Scouting in the woods is old woodscraft. It is not as necessary with the publication in the 1960s of the USGS surveys providing topography, lake depths, waterways and some vegetation cover (open versus canopied). With satellite imagery now, one can discern the hazelnut brakes – a mass of light green – and mature hardwoods and conifer copses, and the shadows of steep slopes and sometimes in the big woods the light and dark shadow of a tall, grandfather white pine.
But it’s like when Little Joey was hiding behind the fence as Shane – in his buckskin and trotting his roan – first approached the Joe Staret homestead, and Shane eventually eased his horse up alongside the fence and leaned on his saddlecock. “Say, you were watchin’ me from quite a spell away.” “Yes I was,” demurred Little Joe. “You know,” said Shane, “I like a man who keeps his eyes on things.” And Little Joe looks up and smiles his blonde, gap-toothed smile.
So we go into the hills over Trout Lake, over the spring and under the wyrde yellow birch into the sugar bush.
We look for sign of deer. In the fall the deer cross carefully and quickly through the wide-open maple forest on heavy north-south trails. Now the woods are plentiful and lush and it is difficult to find a trail under the maple shoots at your shins.
We look for likely places for a fox to saunter. We come up a hill, and there’s a saddle, then another hill, and we take it in. There is not much to take in. A gray and green sugar maple woods.
We look for the signs of wolf and bear, and for nuts and berries. We go down a long defile into the collapsing birch and the tag elder, then up again onto a barrow.
We circumvent the barrow and watch for the game trails just under its rim and at the bottom of its slope along the edge of a cedar swamp.
Peppy rolls in something, and that’s a sign of life. I cannot identify what prompted her to roll. Away from here we do find deer piles. Once in the defile by pure luck we did find an antler.
We cut down the slope southwesterly to meet a landmark near our original way. The landmark never came. There was an old snowmobile and sled-dog trail that never came also. Neither came. So I was lost.
Which is a good thing when you’re scouting. Or anytime, really. I have this saying, piggybacking on Huck Finn: “If you ain’t gettin’ lost in the woods once a week, you’re doin’ somethin’ wrong.”
The first time I got lost I cannot remember my age. Maybe four or five or six. Up at our resort the men all were cutting firewood. And like any good boy should do, I went out the horse gate that was cracked open, and over the two-track path, into the tall Norway pine plantation. Like any good woodsman, I went up a deer trail. But the trail turned into many trails and when I turned around and not before, I became lost, as in a nightmare or nursery tale. The brother of my uncle that had married my aunt found me on the trail, and I was crying. He had come for me. I always wondered why my father or family didn’t come for me.
Back to reality, I looked at the compass, and the sun, and finally through the maple and birch, the poplar, and fir and spruce to the big air that must be over Trout Lake.
These three methods of location and direction sometimes conflict. For example, the compass not agreeing with the sun. Or imagine Trout Lake not being there.
I just kept going down to the next lowest step in order to reach the Trout Lake basin, going in my direction, the sun at 1:00 p.m. off my nose and the shadows at 7:00 p.m.. And of course the slope flattens out and we’re in the basin, and Trout Lake is being there.
And now Peppy, who I ridicule, almost trips over and flushes a partridge.
At the water we swim naked. Everyone swims from fatigue. Daphne comes out to the deep end. Foxy comes out and I wash her ears and jowls.
And Peppy’s swimming around me like a retriever, and she’s thinking, “What a great time we always have doing absolutely nothing in the big woods.”
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