Tag: Outdoors Page 1 of 3

To fully appreciate the little things of life, you should go out to a berry patch in shorts

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 26, 1941.

“The bears,” said Jimmie Frise, “are going hungry in many parts of the country these days.”

“We hardly need pity the wild animals,” I submitted. “It is only humanity that needs our pity now.”

“The blueberry crop,” continued Jim, “has been a complete failure in enormous areas of the country due to the drought. And blueberries are the staple food of bears during July and August.”

“They can turn to grubs,” I suggested, “and ants in rotten logs. I’ve seen logs torn to tinder by bears searching for grubs.”

“It’s the blueberries,” insisted Jim, “with their big sugar content that give the bears their main supply of fat for hibernating. If they don’t get their blueberries, they go to sleep when the snow comes pretty thin and gaunt. They don’t sleep well.”

“And if you don’t sleep well for four months on end,” I admitted, “you wake up pretty cranky.”

“There’s going to be some cranky bears next spring,” assured Jimmie. “And some hungry ones too. This is a lean year for everybody, man and beast. Berries of every kind have been dried on the bushes; raspberries, wild strawberries; even the wild cherries did not come to anything in huge areas of the north. Think of all the birds that soon will be coming streaming down out of the far north, where they have been raising their broods.”

“They’ll get a big shock,” I said, “when they arrive in these parts and find nothing to eat.”

“It’s worse than that,” declared Jimmie. “Vast numbers of them won’t survive. What food there is will be snapped up by the first passers-by. As each wave of them comes south, they will find less and less food. Immense numbers of them will delay a little, trying to get enough food to carry them the next stage of the journey. But the frost, sleet, gales and snow will get them.”

“You paint a dismal picture,” I said.

“Nature,” stated Jimmie, “is a crap shooter. She just rolls the dice. Sometimes it comes up a seven and sometimes eleven. Nobody, not even nature herself, knows what’s coming up. We are always talking about the laws of nature, as if those laws were kindly and beneficent. We try to pretend that nature’s laws are framed for our special benefit. But it is not so at all. About the only law of nature there really is, is that if it comes up a seven when nature rolls the dice, you live. If it comes up eleven, you die.”

“Nature is cruel?” I offered.

“Nature is indifferent,” replied Jim. “Gloriously, serenely indifferent. She knows that all things come to an end anyway. The mightiest mountains she ever heaved up in the past are being eaten away by the rain drops. Nothing in the world is changeless. All nature does is carry out her laws – such as that water runs down hill and wind blows where it is drawn by low pressure. What the water does as it run down hill, what the wind does as it blows, is of no concern to her whatever.”

A Staggering Thought

“But how about all these animals, these bees and insects,” I demanded, “that nature leaves in the lurch when she pulls one of these droughts?”

“They’ll all been left in the lurch before,” explained Jim. “All these creatures, all these separate atoms of life, these bears, birds, insects to the number of so many billions that it would be easier to count the stars than to count the living creatures on this earth, are the descendants of creatures who have survived a million years of droughts and ice ages and volcanic eruptions and fires and storms of all time. Some people get dizzy trying to imagine all the separate and distinct atoms of life that have been lived and died in the past thousand years only, including men, horses, cattle, birds, fish, insects – stupendous billions upon billions of them, each owning, for a little while, a tiny share of life. Then losing it. And in all that time, nature has not cared a whoop for one or the other of them, but has gone ahead serenely minding her laws, making the water run down hill and the wind to blow in the direction in which low pressure draws it, the carnival of life going heedlessly on, ducking and dodging.”

“Ducking and dodging is right,” I echoed. “Yet these poor creatures like the bears have had nothing to do with the drought that has wiped out the blueberry crop.”

“It isn’t a moral question,” explained Jimmie. “It is for no sin on their part that the countless little birds will starve and die in a blizzard this fall.”

“Unless for the sin of being little birds,” I submitted.

“You can get very complicated in an argument about nature,” said Jimmie. “I think it’s best to adopt some good old-time religion and not go wandering all over the place thinking.”

“But you’ve got me worried about those birds,” I protested. “There must be billions of birds coming south in another few weeks, most of them newborn birds only out of the egg this past June.”

“So what? said Jim coldly.

