Emil made breakfast before we hit the sack to save time. Would have saved even more time had we also eaten it as a bedtime snack. But my uncle figured that wouldn't make much sense as we'd just be hungry again come morning.
"Archie me lad, we'll skin this cat a different way. Gather some wood and I'll get a fire going. When she burns to coals we'll bake us some bread and I'll smoke up whatever you can catch from shore."
We heaped the wood high and fired up a blaze they could have seen down in Cranberry Portage. Made me want to strip to skivvies, slash muddied stripes across my face and dance around the ring 'til I sweated myself clean. Instead I hit the beach with the burden of bobber fishing for my breakfast. Emil rummaged through the tarp and started packing for morning.
Half dozen walleyes and a pair of jumbo perch in twenty minutes. Not bad. "Enough to make us a little supper Archie and smoke what's left. Two birds, eh?"
For the first time I made the dough ball for pan bread, added a joy of sweet stuff and propped it to brown. Emil did up a small pot of dried apricots and floated a couple of seasoned fillets in a frying pan of foamed butter. Smelled like home. Now there's an odd thought. Twenty-five miles into the bush and it smelled like home.
While we ate, Uncle Emil banked the coals, salted the fillets and laid them tenderly on the edges of the grill to slowly soak up some heat. "Umm-umm, she'll be some good eatin' in the morning. Should be enough left for a little snack or two on the trail."
"Any idea how long it'll take to reach Wedge?"
Emil looked at the ground, raised his eyes to the woods behind us, looked to the sky, tested the wind with a wetted finger, held a raised thumb like a plumb bob and began to write out a few calculations in the air. Paused, stroked his chin,
"Call it five hours, twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds, give or take. Archie me lad, your guess is as good as mine. Our way in from Wedge was pathless. So is our way out. Only this time our pathless path will be a bit longer and a little more seat of the pants. Who knows how many of our markers are still be standing? And if we'd be able to follow them anyway."
Not much left to do but sit on the preservers and once again be absorbed by the growing dark. Took a while and never did quite make it. Didn't matter to us. It's hard to get bored in the bush. Too much going on all the time. Pillars of midges rose to the sky between the few scrubby jack pines left surrounding our site. Thousands of tiny feeding rings slowly spread shore to shore on the mirror in front of us. Couldn't see the sun go down but I guess it did. The pelicans returned and flotilla-ed by, giving us nary a look. What did they care? We'd be gone in the morning and hadn't put a dent in their larder. Soon they'd again be lords and ladies of the lake.
"Dark enough. Time to turn in. I'll bank the coals, give the fillets another turn and leave them to the night. Tomorrow will be a day we'll not soon forget. Best way to approach it is after a good night's sleep and with a full belly."
Sleep took its time. Felt like Christmas Eve. Yeah, I was excited. Way excited about what was coming. And scared. Not like we were going to die scared. Scared like we were in for a lot of work. Painful work. Climbing over and under kind of work. Must have tossed and turned a good three minutes fretting about the morning.
You see, sleep was my friend. Nothing at night or waiting in the morning was so momentous it ruined a good night's sack time. Years later, in Vietnam, I also slept like a baby. B-52 strike, monsoon downpour, highway for a mattress, rice paddy floor, tree line, didn't matter where I made my bed, my eyes would close and I'd drift off to another world. 'Specially when misery was in the offing. Whether or not unhappiness was waiting back in the Manitoba woods was yet to be seen. Probably was. But nerves or not, this boy conked right out.
I awoke to find myself alone. I'd have laid there wondering where Uncle Emil had disappeared but my bladder told me to go out and find him.
'Uncle Emil, you might wanna come back here and take a look."
I'd stepped aways into the woods to take a leak and finally had a good look at what the storm'd done. The few trees that had dropped around our site didn't do the damage justice.
"Could it be you mean all the jackstrawed timber between here and Wedge? I gave it a look-see yesterday. Even walked went back a few yards to check it out. Didn't want to say anything 'til we had to wade in and have us some fun. Couldn't see the point in talking about it. But I did give what was coming some thought. It'll be a bugger for sure. Probably demand twice what the carry in did. But we'll do her and when it's over, be glad we did."
Before sitting down to eat we paddled out on the lake.
"Last chance on the water Uncle Emil?"
"That and filling up the water jug and canteens. We'll sweat up a storm on the bushwhack. May as well drink all we can hold before setting out and carry a gallon with us."
Took our time with breakfast. Why not? Five minutes more or less wouldn't make much difference in our day. While we ate I happened to notice my uncle had a new eye, a pine tree inserted sideways. Guess that said it all. By nine we were off.
