”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.
THE ENTERTAINER
“Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise.”
Alice Walker
When feeling charitable and in an enlightened mood, life in the bush might be described as uplifting, adventurous, educational, even character-building, particularly now that such life has become restricted to intermittent experiences of short duration or just plain memory. It is amazing how warm and fuzzy memories become in retrospect, when at the time that same life might be couched in terms of hardship, misery and discomfort, punctuated by a sense of bewilderment as to why the decision to experience bush life had ever been made. Rarely however could one describe any activity in the bush to be entertaining. Rarely however, is similar to a rule. That which defines the rule is its exception.
It was early May in the late nineteen fifties that I set out on the initial path that was to define my life’s profession. This was to be my first summer in the bush, employed as a junior geologist with the Quebec Department of Mines. To prepare for this adventure, I had undertaken months of personal research on bush craft, canoe handling, optimal equipment, proper dress and the like. Along with my brand new boots, beige coloured clothes, shirt carefully zippered and sewn everywhere where the dreaded black fly might find entrance, I had, for reasons best known only to myself, favoured a wide brimmed hat which I wore at a rakish angle. Perhaps I thought I was going on safari, or maybe embarking on a trip into the Australian outback. In any event the hat was to prove absolutely useless, being continuously swept off in the dense scrub of gnarly, boggy bush that described the terrain of that summer. Securing the hat with a drawstring only served to greatly increase the chances of death by strangulation.
To occupy my spare time, a hilarious concept that proved to be largely illusionary, in addition to bringing along a sack full of heavy reading of the deeply philosophical, “save the world” type favoured by young innocents, I had decided to learn to play the guitar. Accordingly, I had put together my meager funds to buy a cheap guitar and some extra strings from the Eaton department store’s music department, in those days an important source of music scores and instruments in Montreal. A guitar case being an unaffordable extra cost, the instrument would just have to travel around with me in its naked state.
Unless one was lucky to have been attached to a field party working in an area undergoing logging, and where access might be by vehicle, the initial entry of men and supplies to the region being mapped was normally by float plane. Ironically, if embarrassingly, I would have been emotionally crushed to have been assigned to a party whose access to the bush was by vehicle. After all, I was about to add myself to that company of great explorers of history who had braved death while mapping large tracts of the vast unknown wilderness that is Canada. To have accessed the bush by truck rather than by the more romantic vehicles of bush plane or canoe would have been to suffer a humiliation of monumental proportions, one that might have precluded the stories of adventure I would be able to tell my grandchildren in later years. Fortunately, my honour was salvaged when it became known that our mapping area could only be accessed by bush plane. In later years, after I grew up a little, I was to cherish any and all bush-related amenities offered to me that I had so assiduously wished to avoid as an untested field man.
Depending on location, size of crew, and availability of aircraft, the transport of men and equipment into an area to be mapped was normally a shuttle effort using one or two bush aircraft. Invariably, these aircraft were either a de Havilland Beaver or its larger cousin, the Otter. There was also an unofficial, if pragmatic sequence of priorities in moving men and supplies. Spearheading the move on the first plane were usually two experienced people, being the party chief and at least one bush/canoe man, together with the cook tent, stove, axes, personal gear of the two and some food. That way, if weather closed in or for whatever other reason subsequent plane loads failed to be dispatched, the initial party had supplies and lodging to survive until help arrived. Should the first load be on an Otter, then additional tents and supplies, another bushman, and even the cook, might join the first crew in.
Under almost no circumstances were junior geologists normally found on that first flight, uselessness not being a priority item when setting up a bush camp. To have a camp up and running on the first day required some skill, and certainly a good deal of experience, attributes again not normally associated with junior geologists. A site had to be cleared, tent poles secured and cut, tents erected, the cook’s supplies offloaded and organized, the stove set up, wood secured for the stove, tables made for the dining and engineering tents, all in the interests of establishing a working camp as quickly as possible.
Unsurprisingly therefore, I recall that I brought up the rear in the order of entry into the bush camp that summer. It may have been in a Beaver with a sixteen foot canoe strapped to one pontoon, but in retrospect I think it was in an Otter with a big “prospector” canoe strapped onto one side of the struts that supported the floats. The prospector canoe was twenty-one feet in length with a square stern designed to support a small outboard engine. This canoe was a very stable version of what is often viewed as an unstable craft, and was designed to carry a large and heavy load in rough water. In the world of canoes this was a heavy bulk carrier. We had landed on a large lake and taxied to the location where the first crews were busy establishing the camp. The day was dismal, with squalls and stiff winds augmenting the prevailing chilly temperatures of an early Spring in the far north. Ice breakup on the lake had just recently taken place and there remained many pockets of snow on the ground. Typical of lakes in post glacial age northern Canada, the shoreline and foreshore were characterized by loose jumbles of boulders which together with the windy conditions prevented full access to the shore by a float plane without the threat of puncturing a float. Once camps were established, a crude log dock was normally constructed to accommodate later supply planes. Initially however, the planes remained offshore, their load of supplies and men unloaded into canoes for the short paddle to shore.
