The Channel Shore by Charles Bruce

Author:Charles Bruce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Formac
Published: 2018-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

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North of the coastal slope, beyond the fringes of cultivation and the old second line of settlements, the woods swept unbroken over a second fold in the land. Here there are lonely lakes, swamps tucked between wavelike hills, aimless brooks and stillwaters in which are sourced the creeks that slip through hidden intervales and narrow valleys to emerge finally in bushy pastures and tumble to the Channel. Here there were miles of red spruce and fir, low wet land studded with black spruce, hills clothed with white maple and rock maple, stony plateaus of white and yellow birch.

This is the forest behind the Channel Shore, stretching east and west, rolling north until its brook-water begins to lie in secret ponds, to crawl and slip the other way, northward toward the railroad and the farms along the gulf.

Much of this wilderness had been granted long ago to early settlers, as back lands additional to their farms along the sea. A hundred years and more ago, in the time of early prosperity, the second and third generations of settlers bought up more, seeing, perhaps, a vision of villages and farms.

That dream was dead. Once in a while a man and his sons would cut a road and haul enough hardwood to rip up for a kitchen floor. Sometimes, in the mackerel-fishing days, a man would search these hills for pine and twitch it out to be sawn into planking for a two- master. Now and then when a wood-lot nearer home was chopped out, you had to go back for fire-wood. And lately there had been some pulpwood-cutting there. But much of it had never been touched by an axe.

On the southern fringe of this were the lots Grant had cruised with Dan Graham. This was where he went, with Alan, in the days following their talk across the stove about a saw-mill; the days following Renie’s reminder of the past.

Friday morning, he had glanced at Alan across the breakfast table and spoken lightly, smiling. “Well—d’you think school can get along without you, for one day? What d’you think, Renie?”

Renie’s answering smile, Alan thought, had been a little startled. He had been startled himself. Startled, surprised, and delighted. This was more than he had allowed himself to hope for. It was only one day . . . but for once work was being placed ahead of school. He felt a soaring sense of freedom.

That morning they had followed the road to Grahams Lake and turned east, walking along the lake beach and then up through scattered hardwood, chopped over long ago and now growing up again, to strike one of the old hauling-roads leading in from Katen’s Rocks. This they tramped back to its point of disappearance in the timber.

Now, Friday and Saturday and Sunday and Christmas were over. Sunday you had to put up with. But Christmas, Alan thought, had been a long day. Oh, there was the laughing excitement of presents, in the morning, but ... He felt a little guilty about this.

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