The year was 1968 and we had put in at Sturgeon Falls in northern Ontario. We were heading out on a 15 day canoe trip that would eventually take us to an inlet on Georgian Bay called Naiscoot, near Point au Baril. I was guiding for Y.M.C.A. Camp Pine Crest. We had planned a variety of day experiences. Some days would be easy with few portages; others would be dawn to dusk “push” challenges while others would be R&R stay-in-camp rest and recuperate times when we would do some fishing, baking and taking it easy. Unlike the Voyageurs who used to travel these waterways we weren’t out to kill ourselves. Doing the trip was challenge enough.
On day seven we reached the Village of French River. Our supplies were low but we had planned a stop over to replenish our stores for the next five days with the allocated budget of $25.00. While I shopped the campers plugged a hole in their canoe with the pocket from a raincoat and some steel hardener. It paid to be resourceful. Others wrote postcards home; some phoned.
“The mosquitoes are unusually terrible for this time of year. It must be the warm humid weather,” reads my log.
This followed one of those tough push dawn to dusk days when we were forced to pitch camp by the light of the silvery moon. No one carried a watch. We became quite comfortable, and accurate, mostly, at telling time by the position of the sun. We referred to it as animal time, as versus people daylight savings time.
When we woke to an overcast sky there was no sun to indicate the hour. Arriving at French River, we were shocked to discover that it was 3 o’clock – in the afternoon. So much for the previous day’s gain. To aggravate the situation, we left our newly purchased supplies at French River and had to wait while a canoe returned to fetch them.
More lost time – and with a storm obviously brewing we weren’t feeling overly optimistic. It was imperative that we find a campsite for safety and shelter before it struck. When one spends a lot of time under canvas canoe tripping one develops sensitivity to the weather.
We left the French River, portaged and as we paddled along the Pickerel River the wind picked up and the sky gradually darkened. Distant lightning strikes send us shoreward when we first spotted a trapper’s cabin.
Now it used to be that most of these cabins were left unlocked with the unwritten code that if you used it you wouldn’t abuse it. In fact tradition dictated that if you used it you were expected to leave it in a better condition than you found it. And, it didn’t hurt to leave a little note of appreciation.
We had just pulled our canoes up onto shore and moved our gear inside when the storm broke – wind, driving rain, thunder and lightning. As we used to say – “the whole ball of wax.” After building a cozy fire in the old woodstove, out came the comfort food- peanut butter (the poor man’s steak), jam and bread. Simple the shelter may have been but it would allow us to enjoy the storm and to rest peacefully. Or so we thought.
Now there is nothing that induces a sound, restful sleep like a fierce storm raging outside with rain pelting rhythmically off the roof. And there’s nothing that disturbs a peaceful slumber so fast as the feeling of little furry feet scampering across one’s face. The cabin, it turned out, was wild with mice.
One of my staff just couldn’t cope with his face being used as some form of a mice portage and after a brief reconnaissance with the beam of his flashlight he decided to sleep on the cabin’s kitchen table. The mice wouldn’t find his face there. Or so he thought. But alas, he had no sooner turned off his light and settled in to sleep when his furry friends found his face. That was too much.
Necessity may well be the mother of invention- or the invention of mothers – for he soon searched the food pack and found the pepper, which he proceeded to liberally spread about himself and the table to keep the mice away.
And may I say, there is nothing so disturbing to a peaceful slumber quite like a thousand little mice sneezing throughout the night.
Photo – by BM – a bush cabin