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OKPIK Maine High Adventure

The cold air seeping in woke me with a start. I could feel it penetrating from every direction and I fumbled for the penlight and turned it on. The vapor from our breath clung tightly to the air as it rose slowly to freeze on the walls of the tent. Everything was covered in frost – the ceiling, the walls, my sleeping bag, and the hat I was wearing..the sides of my face….covered in white. I looked at my watch – 2:30 am – and reached for the small thermometer I had placed on the tent floor when I crawled into the sleeping bag – I had to look at it twice – it read 22 below 0 F. I leaned back on the makeshift pillow for a moment and listened to the stillness of the cold night occasionally broken with the loud snapping of trees in the cold air – often sounding like gunfire.

I was relaxing in front of a fire in the crispness of early morning when Crack! A sound like an explosion came from behind me in the woods. I scanned the trees and saw that a maple tree had “exploded”. The explosion caused a big crack in the tree about three feet high. When a winter wind stirs the frozen trees, they sometimes appear to burst vertically. When it was 40 degrees below zero at night, I lay awake and listened to the trees explode. That’s a true wilderness thermometer!

—Linda Runyon, The Essential Wild Food Survival Guide

I realized I had to pee….I cinched the mummy bag back over my head pulling it as tight as it could go so that only my nose was exposed to the cold and tried to go back to sleep. But it didn’t go away. I loosened the mummy bag and switched on the penlight again. Everything I touched melted the frost on it and cooled my skin. I thought about my boots out in the vestibule and cringed at the thought of putting those cold pieces of iron back on my feet to venture out to pee. Then I had a thought – I was sleeping next to the door of the tent – I could probably actually relieve myself without having to get out of my sleeping bag. It sounded like the perfect idea at the time and I reached out and unzipped the bottom of the tent door – inched my sleeping back over to it – unzipped the bag – and took a whizz right in the vestibule without having to get out in the cold air. The next morning was rather comical as the four of us rousted ourselves from the relative warmth to venture outside and crawling into the vestibule noticing the colored snow and calling out – wtf – who pissed in the vestibule? That morning we had a group member that had the beginnings of frostbite on his feet and each of us took turns putting his foot onto our chest to warm them up.

This was a trip with the boy scouts known as Okpik -Inuit for Snowy Owl and pronounced as (OOk’ pick). A High Adventure winter camping/survival weekend that at the time (1980’s) was in Howland Maine. We had backpacks and sleds with our gear and skied into the woods about a mile or so and made camp…learning cold weather survival skills along the way. One of the things that sticks out in my mind is heating the water we would drink for the day and then wearing it around our necks under our clothing so that it warms the chest..and learning to layer properly so that the perspiration from the days exertion wouldn’t freeze you later.

I remembered this story this morning at 3:40 am. We’re in the middle of a pretty good cold snap here in Maine along with some pretty decent wind and this morning I felt that same sort of gentle brush of cold across my face that I felt all those years ago in that cold tent. As I get older I feel the cold more - I can

feel it enveloping and reaching out with it’s icy fingers. And I remembered that on the two trips we took to OKPIK my Dad was there too. On our second trip he experimented with digging a trench in the snow, lining it with a space blanket or similar, and sleeping in the trench with your sleeping bag with the theory that the surrounding snow would help to insulate you during the night. However, he did this within the drip edge of a big spruce – a spruce that had a lot of snow on it from recent snowfall. During the night the wind picked up a bit and the snow would slide off the spruce branches and onto him with an audible thump. I was probably 14 or 15 on those trips which would have made Dad about 55 at the time. I’m soon to be 45 and I would have to think long and very very hard before every going winter camping again – especially in those kinds of temperatures. Dad’s pretty tough in my book. If you’re reading this and you remember where in Howland the Adventure Base was please let me know – I’d love to go for a little walk up there after all these years.