“Billions of them,” I said excitedly. “Look. If I can go out in September and sit in a country corner and count 500 birds passing me – warblers, song sparrows, robins, thrushes, bluebirds – if I, one man in one fence corner, can count 500 a day and that’s easy, then figure the width of the continent. Figure how far one man can see sitting in a fence corner. And figure, if you can, that endless procession, day and night, day after day, of little birds stumbling along southward…”

“It’s a staggering thought, all right,” agreed Jim.

“Is there nothing that can be done to help them?” I demanded. “Suppose we asked all the farmers to leave one row of grain along their fences? Suppose we formed a sort of bird Red Cross society to act in this emergency of the great drought, and set out food of all kinds in city and town and village and in the fields and woods…”

“We have no time for the birds,” put in Jimmie. “It’s more than we can do to see all humanity fed this year.”

“Well, it seems a great pity,” I said, “that added to our human woes are all these other woes in the world.”

Goin’ Raspberry Pickin’

“Cheer up,” said Jim. “We’ve all survived our woes, both man and beast and bird and bug. We who are here today, every man and every bug and fly, are here because our ancestors were nimble. The ones that did not know how to survive left no descendants.”

“And the lucky ones,” I reminded him.

“Yes, some of us are here by sheer luck, too,” agreed Jim. “The drought has not been universal. There are plenty of areas where the berries have ripened in the ordinary course. And down through those areas, as usual, will pass the myriads of birds. And in those areas, the bears and raccoons will wax fat for winter.”

“I wish I knew where there were some good blueberry patches,” I put in. “I feel a year is not to be completely counted unless I have picked a few pails of blueberries.”

“I’m afraid the blueberries are out,” said Jim. “The French call blueberries ‘rock berries,’ and that’s what has scuttled them in the dry spell. The rocks burned them up.”

“No wild strawberries, either,” I said. “And no wild raspberries.”

“Yes, I know where there is a good patch of wild raspberries,” said Jimmie. “Or nearly wild, anyway.”

“Maybe I could survive,” I admitted, “if I picked a few pails of wild raspberries. There are certain ceremonies in life that I like to observe. And picking berries is one of them.”

“This place,” said Jim, “I have in mind is an old abandoned farm. The farm has gone back to bush. The ruins of the farm house foundation are just humps in the turf. But yellow briars grow there, and lilac bushes 20 feet high. And out at the back, there is a big wild patch of what must have once been a cultivated raspberry patch. It is in amongst high woods now, and the woods shelter them. And there is a spring rises in the woods which flows out in a sort of bog, and this waters the berry patch…”

“Is it far?” I inquired.

“It’s not an hour and a half from town,” replied Jimmie.

Which, with daylight saving time and the boss being away on his holidays, meant it was no trick at all to arrange a little berry picking trip. When Jimmie picked me up at the house, he protested:

“You can’t wear shorts picking raspberries! Go and put on your heaviest pants.”

“Tut, tut,” I said, getting in the car with my five-quart pail.

“Look, I’ve got overalls on over my regular pants,” insisted Jim. “You’ll get torn to pieces.”

“I just pick around the edges,” I explained.

So off we went and it was a lovely drive. There is no time like late July to see the country fairly leaning at you with bounty and beauty. We arrived at the old farm in less than an hour and a half and when we drove in the abandoned lane, we could see no wheel marks and realized that nobody had come and picked the berry patch before us.

Back of the brush-grown farm site, beyond the lilac bushes and the thick tangles of yellow briar which, about June 15, must be a glorious spectacle of solid masses of daffodil yellow roses, we found the berry patch just as Jim had promised. All around it a grassy bog from the spring fed it with water. And 50 feet this side of it, you could smell the indescribable perfume of raspberries, and you could see the soft dusty red glow of them, hanging ripe and in their prime.

“Gosh, Jimmie,” I exclaimed, “in this year of drought, what a glorious sight. It’s a miracle.”

“One of the laws of nature,” explained Jim, “is that there are always miracles.”

“Now, look,” said he, as we approached the dense and thickly tangled canes, “don’t go into that patch in those shorts. You can get an awfully nasty rip from one of those thick canes, you aren’t careful.”

“Just around the edges,” I assured him, already picking some of the nearest berries and letting them fall with that beautiful sound into the pail. The first berries into a pail are always the merriest.

Jim took a little walk around the patch and finally selected his ground and waded in.

“Jim,” I called, “look over here. I never saw such berries. Come in here and pick.”

“I’m okay here,” replied Jim. “I’ve got a good spot.”

