half full of butter beans, fifty pounds of sugar, four ten-pound sacks of fine graham flour, a big box of dried apples, six boxes of raisins, and five boxes of pitted dates. Also some mail.

No hurry today. He sat and talked and watched my fresh kettle of beans cooking. Yes, this is what he would enjoy—living out like this in a cabin if he didn’t have so much responsibility that the Lord had heaped upon him. He felt it was his duty to talk to people and spread His word. A man could hardly do that living in a cabin.

“Say,” he asked suddenly, “do you suppose those beans are done yet?” He ate two bowls full and allowed they were pretty good beans.

We had covered the T-Craft engine to hold the heat, and it started first flip of the prop. He has a heater now, a catalyst-type gas heater sitting on the floor. Also has his engine heater handy, too. The old boy hasn’t lived all these years in the Far North for nothing.

Next trip, he said, he might bring the mission girls along to see the cabin. I watched him zip over the crust and draw away, trailing a short stream of vapor.

The ice is now thirty-two inches thick.

As I stored some of my provisions away in Spike’s cabin, I thought about the cache I would build come spring.

Babe also had brought me two pairs of heavy socks that his wife had knitted for me. And another surprise, a detachable parka hood quilted with feathers between the layers, and a ruff of wolfskin around the face.

January 12th
. Minus thirty-six degrees.

I crossed the lake to see the sun. It was really a thrill to see my shadow again, but I could feel very little warmth. The pale golden light flooded the ice for about 100 yards from the far shore, then faded into shadow once more as the sun winked out of sight behind the shoulder of Gold Mountain.

January 14th
. A sliver of a moon and minus sixteen degrees.

My first trip on snowshoes. It was good to hear the soft crunch of the crust beneath the webs as I slung along the creek trail. It had been tough going on previous days without snowshoes. I enjoyed looking back in the sharp air at my tracks winding through the white stillness. Very little game spotted. Two sheep, but just because you don’t see game, that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Today’s bonus was the exhilaration of the trip itself.

January 15th
. Warmer weather with the dark of the moon. Minus eight degrees.