Posted by fuck0500 in Maine Life

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Gramps Garage

While randomly passing by somewhere today I smelled my Gramp’s old garage and a wave of nostalgia washed over me. I’m not sure how one would even describe it to someone and come close to getting it right. How do you describe a combination of fresh air, cigarette smoke, firewood, gunpowder, whiskey,chain saws, deer meat, gardening tools, work boots, and wood smoke combined and steeped in lots and lots of time. I’ve read that smell can be a strong trigger for memory, and I instantly remembered poring over old pictures, listening to stories, shooting guns, looking for deer, fishing…but most of all I remembered wanting to be here…in Maine. Exploring whats around the next bend in the river or the next rise of the trail. Jumping at the explosion of the flushing grouse. Throwing out a lure and seeing the line instantly tighten with a fish.

Centerfolds from Playboy magazine hung on the walls as did the names and dates of his friends who had passed. In those days in Maine drinking during the day was an accepted practice, and the estate caretakers and gardeners would often congregate at Gramps garage for a drink at 9 am which was morning break. I would sit with them, a child some 60 years their junior and listen to all their stories, taking everything in. Ted Donnell, Clyde Carter, David Hyde, Tony Hamor, Elmer Green, Hap Haskell, Waldo Damon, Donald Bryant, Ralph Young, and Hughie Wright were part of the crew that would visit his garage. As I sit here today I can still hear and see them in my mind. Before 9 am Gramp would say he was having “apple juice” but after 9 he would call it a snort. You can read more about Gramp here.

I’m not religious but I always had a deep respect for how our town’s minister handled funerals. When Gramp died he took the time to grieve with us and learn some of Gramps stories and special quirks. The minister knew of Gramps garage, and after the funeral quietly handed my mother a piece of paper with a quote from Frederick Buechner.

Only God is Holy, just as only people are human. God’s holiness is God’s Godness. To speak anything else as holy is to say that it has something of God’s mark upon it. Times, places, things, and people can all be holy, and when they are, they are usually not hard to recognize.

One holy place I know is a workshop attached to a barn. There is a wood-burning stove in it made out of an oil-drum. There is a workbench, dark and dented, with shallow, crammed drawers behind one of which a cat lives. There is a girlie calendar on the wall, plus various lengths of chain and rope, shovels and rakes of different sizes and shapes, some worn-out jackets and caps on pegs, an electric clock that doesn’t keep time. On the workbench are two small plug-in radios both of which have serious things wrong with them. There are several metal boxes full of wrenches and a bench saw. There are a couple of chairs with rungs missing. The place smells mainly of engine oil and smoke–both of wood smoke and pipe smoke. The windows are small, even on bright days what light there is comes through mainly in window-sized patches on the floor.

I have no idea why this place is holy, but you can tell it is the moment you set foot in it if you have an eye for that kind of thing. For reasons known only to God, it is one place God uses for sending God’s love through.

Frederick Buechner’s Beyond Words, p. 156

Posted by fuck0500 in Hunting, Maine Life

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Maine Fur Trapping

Posted by fuck0500 in Maine Life, Trapping

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Alone in the Wilderness Dick Proenneke

DESTINATION- BACK AND BEYOND

I have often thought about what I would do out here if I were stricken with a serious illness, if I broke a leg, cut myself badly, or had an attack of appendicitis. Almost as quickly as the thought came, I dismissed it. Why worry about something that isn’t? . . . I have thought briefly about getting caught in rock slides or falling from a rock face. If that happened, I would probably perish on the mountain in much the same way many of the big animals do. I would be long gone before anyone found me. My only wish is that folks wouldn’t spend a lot of time searching. When the time comes for a man to look his Maker in the eye, where better could the meeting be held than in the wilderness?

If you have never come across the name Richard Proenneke (May 4, 1916-April 28, 2003), and there is a part of you that listens to the Wilderness calling, if you yearn for the way life should be, and enjoy the comfort of a hearth in a cabin on a snowy night, then you will probably be interested in his story.