“But you never saw such…”

“Look out for the bees and wasps,” called Jim. “We’re not the only creatures of nature who have found this patch.”

There were a lot of bees. Bees, wasps, flies, even hornets. I drew my hand back just in time from one lovely bough-tip of berries as a big bumble bee detached itself and whirled around a few times in anger at me. I backed up. I caught my leg on a berry cane.

“Ouch,” I said. “Jim, come over here. You never saw such berries.”

“They’re over here too,” said Jim patiently. and I could hear the pleasant plunk, plunk of berries hitting the bottom of his pail.

Seeing I was only working the edges, I wandered around the patch, picking a few here and a few there, and finding one after the other such glorious drooping clusters of big dusty red berries that I could not help exclaiming to Jim and begging him to come and pick.

“Look,” said Jim, rising up in the middle of the patch, “will you come in here and take a look yourself? I’ve got berries as big and plentiful as any here. The way you pick berries is to set to and pick ’em, not go wandering around yelling at people to come…”

“Okay, okay,” I reassured him. “Okay.”

“No,” said Jim firmly, “come and look. Pick your steps carefully through that gap there and take one good, long look at what I’m picking here. And then you will shut up.”

“Okay, okay,” I soothed him. “Go ahead. Miss all the loveliest berries you ever saw.”

“Pick ’em yourself,” yelled Jim sharply, and disappeared down in the patch again. And I could hear the industrious clunk, plunk until he had covered the bottom of the pail.

I went around the patch once and I picked several good cupfuls of berries I could reach. But the best berries are never on the outside edges of the patch. And I could see dozens of prize-winning boughs just a little way in. But to risk wading into the patch was not to be thought of.

Finally, I saw such a patch as could not be denied. It fairly staggered with beautiful big berries. Bees buzzed special ecstasy around it. But I knew the bees would go away when anyone comes near. So I got a stick and used it to part the bushes as I worked my way very gingerly in towards this particularly gorgeous display.

“Jimmie,” I called from amidst this bower fairly soggy with the perfume of the berries, “if you want to do me a favor, just come and one look…”

Jimmie rose sharply from amidst the thicket, his face red from stooping, and said:

“Listen, you come here. You come and see as pretty a spread of raspberries as any in this whole patch. There is enough here to keep me busy until my pails full. Now leave me alone.”

The berries hung in such clusters you I could reach out your cupped hand and just half close your fingers on bunch and they would drop into your hand. I ate the first few handfuls. There is nothing like a berry fresh off the bush. Strawberries fresh off the ground are sandy. Even blueberries, eaten right off the bush, are usually a little warm from the sun. They need to be chilled in the ice-box and then served with milk, not cream. But raspberries fresh off the cane are the elixir of flavor, scent and feel, as they melt in your mouth.

I shifted the bushes about with my stick. defending myself with the pail behind, and suddenly unveiled new glories.

“Jim,” I called, “you will excuse me just once more, but here is a patch of berries the like of which I am willing to bet you a dollar you never saw.”

“Aw, dry up,” came Jim’s muffled reply.

“You are simply wasting your time,” I said, reaching forth and selecting the choicest, the most bulbous, the ones that simply dropped in your hand when you touched them, “simply wasting your…”

An electric shock struck me in the leg.

I moved smartly to the right.

Two more red hot shocks smacked my leg and at the same time. I heard a sound like a tiny airplane’s engine coming nearer and nearer. I looked towards the sound. And in the thick of this choicest patch of raspberries the world may ever see, hung a large gray wasp’s nest.

And from it, like soldiers pouring out of the Maginot Line, streamed a bright yellow string of wasps.

“Hoy, whoof!” I yelled, leaping away.

“Take it easy, take it easy,” shouted Jim, who had stood up amongst the bushes.

“Whoof, wasps,” I bellowed, leaping as high as I could, as far with each leap, the bushes clinging and rasping and scratching all unheeded in comparison with the little electric hot shots the wasps were giving me on all fronts.

“You’ll murder yourself,” roared Jim, starting to come to my aid

A hundred yards away, up near the car, he overtook me. His pail was already half full. Mine had been spilled empty. He set his pail down and started gathering mud to plaster on my several stings, while I dabbed gasoline from the car’s carburetor on my countless scratches.

“I wonder,” I said wistfully, “how nature came to invest wasps?”

