”Tales From The Underbrush” documents, with occasional hyperbole, the experiences of the artist over a lifetime of interaction with what used to be called nature, now reinvented as the environment for reasons apparently best known by just about everyone in the world excepting the artist-writer. These wilderness interactions have come mainly while working as a geologist, briefly as a forester, but sometimes as just a guy whose principal happiness in life has been derived from being outdoors. Not that life in the wilderness, be it at work or at play has been without pain, discomfort, deprivation and even danger. Fortunately, the passage of time more often then not artfully blots out or at least dims the recollections that wound, substituting instead a recall that if perhaps not substantiating the aging athlete’s jest of “the older I get, the better I was”, at least allows tales to unfold that warm the memory and give substance to the life that experienced them.
The artist proposes to post monthly herein a chapter from his book “Tales From The Underbrush” in the hope that his adventures may be shared and enjoyed by those who might stumble onto this blog. This month’s entry continues the tale.
FLIES AND ZIPPERS
“A shut mouth catches no flies”
16th century proverb
The person that penned that pearl of wisdom had obviously never spent any time in northern Canada. While Canada’s far northern latitudes may in May still be in the waning stages of winter’s frigid grasp, in the middle and more southerly latitudes of the country, May is normally a time of sharp relief from winter’s icy grip; a time of longer days, warmer temperatures, and a surge in the colours, perfumes and sounds of nature’s orchestra of life. May leaves not much to complain about other than perhaps some petty grumbling should excessive rain intrude upon this mood of renewal. In short, May is a good time to be breathing the clean, fresh air of Spring.
Wrong!...................at least if one happens to be in the bush of the Canadian Shield, a vast geological region of rolling hills, swampy lowlands and stunted forests that cover much of the Canadian northland. There, in May, breathing, even nominally in hurried, short, shallow, closed mouth breaths through your nose can be injurious to one’s health, although some nutritional theorists may argue that the protein intake is beneficial. For you see, May is the birth time of “Simulium Venustum Say”. Say you say? Say what? What people normally say would be mostly unprintable.
The Simulium Venustum Say is but one species of an unrelenting plethora of mean, aggressive, merciless, pestilent, voracious, sneaky, biting, gnawing, invasive, painful, maddening, vicious, venomous, putrid, killer-minded, murdering little winged marauders who, I had not realized until now, because they have similarly obscure Latin names, must all have originally come from Rome. This is a bit disturbing since most of my Italian friends, who admittedly can sometimes be partially described using one or two, well, maybe three or four of those adjectives, nonetheless generally have much more balanced personalities. I came to learn that the mysterious Simulium Venustum Say is in reality a beady-eyed, degenerate little bugger known as the black fly, a creature so devoid of morality and goodwill as to make original sin and debauchery seem like prerequisites for sainthood.
Having received the identical “on the bubble” minimum passing mark (the “mercy grade”) in Latin from every one of the seemingly hundreds of exams I wrote on the subject during my entire high school career, I will endeavour not to further pursue the scientific names of all the similarly vicious and degenerate entomological cousins of the black fly. For no readily obvious reason I can fathom, scientists insist on rescuing a dead language by granting to common animals, in this case flies, and miserable flies at that, long-winded, multi-syllabic, unpronounceable, unintelligible names, invariably ending in “um”. Maybe “um” was the ancient Roman equivalent of the presently ubiquitous “like” and “you know” so beloved by the younger generations, so that this lascivious Latin black fly became like, you know Simuli. Like, you know, Say.
Anyway, said winged creatures are totally undeserving of this apparently honourable system of nomenclature, being the contemptible scumbags they are, seemingly intent on obliterating the human population in the most painful, maddening manner their devious little minds can invent. On the other hand, should the apparent current worldwide trend of mischief, mayhem, unbrotherly love and general genocide continue at its current pace, these flies may either have a point, or alternatively, may have to clean up their act, get off their butts and back to even harder work it they are to maintain their traditional leadership in the annihilation of the human race.
