TRAPPER JOHN and The SNOWMOBILERS

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Trapper John was in his 70’s, according to his younger brother who passed this tale on to me. He had miles of trap lines throughout the Burk’s Falls area in northern Ontario. In his younger days John travelled by snowshoe. The snowmobile was something of a Godsend. Like so many other trappers John found the tiny Elan skidoo model to be almost ideal. Like the little engine “that could” this mighty little machine never met a mountain it couldn’t climb or a trail too narrow to travel. For a backwoodsman it provided transport to some really remote routes. And so, over the years, John developed his network trap line and got to know the land as any inner city resident might come to know the back alleys of his territory within the city.

On this particular day John was travelling his line and checking his traps when he emerged from the dense forest to the open spaces of a lake. It was there that he met a group of snowmobilers on their new post 2000 ultra powered high-energy machines. In any contest of speed John’s little Elan was no match. But when it came to backtrail maneuverability the little Elan easily outclassed its bigger, brawnier brothers.

The faster, more expensive machines pulled up to John.

“Can you tell us how to get to Lake Sseltiw,” they enquired.

“Sure,” said John. “I just came from there.”

Now John knew that there was no possible way that those bigger, wider machines could ever back track across the land he had just travelled. They would have to take the longer route around instead of traversing cross country. And so John drew them a map in the snow showing them where they were and where they wanted to go.

They thanked the trapper as he headed out and that was the last John saw of them that year.

A year later, in the same area, John came upon these same snowmobilers. They reminded him that in the year previous he had directed them to their destination. Did he wish to know the rest of the story?

“Story,” he asked. “What story?”

“Well,” they began, “we started out following your directions when it occurred to us – why didn’t you follow your own advice?”

After all, the trapper had admitted that he had just come across land from their destination. And anyone who attended Geometry class would know that B to A is much shorter than going from B to C to A in the classic triangle. So they turned around.

“We decided that you weren’t telling us everything (and in truth he wasn’t) so we followed your trail.”

As it so happened the first part of the trail was straight enough to accomodate their machines and with their usual enthusiasm they roared ahead with gay (as in happy) abandonment. But it wasn’t long before they discovered what Trapper John hadn’t told them when the first machine, charging down the trail at full throttle, suddenly found the trail so narrow that it soon found itself coming to a full stop as it became wedged securely between two trees. Because they had maintained a safe distance between machines there were no pile-ups.

“But it took us hours to free the wedged machine AND even more time as we tried to turn our machines 180 degrees in order to make our exit.”

“This year,” they added,  “we don’t intend to make the same mistake. Fool me once….”