Over the Darkened Landscape - By Derryl Murphy Page 0,59
It was here on Artillery Lake where he had his trap line, he and his father, one line reaching like a finger due north before looping back south, the other crooking northeast and then southeast, eventually forming a rough diamond.
He told me stories of his life up North, and even in those sullen teen years when he sounded only like a cranky and insignificant old man, a part of me still yearned to hear tales of real-life adventure, although no doubt embellished through years of retelling.
As both of us got older I lost touch with him, me moving to a different city and he folding himself into that private space old age often brings. But those stories stuck with me, and now, looking for a different challenge in my life and even more, a connection with the man grandpa was, I am here.
It is three days since I arrived here, and I believe I am at the location of the cabin where my grandpa and his father once lived. It isn’t much; bushes and stunted trees sticking out from amidst old planks, a circle of blackened stones nearby that signifies a former campfire. The sod roof would have collapsed and disintegrated decades ago, and any furniture they had I suppose they would have either burned near the end, or else took out by dog sled or canoe and barge.
It’s a good spot, better than the one I had chosen. Nearby is a stream, and while the cabin was built up higher, it is still protected by a little hillock and a stand of trees. I break down my campsite and throw as much as I can in the canoe, follow the shore as I ride the choppy waves, spray and foam blowing up against my face and hands. By the end of the fourth trip my fingers are blue, and it is all I can do to pile loose kindling and light a new fire in the old circle of rocks. As I sit there warming up, I imagine that my grandpa and his father sit beside me doing the same, waiting for my say-so to get the camp put together.
When I’m finally warm enough I get the tent back up, moving aside a few old boards to make sure there’s room. Tomorrow I’ll start working on putting together a shelter that’s a little more durable. If I want to stay here for the winter, I could certainly use something more than a thin wall of nylon.
*
There was a cast-iron stove, rusting but still whole, lying in the weeds about fifty yards from camp. After spending over two hours wrestling it a few meager feet, it struck me that I could load it on the toboggan and slide it along. Still a lot of work, but I managed to get it into place, nestled into a bed of rocks and sand. Lying beside it was enough still-good piping to vent it off to the side and out a wall of my little cabin, and for the first time since the seasons began the change-over, I’m warm.
Three walls are wood, the back one is the side of the little hill. The roof sweeps one direction, down from the hill, and the small door I have to crouch to get through is set in the side, near the front. I managed to scrounge most of the wood for the roof, and spent a good three weeks chopping trees and planing logs with the axe, giving myself a good half-hour at the end of each day to sharpen the blade in anticipation of more chopping. Before the snow falls I even manage to construct myself a crude bed. But the stove is the true sign of civilization, in place only days before the first skiff of snow settles in.
Bath night. The lake and stream are all frozen now, so I scoop snow and, sometimes, chopped ice into my two buckets, melt them on the stove. I stand there, naked except for my boots, lather up my hair and soap up my body, then reach blindly for the second bucket and dash out the door into the minus-thirty-odd night, gasping in relief from the almost oppressive heat and steam that are built up, then gasping even louder as the cold penetrates the hot water I am pouring over my head and body. Then back inside, dry myself by standing by the stove, picking newly formed icicles from my eyebrows and beard.