”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.
NO FLIGHTS OF FANCY THESE – PART 3
“For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.”
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
“Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible”
Simon Newcomb (1835 – 1909)
A little story of my own is less dramatic but did not feel so at the time. It was again in Ungava in the early 1960s and I was a senior geologist with a field party that had set up a camp at the edge of a large lake I recall to have the name Wapaniskan……….spelling not guaranteed. It was to be a base camp from where I was to spend the better part of a year exploring the region in a search for base metal deposits on behalf of one of the world’s largest mining organizations. The area of our interest being widespread, large distances had to be covered at times. Walking to some distant target, particularly if it involved getting there on snow shoes, would involve most of the day in traveling leaving little time to conduct useful exploration. In addition, our camp was above the tree line, but we were still required to use wood as basic fuel for cooking and heating. The nearest wood was ten miles or more away. The solution was to acquire or rent, I cannot remember, a new fangled vehicle that has since become a standard for transportation in far northern latitudes and a sports machine anywhere where winter snowfall is the norm. Those of you who have guessed that I refer to a snowmobile can progress to the front of the class where no sleeping is allowed. Unless you dear reader are of my venerable vintage, you probably think that snowmobiles sprung overnight, if not instantly, from concept to the gigantic, power laden machines of the present, which in the hands of drivers unfamiliar with them and not properly trained, or merely moronic, can be instruments of death and destruction both for their drivers and any innocents in their path. In short, they have become like cars.
At the time I refer to however, skidoos were relative new born, barely out of the womb of the fertile mind of Armand Bombardier. A French Canadian of inventive predilection he had decided that snowshoes, while admirable in concept and deeply ingrained in the history of Canada’s indigenous peoples and where for centuries and in a variety of designs they had proven successful in helping manoeuvre through snows of various types, could nonetheless be improved upon when it came to the more efficient transport of both people and equipment. Ergo he put together a chassis about six feet long that one sat astride somewhat like a motorcycle; rigged up a tank-like track of hard but flexible rubber plates; attached two steerable skis in front linked up to a set of handlebars and lastly, installed a small gasoline engine to power the lot. The skidoo model circa 1959 that we acquired had a single cylinder, 7-1/2 horsepower Wisconsin engine that would barely be considered large enough to act as a starting motor for today’s skidoos. Nevertheless it did the job and on candled ice that provided perfect traction, I could get an estimated 30 mph out of this very early model which was one of the first to be mass produced. One perhaps unique practice insofar as this model was concerned was starting it. Hand pulled to crank the engine over and provide sparking in the cylinder, it often required the direct deposit of highly flammable raw naptha gas straight into the cylinder, so that the frozen spark plug might summon up the energy to ignite the more easily flammable naptha, warm up the engine and eventually ignite the normal gasoline fuel that was drawn into the cylinder. That we never cracked the piston or cylinder with this practice was a source of ongoing amazement to all. Flooding the engine was normal during these starting efforts, and in the raw sub-zero temperatures in which we laboured, the breadth of my sociably unacceptable vocabulary was to appreciable expand.
But I digress as usual. It’s just that there is so much to tell and possibly not enough time to do so. At any rate, the skidoo we were to acquire or rent was located some distance away so that transporting it directly overland from its location to our camp was not practical. I recall the skidoo belonging to someone at a trading post (Yes! Trading posts still existed in northern Quebec in the 50’s and 60’s). It therefore required that an aircraft fly to the post, secure the aircraft and bring it to our camp. I was assigned to accompany the pilot and act on our behalf in the process. The trading post was located on the floor of a narrow and deeply incised valley. After the deal was done, the fun began. We had flown in a ski-equipped Beaver that was already carrying a partial load from another camp. The early skidoos of the type we had acquired, while nowhere near the present day behemoths in size, were nonetheless heavy enough to challenge lifting by two fit people, and bulky and awkward enough to present an additional challenge in loading it into the confined and partly filled interior of the Beaver. Sling seats in the back of the aircraft had to be stowed and existing cargo rearranged to accommodate the skidoo. In the end, it proved impossible to stuff the skidoo fully into the Beaver so that the doors could close and the pilot and I retain our seats. What to do? Where there’s a will there’s a way as the saying goes, or where desperation dictates a solution, one will be found……sometimes. So it was that all existing cargo was removed from the Beaver and the skidoo stuffed as far into the available interior space as possible. The co-pilot’s seat was moved so far forward as to be unusable except for a midget that I was not. In the end the skidoo ended up with its back end sticking out of the right side of the aircraft after the cargo door on that side had been removed so its opened position would provide even further resistance to the ability of the plane to get airborne. Miscellaneous portions of the earlier load were squeezed into available niches including the co-pilot area while I was left to sprawl across the skidoo along with the other baggage. All of this cargo including me was trussed up with rope around various anchor points in the fuselage to prevent shifting of the load or its premature exit from the plane, an aspect I obviously did not relish.