In the bush of the Canadian Shield, in addition to the black fly, are included his principal band of unwelcome cousins, namely deer flies, moose flies, horse flies, mosquitoes, and no see-ums. They all have one common goal in mind………..your blood, your flesh, your eternal misery and the ongoing disruption of your mental stability.
It was 1959 and as a McGill University undergraduate student in Montreal, I had acquired a summer job as a junior geologist with what was then known as the Quebec Department of Mines, the provincial agency whose responsibilities included producing basic geological maps of Quebec. It was to be my first time in the bush as an alleged professional, and was scheduled to be from May through early September, the specific boundary dates depending on the weather.
Being a nineteen year old at the time, I was of course in the enviable position of being a mature teenager (oxymoron, like batteries, not included), and therefore knowing everything about nothing, and nothing about everything. This contrasts with younger, less mature teenagers who think they know everything about everything, but in reality know nothing about everything. Generalizations in this regard are of course dangerous but I guarded against those dangers by using myself as a yardstick of reference. But enough about me. Let’s get back to my tale. Notwithstanding the fact I had never spent any appreciable time in the bush, but nonetheless believing in my tiny little mind that I possessed superior knowledge about all facets of practical bush life, rumours of an innocuous little insect with a poor personality and a completely non-vegetarian dietary preference came as something of a surprise to me.
Being the invincible, macho nineteen year old that I was however, I treated these stories with the scornful disdain and disrespect that wild exaggerations of that type deserve. Over the course of the school term however, the continuous tales of insect related blood and gore had become so persistent that they commenced to induce in the rough exterior of my bravado a slight twinge of nervousness. I resolved to track down the truth. Supremely knowledgeable undergraduate student I was, I quickly ascertained that book research would at best bring forth an excess of theoretical facts unsuitable for the rigours of reality. To dispel these ugly second hand rumours, I turned to the only source I knew I could trust, namely first hand rumours. After all, if rumours are first hand, then surely must not they be true? These “facts” however, were to be acquired at great risk and expense from sources that at the time were deemed to be infallible, namely graduate students. (Please hold the applause if not the laughter). Because it was rare that graduate students acknowledged the existence of undergraduate students, never mind actually conversed with them outside the confines of the formal teaching/learning environment, it was necessary to conduct covert operations in order to accomplish my goal. This was largely undertaken at a local establishment called the Mansfield Tavern. Since this is Montreal, Quebec in the 1950’s we are speaking of, the fact that I was a nineteen year old in a place of (sometimes considerable) alcoholic consumption was of no consequence whatsoever. No matter that you were not then legally allowed to go to a movie in Montreal before you were sixteen years of age, as long as you did not soil your diapers, throw up over the waiter, knock over the furniture, paid for your drink and left a decent tip, you could get a beer at any age in that great home town of mine.
Having read all the Sherlock Holmes and Hardy Boys books at a younger age, I was well trained and prepared in the art of covert operations. So it came to be that one day, cleverly disguised in a T-shirt on which were discretely emblazoned in three inch high red lettering the words “McGill Geology Undergraduate”, I casually settled into a chair next to a table occupied by a known group of McGill graduate students. I knew this to be so because every second sentence that was uttered by the group began with “As a graduate student I can tell you…………” Over the course of the next six hours, while casually consuming a steady raft of draft beer, I furtively scratched notes in code on a growing pile of beer mats, trolling for facts and pearls of graduate wisdom in the conversational waters of the adjoining table. In retrospect those pearls took up no more space than one beer mat after editing for content, but I kept making the mistake of writing down each “as a graduate student I can tell you.” This entire operation was largely conducted without incident except for one potentially disastrous slip-up on my part, when, nodding off once, I toppled over onto the graduates’ table, spilling everybody’s beer. I quickly recovered however by feigning insanity which the graduates instantly confirmed upon observing my T-shirt identity. It was only after those six hours of concentrated snooping and copious quantities of beer, punctuated by seventeen trips to the washroom and several small naps that I discovered that while the next table had indeed been populated by graduate students, they were actually refugees from the English Department. Not to be denied however, I ended up transcribing the notes and subsequently used them in an English essay assignment entitled “Beer As A Social Instrument: A Study Of Misspent Money, Misspent Youth”, and for which I received an “A” for practical application and a “D” for bad writing. A week later, after I was well again, I managed to conduct a similar covert listening operation, this time with the right graduate group in place, and where my now greatest fears were realized. The rumours about the black fly were true and I was doomed.
