Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden

Author:Joseph Boyden
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP (CANADA)
Published: 2009-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

21

A FEW FEET

BELOW THE EARTH

Bush life is simple. Repetitive. My father knew that only three necessities exist in the bush. Fire, shelter, and food. You dedicate your every waking moment either to the actual pursuit or to the thought of these three things.

When I arrived, I knew I was good for a while. The laziness set in. I had canned food, cigarettes, and whisky. Summer was at her peak. I caught a few pan-size trout in my first casts, and that added to my complacency. But August had come and was going. Already the nights were cooling down, and the sun took longer to warm me in the morning. So I shook off the blanket of content and began to prepare for the autumn and winter.

Plenty of animals live on the island, this island that would take days to walk across. Beaver and muskrat, otter, ptarmigan, grouse, geese and ducks. Plenty of black spruce, alder, tamarack, but no hardwood, and this would make the collecting of winter wood a constant chore. I’d been setting snares again. Goose wings tied to willow for the fox, and carefully built cubby sets, little teepees built big enough for a lynx to enter, a rabbit fur tied to a stick inside that tempts the lynx into the wire noose.

I slept in a canvas prospector’s tent on a small rise by the river, my plane nearby, concealed in spruce boughs so that it couldn’t be seen from above. I had no choice but to keep a fire going at night, and the light of it could give me away if they were truly searching. I needed it not so much for the heat but for the companionship, the comfort. I didn’t worry too much, my fire a tiny sparkle of sand on a gigantic beach.

Each day I rose before the sun and made the smallest pot of coffee I could manage. I did not sleep well, me. My leg bothered me most at night, the ache of it a dull annoyance. I tried not to obsess about what I had done. Just the opposite. I focused on my daily existence and scouted this new area, found a few beaver dams, and made note that with the freeze I would begin to set traps here for them. I found the rabbit trails and made a note of them, too. I’d wait till closer to winter to begin that snaring. Rabbit would be the key to my existence if I didn’t shoot anything bigger.

I worked on and by the means I’d chosen. Fire was the first. Keep it going. Collect what I needed to in order to keep it going. Repeat dozens and dozens of times a week. Not much gas to waste for the chainsaw, so I relied on the saw and on the maul. I found the fallen and dead wood that hadn’t rotted, sawed it into lengths, and dragged it to my camp. I built a pallet for it to keep it off the ground.

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