That done we took off for camp. As mentioned, the trading post was at the head of a steep narrow valley that precluded any major manoeuvring when it came to flight. I do remember that our own camp lay to the east of the north trending mountains so that it was necessary to navigate our way over this eastern mountain barrier in order to head to the camp. As the Beaver lurched down the valley floor and staggered into the air. I suspected that we were seriously over loaded. Sluggishly the Beaver fought its way upward, the propeller desperately clawing for air. Hemmed closely in by the surrounding mountains I had serious doubts as to how we were going to get out of the valley. Suddenly a wing dipped in alarming fashion, and engine screaming at full power, we entered into a steep turn. Nose pointed barely above the horizon the pilot kept the plane in this turn for what seemed like an endless series of tight circles within the confines of the valley walls, each full circle attaining what appeared to be a miniscule amount of altitude. After what seemed like an interminable time the plane leveled out, and with barely a few feet to spare above the mountain terrain we slipped over the peak, taking the tops of several scrub pine trees with us in the process. The rest of the trip to camp thankfully proved uneventful, a veritable downhill trip compared to our laboured climb-out from the trading post.
Over the years, I was to experience similar flight fright, but in reality these occasions were merely a normal part of bush life and its attendant flying, and I am still around to pen these tales. There remains here but one story to tell of exemplary airmanship that while I was thankfully not a part of the experience, I became privy to the details as recounted by one of the survivors. The single engine float plane, loaded with passengers and baggage had just taken off from its base, headed for some distant outpost. Suddenly, not much more than a hundred feet or so off the ground, the aircraft lost power. With the plane now heading for the bush, there was no time to attempt a restart or enough altitude to make a turn for an emergency dead stick landing on the lake behind. What the pilot then did might seem shocking at first glance, but was an amazing piece of airmanship. An airplane crash of any sort is an ugly affair. Assuming that a bush plane might even have managed to adopt a perfect gliding attitude before crashing into the forest, the plane will be most often grabbed by trees and flipped onto its back, often tearing at fuel tanks with resultant fire. Even should that not happen, passengers would find themselves upside down and further disoriented from shock. Assuming there has been some survival of those on board the challenges of extricating themselves from this position in the wreck would be monumental.
In the case of which I speak what the pilot did was to head for two of the largest large trees he could see in his path. While this might seem like a recipe for disaster his thinking was that which most often defines genius………simple and highly effective. Steering a path to pass directly between the trees allowed the latter to rip off the wings and sever them from the fuselage. This had several positive results. Firstly it severed the wings and their tanks full of flammable fuel from the rest of the aircraft. Secondly, the fuselage, now bereft of said wings, assumed the profile of a fat dart as it now kept on going through the bush right side up, eventually coming to a sliding halt as the forest growth slowed its progress. Fortuitously, with no tree collisions or tree limbs lancing through windows, all the passengers survived and beyond bumps and bruises, no major injuries were incurred. While luck was obviously on their side, it was the cool thinking and experience of the pilot that allowed that luck to occur. As Gary Player, the famous South African golfer has been heard to say, “the harder I practice the luckier I get!”
TO BE CONTINUED
Copyright © 2009 Ian de W. Semple