Loaded, in this instance with notes on the essential dress code that acted as the first line of defense against the black fly and its closely inbred cousins, I made suitable preparations for my bush debut that fateful May. Being strictly the overly testosterone-laden, brain-deficient male that any nineteen year old with any sense of pride is, I not only considered such preparations of dress beneath my station, but if truth will out, was totally incompetent to the degree that my practice of wearing loafers in order to avoid the challenge of lacing my shoes was no mere accident. Consequently, I turned to that ultimate rescuer of the incompetent, that steady, indefatigable Rock of Gibralter known as...…Mom!
It was therefore in about mid-May of 1959, slightly behind schedule due to a late ice breakup, the remnants of which still littered the shoreline, that I made my bush debut, a grand entrance the likes of which few are likely to have experienced either as a participant or observer, but that remains for another tale. Suffice to say that with respect to clothing, I was resplendent in the proper wear, the ultimate bush dude. From the ground up this included all-leather boots, as opposed to rubber or even leather topped, rubber bottomed boots. At great expense and time I had found a pair of twelve inch leather boots with un-seamed toe caps, rather than seam-stitched toe caps which tended to leak over time. The fact that at that juncture I was pre-occupied with a boot that might leak, became in short order a concern with hilarious overtones. Later on that subject. Encased within those boots were heavy bush socks, which in turn enfolded the bottom ends of cuffless, light coloured tan canvas trousers, properly zipped with a locking fly zipper. The latter was an exciting new scientific innovation in those days and one that was imperative to guard against the dangers of mutilation and possible painful death that a spreading, unlocked fly might bring about. T-shirted of course, over which was another vestment that had been suitably altered by Mom, an equally light-coloured, tightly woven tan shirt, to whose buttoned front had been attached a full length zipper and whose cuffs had been sewn tightly shut. To this attire was added a large neckerchief and a short-brimmed, floppy bush hat of, you guessed it, tightly woven, light tan-coloured material. Why this constant harping on light colours and tight weaves? Well the latter is easy…… so the little buggers can’t get in! As to colour, light is good, dark is bad, especially blue, or so went (goes?) the conventional wisdom of black fly defensive measures. Out for that reason also are blue jeans, that when wet, are more miserable than other cotton weaves in the bush.
As reality would have it, all these precautions were somewhat analogous to throwing gasoline on a fire in an attempt to extinguish it by smothering. There is nothing, chemical or physical, that can stop this indefatigable, relentless, voracious enemy, the black fly. What about mosquito nets you might ask? Aside from the fact that the net weaves were often insufficient to keep out the invaders, in the fiercely hot, humid conditions of the northern summer, breathing became a survival exercise in but a few minutes of net use, and in any event, the dense, clogged bush of the Canadian Shield either quickly ripped at or ripped off the nets, snagging and pinning the poor wearer to some bush whereupon the black flies literally went berserk with glee at the prospect of a stationary target.
But what about DEET? Ah yes, that wondrous, if mysterious chemical that was to save our sanity, maybe even our very lives. It was a new armament, that unlike today’s potent (but equally useless) variety that appears to contain, like those ubiquitous efforts of the modern professional athlete, “a hundred and ten percent” of the good stuff, in reality only offered a brief, illusionary respite, based mainly on faith and the initial relief that such faith was willed to bring. Then you had to actually leave camp and start the bush traverse. It didn’t matter that “deet”- based repellants like Repex were greasy, leaked into and stung your eyes, tasted like hell, and, like you after ten minutes in the bush, stunk. It made no difference anyway. When I tell tales of my plodding steps dislodging myriads of black flies that swarmed out of Labrador tea bush in such numbers as to form clouds that like “real” clouds, blocked out the sun, I am accused of exaggerating. The terrible truth is that it was the truth.