“That’s another thing you’ve got wrong,” stated Jim. “Nature doesn’t invent anything. She just lets things invent themselves to try and get around her.”

“Well, sir,” I submitted, “raspberries have done pretty well for themselves.”

So I sat in the car and convalesced while Jimmie filled my pail and his both.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 22, 1943.

“The more primitive we become now,” summed up Jimmie Frise, “the better our chance of survival.”

“You would hardly call the modern war machine primitive,” I objected.

“I refer to the human factor,” stated Jim. “True, our aircraft, our new ships, our latest tanks and fighting machines of every kind are increasingly complicated and technical. But the men who operate them have to become more primitive as human beings exactly in proportion as the machines become more complex. To fly the very latest bombers at great heights the crews have to become primitive as Eskimos or prehistoric men so as to stand the intense cold. The crews of our newest fighting ships on the sea have to have, not the qualities of Nelson’s sailors, but of the Vikings and Phoenicians who sailed their long ships recklessly into the unknown. The British Navy hasn’t been in habit of fighting its battles alone in the Arctic circle and in the jungle seas of the south.”

“All you mean by primitive,” I scoffed, “is physically tough.”

“I mean primitive,” declared Jimmie. “The dictionary says primitive means early, ancient, old-fashioned, simple, rude and original. What’s the use of being physically tough on board a destroyer that gets wrecked off Greenland? Your toughness won’t do much for you, unless you have also developed the primitive qualities of your mind and spirit. It’s the guy with the primitive mind among the crew who will steer the lifeboat to land without, a compass and make a camp out of nothing. Have you seen that movie, ‘Desert Victory’?¹“

“Who hasn’t?” I retorted.

“The men who are winning those battles,” asserted Jim, “are not merely tough. They are not merely skilful in using the tanks, machines and technical weapons. The ones who drive through are the ones who have developed the primitive characteristics of the human race. When the tank quits and the gun jams and the machine breaks down, it is a primitive fighter who keeps right on going. And wins.

“I suppose you are right,” I mused.

Too Much Civilization

“There are certain primitive characteristics of the human race,” insisted Jim, “that should never have been weeded out of us. Civilization got so carried away by its own rush, this past hundred years, that it seemed bent on depriving us of every primitive virtue. The whole aim and object of civilization in recent times appears to be to convert humanity away from the primitive. Every invention, every new device, from kitchen utensils to social laws, has been to make men act, look and be as unlike primitive men as possible. If we find a band of Indians in some a remote and impenetrable jungle, a department of the government rears up and goes crazy until it can capture the primitives and load them up with electric toasters, portable radios and vitamin pills.”

“You are confusing primitive,” I said, “with underprivileged.”

“I suppose,” said Jim, “you would say those soldiers in ‘Desert Victory’ were underprivileged? I tell you the very qualities that modern society has tried to eliminate from mankind in the past century are the qualities now that will win the war for us.”

“Toughness?” I repeated.

“No,” said Jim. “The ability to go on living, acting and carrying out your plans even after all ordinary means have been taken from you. The Germans figured we were so dependent on the means of modern life, the conveniences, tools, gadgets, comforts and equipment of modern life, that we would be helpless without them. In France, they proved right. The minute the Germans smashed the cities and drove the city dwellers out of their towns, the French were helpless. They were unable to live without roofs, taps, windows, kitchens and feather beds. So they surrendered. Then the Germans attacked the British under the same delusion. They tried to smash the cities. But they didn’t quite succeed. They didn’t smash enough houses. So they attacked the Russians. But the Russians were primitive.”

“Hmm, I see,” I admitted.

“The Russians could still live without cities and towns,” went on Jim. “They could live in the woods, in the fields, in root cellars, in scooped out holes in hillsides. They did not feel helpless. So they fought. And they won. Suddenly the shoe was on the other foot. The primitiveness of the Russians proved greater than the primitiveness of the Germans. The Germans had to have shelter against the Russian winter. So the Russians deprived them of that shelter; and they were ruined.”

To Study Woodcraft

“You are getting at something,” I stated shrewdly. “Something is cooking.”

“Yes,” confessed Jim. “I have a plan. A scheme. A project.”

“To make me primitive?” I inquired.

“No,” proceeded Jim eagerly. “I am going to start a little neighborhood group around here to study woodcraft.”

“Boy scouts?” I suggested sweetly.