Dick was born in Iowa, and spent time as a carpenter in the Navy during which he contracted rheumatic fever, and was bedridden for almost 6 months, vowing after to spend the rest of his life working on the strength and health of his body. After being discharged, he went to school and became a very adept diesel mechanic – his skill were well known and sought after in Kodiak Alaska where he had eventually moved. Dick’s heart was captured by the wildness of Alaska. In the spring of 1967, a contractor that Dick was working for was under pressure to hire only union men – Dick always felt he was his own man, and he did the job he had to do without worrying about the hours or conditions. It was the excuse he needed to plan his retirement at Twin Lakes, and at 51 Dick headed into the Wild and never looked back.

I was here to test myself, not that I had never done it before, but this time it was going to be a more thorough and lasting examination.

It would be a tough argument to win to find a person on earth that was more hardcore than Dick Proenneke. I can imagine one bit of his experience as I’ve built my own cabin from scratch using wood from the surrounding property, but I had the benefit of a chain saw. Dick did it all by hand, including a stone hearth and chimney. One thing that I found amazing when reading the book is that not only did he use only hand tools, to save on weight he only packed in the axe heads and other steel items and built the handles after he got there. Who does that???? It would be such a daunting task for me I would certainly quickly feel overwhelmed to think that I had to build my axe handle before starting to build my cabin.

Thankfully Dick kept a journal of all of his activities which is now a book “One Man’s Wilderness” and shot lots and lots of film, which is now a movie ” Alone in the Wilderness”, both of which are available at the end of this post. I am so thankful that he had the forethought to know that there are many of us that would relish and envy his life.

The book begins with one of my favorite poems by Robert Service – I’m Scared of it All;

I’m scared of it all, God’s truth! so I am;
It’s too big and brutal for me.
My nerve’s on the raw and I don’t give a damn
For all the “hoorah” that I see.
I’m pinned between subway and overhead train,
Where automobillies swoop down:
Oh, I want to go back to the timber again –
I’m scared of the terrible town.

I want to go back to my lean, ashen plains;
My rivers that flash into foam;
My ultimate valleys where solitude reigns;
My trail from Fort Churchill to Nome.
My forests packed full of mysterious gloom,
My ice-fields agrind and aglare:
The city is deadfalled with danger and doom –
I know that I’m safer up there.

I watch the wan faces that flash in the street;
All kinds and all classes I see.
Yet never a one in the million I meet,
Has the smile of a comrade for me.
Just jaded and panting like dogs in a pack;
Just tensed and intent on the goal:
O God! but I’m lonesome — I wish I was back,
Up there in the land of the Pole.

I wish I was back on the Hunger Plateaus,
And seeking the lost caribou;
I wish I was up where the Coppermine flows
To the kick of my little canoe.
I’d like to be far on some weariful shore,
In the Land of the Blizzard and Bear;
Oh, I wish I was snug in the Arctic once more,
For I know I am safer up there!

I prowl in the canyons of dismal unrest;
I cringe — I’m so weak and so small.
I can’t get my bearings, I’m crushed and oppressed
With the haste and the waste of it all.
The slaves and the madman, the lust and the sweat,
The fear in the faces I see;
The getting, the spending, the fever, the fret –
It’s too bleeding cruel for me.

I feel it’s all wrong, but I can’t tell you why –
The palace, the hovel next door;
The insolent towers that sprawl to the sky,
The crush and the rush and the roar.
I’m trapped like a fox and I fear for my pelt;
I cower in the crash and the glare;
Oh, I want to be back in the avalanche belt,
For I know that it’s safer up there!

I’m scared of it all: Oh, afar I can hear
The voice of my solitudes call!
We’re nothing but brute with a little veneer,
And nature is best after all.
There’s tumult and terror abroad in the street;
There’s menace and doom in the air;
I’ve got to get back to my thousand-mile beat;
The trail where the cougar and silver-tip meet;
The snows and the camp-fire, with wolves at my feet;
Good-bye, for it’s safer up there.

To be forming good habits up there;
To be starving on rabbits up there;
In your hunger and woe,
Though it’s sixty below,
Oh, I know that it’s safer up there!