It was also in 1959 that I learned that lunch was not such an important meal to have after all, not at least if you had to stop in the bush and eat it. The pause was not worth the pain that such stops invited. Stopping for anything caused the slight wind created by walking to cease. You could almost hear the bugling when that happened, as the enemy prepared to have their lunch……….you! During those times when an especially long traverse required some sustenance to be ingested for lunch, it was normally done in a manner such that one’s outer bush jacket was drawn up over one’s head and the sandwich or whatever was quickly devoured through the space between two buttons of the bush jacket. The senior geologist or party chief had it even worse of course. They had to stop and properly map a rock outcrop, involving examination, note-taking, diagram drawing, while at the same time attempting to preserve their sanity. Perhaps that is why I have certain reservations as to the accuracy of many Quebec geological survey maps.
I have a picture taken of me in the bush that summer. My face is a mass of bloody bites and sores inflicted by all manner of flies. It can best be described as looking like I had tried to shave using a straight razor attached to a vibrator. Death by a thousand cuts!
Along came the heat of August, and with it a degree of abatement in the occurrence of the black flies. While there are mosquitoes to also contend with, they are mainly nocturnal, and next to the black flies, are the sort of weak, sickly wimps that needed rescuing from bullies on the beach by that muscle bound comic hero, Charles Atlas. Notwithstanding the mosquitoes therefore, and after about what seems like no more than five minutes of respite from the black flies, who but to make their appearance in the oppressive, stifling heat and sweat of the summer that leant new meaning to the adage “worth his salt”, were the deer/moose/horse flies. These larger winged molesters have a particular fondness for the upper torso where various near surface veins and blood vessels are a particular attraction. They are like stealth bombers these flies, and are the masters of ambush with particular fondness for the scalp and the backs of the neck and ears where the blood is near the surface of the skin. You can be innocently standing around just minding your own business, when “pow!” It is as though the guy at the Dairy Queen had sharpened an ice cream scoop and decided you looked like a prime chunk of vanilla. Unlike the black fly which leaves a small hole in you, the deer fly and his counterparts leave a bomb crater, and one that hurts like hell.
And so it was in the summer of 1959 that I wondered if field geology was really what I wanted to do after all. To add to the distress connected with the flies was another inconvenience so relatively minor in comparison that even mention of it invites criticism as petty whining. I nonetheless will note that in the roughly four months, or approximately one hundred and twenty odd uninterrupted days I spent in the bush that summer, I recall only three days in which I was not completely wet, and I mean head to toe wet. If it was not the incessant days of rain, the fording of innumerable rivers and streams or the sodden expanses of swamp, it was the cold, wet, clammy bush that invariably greeted you each morning as you set off on your traverse of the day. A certain practice that we came to carry out in this regard might seem to an urban observer as absolute folly, or perhaps even indicative of being bushed, that state of mind where, after too long in a wilderness devoid of so-called civilization and the companionship of human beings other than your campmates, the reality of your existence can slip into the surrealism of strange and often irrational behaviour. Thus it was the practice of the experienced bushman, at the very start of the traverse, to head into the most water soaked piece of bush he could find, in order to totally and instantly immerse himself in moisture. Irrational as it might seem, there was a certain enveloping stability to be had from a completely and instantly wet body as opposed to one that was partly wet and partly dry but on its way to a thoroughly sodden state by what was in effect a death by a thousand drips!
The hardships of 1959 notwithstanding, like a bad smell, I came back. Therein lie more stories to come!
Postscript
Many years later when I moved to Vancouver I thought I had died and gone to heaven. There were no flies! British Columbians will of course argue to the contrary and vehemently disagree, being extremely upset as they are with the three dozen mosquitoes and twenty-seven no see-ums that are known to reside in the province. The reality is that on balance, like a politician at an achievers’ banquet, flies in most areas of British Columbia are to be tolerated as annoying interlopers rather than as northern Canada instruments of physical suffering and mental degradation.
“We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.”
Francis Bacon
Copyright © 2008 Ian de W. Semple