“If we were attacked,” declared Jim, warmly, “and driven out into the fields and woods, it would be the Boy Scouts among us who would show us how to survive. What I propose is to organize a little group of a dozen or so of our neighbors into a class. And each weekend, we will hike for the out-of-doors, with nothing more than we can carry of bedding, food and utensils, and study how to live in primitive fashion.”

“It’s just a scheme,” I accused, “to go fishing. It’s just a way you’ve thought up of making respectable, in wartime, your own desire to get into the country on week-ends.”

“I’m serious,” declared Jim firmly. “Over in Buffalo, the natural history museum has organized classes to teach the people how to live in the open. It’s a war measure. At Cornell university, they also have organized classes to study woodcraft, to teach people how to survive without the aid of organized towns and cities. Our boys are all gone to war and have learned how to fight. But we are snuggled down here at home, unprepared to fight at all. If our cities are smashed, we quit. Mark my words.”

“Would woodcraft save us?” I snorted.

“Do you know how to make bread in a frying pan?” cried Jim indignantly. “Well, there isn’t a prospector, a lumber jack or a trapper who doesn’t know how to make bread in a frying pan. Do you know how to make a shelter out of boughs so that you can sleep dry and warm on a rainy night? No. Well, every living man, woman and child in Canada ought to know.”

“Can’t we take tents?” I inquired.

“How many people, in Toronto,” demanded Jim, “have a tent handy that they could pick up and take with them if they were bombed out? Don’t be silly. If we are going to fight, as Canadians, we have to know how to survive on what we can carry on our backs. The greatest woodsmen in America say that a pack of 40 pounds is a burden for anything more than a short portage. Thirty pounds is plenty. And the more you can get your pack below 30, the better off you will be for a long journey.”

With What You Can Carry

“In France, in the retreat to Dunkirk,” I admitted, “I saw people trying to get away with loads in wheelbarrows, baby carriages and hand wagons – that is, after their cars gave out for want of gas.”

“All you can take is what you can carry,” announced Jim. “And first comes an axe, then a frying pan and a pail, then blankets. Make a bundle of that alone, without any extra clothes, spare boots, weapons, first aid kit, fishing tackle, rubber sheet or any precious possessions you can’t abandon, and see how far you would like to carry it. I tell you, about the best way the people of Canada can spend their week-ends this summer is going out as families, and living in the open on what they can carry on their backs. It will show them how helpless they are, if nothing else.”

“To tell you the truth, Jim,” I confessed, “I think it is a swell idea. Not that I think the day will ever come when we Canadians will ever have to take to the woods. But at least a little experience living in the open with only what we can carry on our backs will make us a little less snooty towards the French people. There are a lot of us who feel quite high and haughty about the French. They think they should have stuck it out longer. Well, a few days in the open with nothing but a blanket, a frying pan and a pail might develop a little more sympathetic attitude in the hearts of some of our cockiest citizenry.””

“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, “seven of the neighbors have already expressed themselves as being interested in my scheme. I have spent the last couple of evenings chatting with whoever I saw out raking his garden…”

“Good for you,” I cried. “Are there any young men among them?”

“No, they’re mostly our age,” said Jim. “I think maybe seven is enough for the first party. If we get too many in the first lot, it might prove a flop. We’ll pioneer the scheme and work out a practical system for teaching woodcraft. For example, we’ll each carry our blankets, rubber ground sheet, spare shoes, extra socks, sweaters, etc. Then we’ll divide the community items, such as axe, pails, fry pans, and the food we take, among the lot of us equally.”

“That sounds good,” I agreed.

“We’ll go by street car to the city limits,” outlined Jim expansively, “and then hike for the country, taking back roads, until we come to some wild bit of country where we can make camp. We will construct brush lean-to shelters. We will study fire-making. How to build fire under difficulties. How to make camp bread. Camp cookery, without canned goods. The first week-end, we will study the rudiments. On successive week-ends, we can go into the refinements of making shelters, cooking, and getting the utmost out of living off the land through the art of woodcraft…”

“When do we start the program?” I inquired.

“All seven,” announced Jim triumphantly, “are set for this week-end.”

“I make eight,” I announced heartily.

“You make nine,” corrected Jim, who stated that he was going to be the captain.

The Pioneers Assemble

Friday night, at Jim’s house, there was a meeting of the neighbors to discuss the plans for the morrow. Three of them could not come on account of engagements, which left the six of us. Without exception, we were all, to some extent, woodsmen. Each of us had been fishing, or shooting or had been in the old war or laid some similar claim to knowing a thing or two about how to look after ourselves in difficult circumstances.

