”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.

CHEAP TRILLS

“Each Bird Loves To Hear Himself Sing”

Proverb

The bush can be a lonely environment. Though not unknown, for reasons of safety and perhaps mental stability, one does not normally travel alone on a traverse as a matter of practice during the course of mineral exploration work. In the early days of my bush experience working on geological survey parties, a traverse was conducted by a senior geologist who mapped the rock encountered and a junior geologist like me who maintained the position of the traverse using a combination of compass bearings, air photos and pace counting. The latter was kept track of by a little counter one held in one’s hand. Knowing the length of one’s stride, say two and a half feet, and clicking the counter every fourth stride meant that each click on the counter corresponded to ten feet of traverse. Now I can hear people pushing and shoving in a lineup, rushing to ask such silly questions as how do you measure a straight line if you have to go around a tree, a lake or a beaver dam? How do you measure horizontal distance when you are climbing a cliff? How do you measure horizontal distance when you have slipped and are rolling ass over tea kettle down a hill…………..count every fourth roll and determine the circumference of each roll? What happens when you lose count between strides one and four as you desperately swat flies or get hammered by a tree branch? What happens when the geologist calls you over to show you a rock feature and you forget not only where the line was you left but you also forgot to pace off the offset distance to the rock? On which foot do you count the pace, the left or the right? Because our legs are not the same length, in what direction do you drift? (I drifted left). How do you compensate for that? (Go around a tree to the right!). What happens when you lose the *&%^@$#* counter? To all that I answer, that like the older woman with a gleam in her eye once said, it all comes down to experience.

It is quite amazing, after some practice and yes, experience, how precise one can become in determining a position by “pace and compass” and maintaining a straight line over considerable distances. Depending on the scale of mapping being done, a traverse might be laid out so as to walk a rectangle with the long sides being five miles separated by the short sides each of a half mile. In other cases the traverse might be made up of irregular lines that went from one geographic point to another, eventually “closing” back to the starting point. In either case, accuracy was essential, not only to maintain the integrity of the survey but equally important, to permit a safe return to camp in time for dinner! Corrections for slope and the circumvention of objects become instinctive and second nature, and more often not the result is surprisingly accurate and workable, even under the most arduous of conditions brought on by poor weather or being beset by ravenous flies; most often both.

Notwithstanding the fact that you may be working with someone else on a traverse who might normally wander up to hundreds of feet away in search of outcrop, but who also may be as little as ten feet away from you in the bush, they nonetheless may as well not exist. Those ten feet become a stellar separation in which vegetation blocks view and sound, and fatigue and discomfort block any wish to communicate. In short there is a feeling of isolation that on one hand holds a sense of beauty and comfort but on the other hand, and more often than not, can engender a feeling of loneliness. A comforting and empathetic companion, undemanding and unobtrusive therefore becomes a true friend during the course of a lonely and tiring traverse.

There are two such friends in the bush, the dragonfly, the subject of another essay, and the chickadee, (eventually!) the subject of this one. The chickadee is a tiny little bird, somewhere between a hummingbird and sparrow in size. The most common species, the Black-capped Chickadee is just that; having a black feather cap over a white face and black throat with an olive back and buff-coloured underside. Bold and acrobatic, they can sometimes be seen hanging upside down looking for insect eggs on the underside of leaves. Their most characteristic feature is of course their warbling trill, a sound that replicates their name along with a distinctive, extended arpeggio ……….chickadee-dee-dee-dee-dee. Tame, unafraid and curious, for reasons best known to only them, they will often follow you for long distances as you tramp through the bush. Perhaps they think you are some sort of a large insect about to lay an egg, or more likely, that you are a choice piece of suet. Or perhaps you just represent welcome company, chickadees being one of the few residents of the godforsaken bush and swamp that characterize the Precambrian terrain of northwest Quebec where my early bush experience took place.

For whatever reason, chickadees always projected an attitude of cheerful friendship as they flitted from branch to branch and tree to tree, easily keeping pace with my purposeful slog, and trilling, always trilling. I found myself quickly bonding with them and they became close friends. No matter on which day or in what terrain, their presence was a welcome sight and sound, good friends rejoined. On a day when they were not there, the sound of silence was a void that made the bush seem ever more barren and lifeless.

Cheep trills indeed!

Copyright © 2009 Ian de W. Semple