What can you say about misery? Kind of goes like this: At first it's a challenge, almost easy 'cause it's new. Hoist a pack, carry it 'til it hurts, set it down and go back for another. Next, it gets tougher, hurts sooner and you think you can't do it. Finally, you get used to the pain, accept that it won't get any better, won't kill you and just keep plodding on. You get lost in thought but pay close attention when working your way over or though a pile of splintered timber.
The good news was no more than half of the forest had been blown flat. That was also the bad news. Some twisted and torn trunks had reached the ground and laid there like a thousand weather vanes pointing down wind. Those trees you could straddle over or if too high, crawl under. Some had ricocheted off other trunks on the way down and crisscrossed with others on the ground. Jackstrawed was what Emil called them. I'd go around the piles if possible. Only had to go over one and it wasn't very big. Some had tipped and hung up in the branches of other, still standing trees. He called them widow makers. Those I usually scurried under, hunched and braced should one fall. Not sure what I was preparing for. If one fell I'd have driven into the ground like a tent peg by a pile driver.
"Never know when they'll come down. Should you be standing under one when it does, that's all she wrote. Send a letter to your wife, she'd be the widow, the tree the maker, letting her know her what a great guy you'd been 'til you went and did something stupid."
We did the carry in stages, a lot more stages than the trip in. Emil still had enough ribbon to mark our gear piles where we'd set them down. Made them easier to find when we returned. Retrieved them as we passed on so as not to run out. Again it was a compass guided course with as much allowance for swamp as possible.
Our three planned rests stretched to eight, each a pipe, snack and conversation break.
"Archie me lad, this sure is something. Probably feel better if I wasn't smoking. Probably also feel better if I was twenty years younger. You know what? If I'd have known this was in the cards before we set off, we'd've still done her. So long as neither of us gets hurt and if we keep our wits about us neither of us will, going through what we're going through makes it that much sweeter. The only thing I'd change is to have a cold beer right now. And maybe a coke for you. But first a beer for me. A LaBatts fresh out of a tub of ice. Sounds sooo good."
Our signal to go was always a "saddle up" followed by a grunt of rising from Emil. We'd reload and go at it again.
The biggest bugger was the canoe. Emil'd move it solo when possible. More often than not it'd be the two of us, one at each end, hoisting it over or dragging it under the toppled trees. A slow, sweating, grunting carry.
Break four had me lusting for the coke Uncle Emil had mentioned back on stop two.
"Twenty-five ouncer in the big glass bottle. I'd drain it straight. And lick up the foam that'd come pouring out my ears. And maybe four cheeseburgers just like the ones from The Clock Drive-in over on Broadway. Line 'em up and knock 'em down. Wash 'em down with another big coke. I've done nothing but think about that combination for the last hour. When we get out can we see if the Canadians down in The Pas can fry up some burgers?"
"Didn't we already do that? And don't you remember what the burger was like?"
"I don't care. And maybe they've gotten better since we were there. If not, I'll go for the gravy next time."
So it went. Hour after hour. A city block in we were already mud spattered and pitch covered. And it kept layering on with every straddle, crawl and climb. My hands, clothes and packs were thick with pine tar and sap. Smelled like turpentine mixed with honey. Needles and bits of bark stuck to the pitch. As my sweat began to flow I'd wipe my face with a sleeve or back of hand. More pitch, more bark, more needles. Halfway through I looked like I'd been tarred and feathered. Tar baby from the Uncle Remus stories was what Emil said.
Uncle Emil was no better. On break five we just pointed at each other and laughed. Food tasted like pine as did the smell of Emil's pipe tobacco. Seemed he'd dropped his pipe a couple of times and it too had started to coat up. Yeah, we were a sight to behold.
By the time we reached Wedge we were moving not much faster than the glaciers that had passed through a few thousand years earlier. We'd finished every morsel of food in the day pack - had to drink the molten Hershey bars - drained all the water and hurt everywhere. I swear, even my hair hurt.
"We'll take a short break, then load and hit the water. Maybe drink up the entire lake on the way to camp. Of course once the lake's dry we'd be back to portaging so be careful with your intake. First order in camp will be to eat. Then set up the tent. Take a swim. Go to bed. That's it. Don't know about you but I'll be a paddling dead man."
Being back on the water beat the pants off going through the woods. Of course so would being dragged down a gravel road behind a speeding pickup truck.
"What time is it Uncle Emil?"
"Six-forty."
We paddled on.
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