One of them wanted to bring a tent. Another had a patent charcoal camp broiler he would like to bring along, and we could take sirloin steaks for the party.

“And boys,” he said enthusiastically, “I’ll serve you up the swellest charcoal broiled steaks you ever…”

“No, no, gentlemen,” cried Jimmie. “This isn’t a camping party we are going on. This is research. This is a study group, to see how men, suddenly deprived of all the civilized means of subsistence, can carry on their lives with vigor, purpose and health.”

When we came to the grub list, we ran into other difficulties. Jimmie insisted that no canned goods should go.

“This isn’t a canoe trip,” he explained. “What we have, we carry on our backs. For miles. Canned goods are too heavy. We aren’t even taking bread. We are taking corn meal, flour and baking soda, and I am going to make bread in the frying pan, propped up before the camp fire…”

“How often have you made it?” inquired the neighbor who owned the charcoal camp grill.

“I have a recipe,” retorted Jim, “certified by Dillon Wallace, Horace Kephart, Dan Beard and all the greatest woodsmen of America².”

In the end, two of the party said they would have to drop out. The man who owned the tent said he had been troubled with sciatica the last four years. And the man who owned the charcoal camp grill said his doctor had only last week warned him about his stomach. But, not counting the three members unavoidably absent, but in all likelihood coming with us tomorrow, that left a good company of us still in the scheme.

Saturday, as you recall, dawned dull and threatening. By noon, there could be no doubt in anybody’s mind but Jimmie’s that rain was imminent. At 1 p.m., after phone calls to all the pioneers, only Mr. Fresco, Jim and I were on Jim’s veranda for the departure. Mr. Fresco had never done anything in his life but work hard as an accountant, to save up enough money to retire and take a trip to Europe. Just when he got his fortune made, in 1939, the war broke. Mr. Fresco was coming with us in desperation.

Each of us had a pack made up of blankets, ground sheet some items of spare clothing. What little food we three required, Jim carried in his pack – bacon, flour, six eggs. one small tin of milk contributed by Mr. Fresco, and baking powder, a fistful of dried prunes, a packet of dehydrated soup, etc. I carried the frying pan and pails, Mr. Fresco, the axe. Each of us had our own cup, plate, eating utensils.

Life in the Open

Boldly disregarding the interest of neighbors, we headed for the street car and with two transfers, reached the end of the line. Though rain fairly hung in the air, ready to fall at a false word, we hiked north to the first country road, which we took eastward. About three-quarters of a mile along, the first drops of rain fell, and Jimmie cried:

“We camp in this gully ahead. First consideration, always, amongst woodsmen, a dry camp.”

Mr. Fresco and I admitted we were happy to halt, because our packs, though small, were like lead on our loins.

In a jiffy, Jim had the axe swinging. Half a dozen stout saplings made the tripods. Down came a sturdy evergreen tree, and with skilled strokes, Jim denuded it of its branches, skilfully hanging them and weaving them over the poles, so as to make a lean-to shelter. The rain came through it easily, but Jim explained he would thicken it up later with more brush.

“Next a fire,” he cried heartily.

And in no time, we had a pile of kindling, sticks, twigs and billets, which Jim expertly set alight.

It flared up brightly, and then, with little hissing sounds from the raindrops, died away. I knelt down and blew it. The rain started in earnest. Mr. Fresco, sitting under the brush shelter, began to shiver. Over the fence behind us came a loud voice:

“Hey, what are you tramps doing cutting down my evergreens? Don’t you know there’s a by-law in this township against lighting fires the roadside?”

He was a farmer and he came over and joined us. While I continued to blow the fire, without results, Jimmie outlined to the farmer the great enterprise we were engaged upon, the discovery of how men can survive and remain active, vigorous and full of purpose, after being deprived of all the normal means of living.

“Well,” said the farmer, “you picked a heck of a day for it. Mother has just made a batch of new bread. We’ve got fried chicken for supper and rhubarb pie. I think you had better come up to the house until the rain passes.”

Which we did. And as the rain did not pass, the farmer about 10 p.m. drove us back to the end of the street car line, which had us home about 11.30.

And all day Sunday, we lay low, for fear the neighbors might see we were home already.

It rained all Sunday, too. