True North by Elliott Merrick

Author:Elliott Merrick [Merrick, Elliott; Millman, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58394-300-7
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2010-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

December 11

I am taking notes tonight in my battered, eternal book under greater difficulties than usual, for this is the smallest tilt we have ever been in. It is much smaller than our tent.

Victor was behind, fixing traps this afternoon, and Kay and I came on over two ridges and lakes to find the tilt. It was on a level shore dotted with big snowed-up boulders whose peaks, showing above the snow, were almost indistinguishable from the peak of the tilt. We walked up and down and up and down until Victor came and shoveled out one boulder, which turned out to be a tilt. The walls are only four logs high, and the door is only two logs high. Arch built it long ago and planned to have it seven by six. He cut the logs that length, and of course the corner notches took up more than a foot, so it is less than six by five inside. Outside, by a piece of twine were hanging four weasel carcasses, one marten, and a mink, which is Harvey’s way of saying he has been in here and taken them out of the traps. The path really belongs to Harvey, but Victor, who is his brother, furs it on shares.

When we had wood cut up and water carried from the cascade brook, and snow shoveled off the roof so it wouldn’t leak, we crawled inside. It was certainly a jam for the three of us and a hot tin stove. Victor says when he is here alone he sleeps diagonally from corner to corner, that being the only way he can stretch out. He cut up the bunk and burned it last year, as it was too short to be of any use. We each sat with our backs in a corner and our legs out straight in the middle, one pair on top of the other pair. We had to take turns getting each other’s moccasins and leggings off. Somehow we all feel very good tonight, and we don’t care how bad the prospects for sleep look.

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