And so the process began on that particular day. Unstrapped from the struts, the prospector canoe bobbed gently on the water beside the float on the leeward side of the plane. I had been asked to get into the empty canoe so as to receive cargo from the plane that would be handed to me by one of the bushmen already in camp and who had paddled out to the plane in a smaller canoe. The details of what happened next are a mixture of clarity, fog, and deep suspicion. I stood magnificent on the float dressed in my full regalia of bush clothes and boots, heavy canvas bush jacket securely fastened, hat flapping in the breeze and, entrusting no other to its care, clutching my precious guitar. Having not only researched the subject but possessing some previous practical experience in the matter, I was cognizant of the need to carefully step into the centre part of the canoe in order to maintain not only its stability, but the preservation of my well being. So step carefully I did and as I just as carefully made to sit down, store the guitar and prepare to receive additional cargo, I mysteriously exited the canoe in an unplanned and untimely fashion, being pitched ass over tea kettle as the expression goes. Water that has only recently devolved from its solid form of ice, is not just a mite nippy, or even a tad chilly. Rather it is mind numbingly freezing so as to snatch your breath away, draw your extremities deeply back into your body and leave you stiff with confusion and incomprehension. It was in that state of mind therefore that I attempted to cope with the situation that no one seemed to be doing anything about. Floundering in dark, icy water dressed in full bush gear and bush boots is an exercise that has only a limited chance of success. It remained therefore for science to take over and dictate the only direction in which my actions were to take me, and that was down!
To ensure that I sunk straight to the bottom, I was wearing around my waist a military web belt loaded with an impressive variety of equipment, including compass, camera, knife, filled water bottle and other portable gear, but most of all with a holstered, heavy geological hammer that any self-respecting geologist took everywhere with him except to bed. As the summer wore on and isolation began to set in, I expect that this exception may have been abandoned by some also. When suitably encumbered around my waist therefore, the weight of attached equipment dragged down the belt so that I looked like some western movie gunslinger. Also, equipped as such, the belt was necessarily rigged to be very tight around the waist so as to not slip too far down over the hips. Any concept of “quick release” of the belt in an emergency situation was therefore wishful thinking. I do not remember how deep the foreshore was but it was certainly deeper than I was tall, for I was well under water and had not yet touched bottom. Fortunately, I had with me a form of flotation device, which in a more normal circumstance was called a guitar. Clutched in a death grip high above my head, it had miraculously remained on surface unsubmerged, like a long necked boat. That, together with frantic kick thrusting and one armed paddling, brought me spluttering to the surface, bare-headed and gasping for air. Since no rescue attempts were apparent, and thrust by the wind and wave action shoreward, I managed to dog paddle a short distance to where my feet touched bottom. Slip sliding on the greasy under footing I waded shoreward, finally staggering onto the rocks and straight into hip deep snow. Thoroughly depleted of whatever remained of my dignity I stood soaked to the skin, a shivering miserable mess while my packsack was unloaded from the plane and canoed ashore in what seemed to be no great haste. Stripped bare in the snow on a cold, windy northern day and with more shakes than a belly dancer I retrieved a dry set of clothes and socks and tried to make like it was all in a day’s work.
As it was later told to me, I must have “stepped on the canoe’s gunwhale” in such a fashion that had tipped it and delivered me into the cold arms of the lake. Either that or I had made “a sudden weight shift” while seated that had produced the same result. I knew both scenarios to be completely untrue. Slowly it dawned on me that this may not have been an accident. Prospector canoes were of a size and stability that you almost could stand on one gunwhale and not capsize it. Strange also was the fact that nothing else had been loaded into the canoe before the “accident” occurred. While laughter was to be expected, there was an ongoing and palpable sense of suppressed hilarity that long exceeded the scope of the incident. Of particular interest was the fact that the two bushmen studiously showed no signs of amusement at all, an unjustified repression that sharply aroused my suspicions. I had apparently cut a very entertaining figure on going overboard. A disembodied hand wrapped tightly around a guitar offset by a dislocated hat merrily floating down the lake was the sole expression that I had even existed. It was an imagery that left even me chuckling and snorting with amusement long after my dignity had been restored.
There seems little doubt now that someone of my bush colleagues had decided, either in concert or alone, to initiate my entry into the bush and mitigate any boyish arrogance I might have about my bush craft, by “accidentally” stepping on a gunwhale in such a fashion as to produce the only probable diversion this crew would have for the next six months. I had left civilization as a junior geologist but I had entered the bush as an entertainer.
“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.”
Mel Brooks
Copyright © 2008 Ian de W. Semple