In 1998 Dick entrusted his cabin and cache to the Park Service, after spending some 30 years alone in the Alaskan Wilderness. What an adventure it must have been. The Park Service is maintaining it as a historic site, and there was an agreement that he could return to stay in his cabin anytime he wished.

Dick lived out the last years of his life with his brother in California, and passed on Easter Sunday 2oo3 at the age of 87, reportedly from a stroke.

An amazing man, and an amazing life…thankfully he allowed us to share some of it.

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Natural Highways of the Woods

All my life people have been telling me you shouldn’t travel alone. But it’s interesting; I’ve never been told that by anybody who’s ever done it. - Bill Mason

Years ago there was a large tract of land that I liked to hunt – I liked it in part because it was bordered on all sides by woods roads, so one could effectively never take a wrong turn, as long as you could walk in a straight line, you would eventually find your way out. It allowed me to wander rather aimlessly without having to worry about sense of direction. However, I began to notice that invariably I would walk past the same places each time I was there. Deliberately I would enter through a different location each time, and yet once my mind wandered a bit I would begin noticing the same areas once again, which taught me about funneling. There are lots of studies and evidence that says in the absence of sun, landmarks, blindfolded, or in darkness people have a tendency to walk in circles, and while that may be true (I have certainly experienced that on a boat in the fog) I believe that if you turn someone loose in a vast tract of wilderness, they tend to walk along “funnels”. And wildlife do the same thing – which is why there are typically particular “crossings” where you tend to see the most wildlife.

When I asked a friend of mine who has professionally trapped marten for much of his life how I could spot a crossing or funnel his answer was that he couldn’t describe it to me, but he could show it to me. His journals show that the landscape naturally lends itself to certain routes of travel, and that these routes have held true over many years, even if areas were logged. There is a good story that he tells; he will sometimes take out of state people out on the trapline so they can experience what it is like, and one time he had a fellow from New Jersey riding with him, who said that he wanted to chose the spot where they next put in a set. Jerry said no problem, and in short order the guest said that he wanted to stop and make a set. He asked Jerry if he thought it was a good spot, and Jerry said that it wasn’t, but the guest said he wanted to set it anyway, and they did. Jerry, with a caveat to the listener that he was just having fun with the guy at this point, drove 200 yards down the road and said “this is the spot”, and set the location. And sure enough, when checking the sets the next day, Jerry’s spot produced a double of marten, a mere 200 yards from where the guest placed his sets, and upon this discovery the guest said that never again would he ever doubt Jerry’s word. And that’s how legends are formed. It’s interesting that if you walk a certain stretch of woods each day, you begin to notice the subtle changes that happen – bent grass or perhaps a bit of fur on a branch that wasn’t there the day before. I think our ancestors were much more in tune with the world, and used the natural lay of the land for ease of travel before the days of epirbs, cell phones, gps, or even compasses. That’s why the Native American names for places were much more meaningful than those of today – such as Passadumkeag, which means above the gravel bar, and describes the section of the Penobscot River where it meets the Passadumkeag river. And wildlife know them too – I came across an otter track once in the middle of nowhere, far from any source of water. I took a couple of days and followed it in both directions, finding the water where it came from, and where it was heading too, a distance of some 10 miles apart. I think the old ways of the woodsmen are somewhat lost today – being able to extricate yourself from any sort of situation, knowing where you are, and relating that to the surrounding country around you. I enjoyed seeing the old barely discernable marks on the trees whenThe Old Man from the sand pit took me along the old hunting path – a path my Grandfather used, and his grandfather before him. In those days people knew where they were in the woods, much as people today know where they are by what road they are on. It’s just a matter of learning the subtle clues and signs of the path you are traveling.

