Hunts and Home Fires by Dennis Lattery

Author:Dennis Lattery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publication Consultants

photo by Charles Allen

Chapter 33

The Woodstove

A FRIEND OF MINE, WHILE FLOATING A REMOTE RIVER in central Alaska, accidentally happened upon a tumbledown log cabin in the timber off the river. It was so old, a part of its obviously wellbuilt roof was near the point of caving into the structure. Like most wilderness cabins, it had the door latched but not locked, making it available, as was the general custom, to anyone who might be in trouble on the trail. There was nothing inside he could use to date when it had been built. It was small, as was also the custom, for the bigger the cabin, the greater the amount of wood needed to heat it. From what was in the cabin, all my friend could figure was that this was probably a deserted trapline shelter.

The only thing out of the ordinary about the camp, a perplexing thing at first, was the rusted little woodstove inside the cabin. The oddity was that the stove was elevated off the floor on a wood crib filled with sand. This raised the cabin heater over 2 feet off the floor, not a real good idea, it seemed, for keeping the lower part of the cabin reasonably warm in country where the outside winter temperature can easily reach fifty degrees below zero.

My friend solved the mystery, at least to his satisfaction, and left the cabin in the woods behind to continue its lonely journey into oblivion. The trapper, he surmised, had neglected to haul enough stove pipe to the site when he first built the place who knows how long ago. The user had to compensate by raising the stove off the floor so the pipe he did bring with him was long enough to reach up through the roof, a construction error he apparently never bothered to correct later.

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