Posted by fuck0500 in Hunting, Maine Life, Trapping

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The Coyote and the Cat

Blackjack

Despite wanting to keep him indoors, Blackjack the cat attacked and jumped at the doorknob every morning with such fervor, and while some controversy surrounds letting a cat outside ( a friend of mine thinks that you should be required to purchase a hunting license if you let a cat outside) , he seemed to love being outside so much that I acquiesced to his demands and let him outside every day. He was an adopted from the shelter cat, and he had come a long way behavior-wise since coming into my home. Although I had never been particularly fond of cats, he was pretty special, and I had grown accustomed to him sitting on my lap at night kneading with his paws. He was usually there waiting for me each day when I got home, except this particular afternoon, he was not waiting for me. I wasn’t too worried when he didn’t come running after I called, but by dusk I was getting very concerned about his whereabouts. I strapped on the headlamp and followed his usual morning path into the woods. After a short walk of scanning the woods floor, in a little clearing I came across the tale. There were scuff marks in ground, and evidence of a short fight with some tufts of black hair that convinced me of my cat’s fate. Following the bent grass I came across fresh coyote tracks and that further cemented my theory that coyotes had got my cat. Although I know that the coyote was only following his instincts revenge immediately came to mind – an eye for an eye as it were…you took from me, now I will take from you. I thought about it, and decided to set a trap in the woods behind the house beyond where my cat was killed, which is legal here in Maine, and see what happened. Several days of checking went by with nothing happening, until early one morning I awoke to noises out back. I immediately went outside and heard the ticking of the trap pan and knew I had something. The headlamp revealed a huge coyote, which I quickly dispatched. End of story? This is when the story really began to get interesting. Four other coyotes were still in the woods, and were not leaving. About 50 yards out in a semicircle they howled and barked for almost a half hour before finally reluctantly turning back into the woods. I figured by the rukus the others were making I had caught the pack leader as well. Curious, and now intrigued, I threw some large bait out back after it snowed a couple of days later to see if and when they would return. It took two weeks before I saw tracks in the snow and the bait had been dug up and dragged back into the woods. I kept putting bait behind the house and began following the pack – I learned a lot about where they slept and the trails they used around the area, and saw some places that I didn’t know existed out there in the woods. Once January and coyote breeding season arrived I noticed something funny – there were coyote tracks that would come in from a side trail and mingle with the pack for a while before leaving on another side trail. They were big and heavy prints, and looked like a big coyote. One morning a couple of days later, shortly after leaving for work a big blonde coyote ran out in front of me. I decided to be late for work and followed him into the woods for a bit, and the tracks matched the ones I was seeing that were mingling in with the pack. A couple of weeks went by and the pack seemed to have accepted him, his tracks stayed with theirs and stopped leaving and returning, and their catnap beds in the snow returned to five from the four I had being seeing before. It seemed he was now one of there own. Then, one cold night in February I was sitting in my chair having a drink in the evening, when suddenly a coyote howl split the night like an emergency siren. It sounded like it was inside the house it was so loud. I quickly ran to the back door, grabbing my coyote howler on the way and flicked on the back light to reveal that blonde coyote just on the edge of the woods in the backyard looking and howling at the house. Chills ran up my spine as I watched him. I put the call to my lips and howled back. He sat still for a few minutes and with one more mournful howl turned back in to the woods and I never saw him again near the house. In my mind I believe he became the new pack leader that breeding season, and he was telling me the pack and I were even.

Posted by fuck0500 in Maine Life, Trapping

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Upper Allagash River

Sunset at Ramsey Ledges Allagash River

The lure of the North Maine Woods. I wanted to introduce my wife to that feeling – the wildness, the history, the remoteness that it seems you can only achieve from Northern Maine. I wanted the trip to be short, sweet, and easy, something that would instill the desire to return. I went through several options, the final three being accessing Allagash Lake through Johnson Pond, Churchill Lake via St. John’s Bridge, or the Upper Allagash River via the town of Allagash. I decided on the latter for a couple of reasons – first being that it was the easiest to drive to. For the Lakes the drive is pretty long on dirt roads and there are a lot of “if’s” ; if the road isn’t washed out or otherwise impassable, if the water level is high enough out of Johnson Pond, if the wind is right, and many other variables. Turns out the decision against the Lakes was good – we would have been windblown (unable to go anywhere) for a couple of days. So, we headed for the town of Allagash and entered the North Maine Woods headed for Michaud Farm and hoping to camp at Ramsay Ledges, thinking it would be easy to find someone to shuttle us from Allagash back to the campsite so we could paddle the last ~13 miles or so of the river, and we could see Allagash Falls along the way. I always enjoy the ride up Route 11 to Fort Kent, but I got a surprise when I got to the North Maine Woods gate. Apparently, fees have gone up since I was there last in 2006. I remember when I canoed the entire river, the camping fee was 6 dollars per person per night, very reasonable in my opinion, and on subsequent visits the fee had not changed. The North Maine Woods (NMW) fees have increased a lot apparently, and it turned out that between the Allagash Wilderness Waterway (AWW) and NMW fees that camping there now comes to 20 dollars a night for two people. For me, that is above a line that I’m willing to pay for camping considering what you are getting, which is a picnic table, fire pit, and place for your tent. That price is approaching what I can stay in a hotel for, in fact, when I went moose hunting in the Allagash region my friend Peter and I were able to get a cabin with shower, stove, and beds for 15 dollars per person per night from one of the local guides. It just seems to me that to pay that price for camping is too much – in paying that I would expect a stack of firewood, or a guarantee of no bugs or some other amenity. Speaking of bugs on our trip they lived up to their legend, clouds of blackflies, mosquitoes, moose flies, horseflies, and the especially awful no-see-ums. If you are camping in the Allagash region during spring or early summer, check your tent netting carefully and be sure it has no-see-um mesh. They were able to get through mine, and they attack in clouds often at 2 or 3 in the morning and there is nothing quite like the burning sensation of a no-see-um at that hour. So, be prepared to brave the bugs. We made it to Ramsay Ledges without incident, seeing a small moose on the way. I heard a bird calling on the river that sounded like an osprey to me, and I had assumed that it was until we went out for a paddle upriver towards dusk and I got to hear an eagle calling. Although I have seen many of them, that was the first time I have ever heard one call I think, tipping it’s head to the sky. The campsite had lots of rabbits (snowshoe hares) running around, and I so wish I had a video of the one hopping by the tent that paused to look and flick his ears at hearing the soft snoring coming from within.

North Allagash Deer

I loved hearing the mergansers with their croaking cry flying up the river, and the light mist on the river in the morning. We drove down to the local restaurant to try to get a ride back up the ~11 miles to the campsite so we could paddle the upper river to the truck, but the only taker I could find said it would cost 60 bucks. I actually laughed at him thinking that it was a joke like some Mainers will do, but it wasn’t. That really soured me on our visit to the Allagash region…I was prepared to pay as much as 3o, but 60 is outrageous to me for an 11 mile shuttle. Just from my standpoint, in his shoes I probably would have done it for free and done some fishing on the way back. So, we headed back to the campsite and paddled upriver a bit and did some fishing. The bugs were merciless upon arriving back to the campsite, and being unable to do the trip downstream we wanted to, we decided to leave and head down to the The Passadumkeag River and stay at camp to salvage what we could of the time off. We had a whippoorwill calling at 4 in the morning which was awesome, and the game cam caught a fox wandering around camp that morning too. Fishing the next day on the river that got me thinking. Compared to the Allagash Region there were no bugs at all on the Passadumkeag and it is just as wild. There are many many wild and scenic rivers in Maine where very few people paddle, The Machias River for example, and the camping is free. There are less bugs, less people, and less commercialization in my opinion. So while the Allagash is a must paddle wilderness experience for sure, I think the next time I have the itch for exploring remote wilderness, I’m going to be looking closer to home. I can get the same experience, see less people, camp for free, and I’m sure I can find someone in a store or restaurant to shuttle me upstream for something more reasonable than 60 bucks.

Here’s a short video of our trip;

Posted by fuck0500 in Canoeing, Fishing, Maine Life

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Posts Tagged ‘wildness’

OKPIK Maine High Adventure

Gramps Garage

Maine Fur Trapping

Alone in the Wilderness Dick Proenneke

Natural Highways of the Woods

The Coyote and the Cat

Upper Allagash River

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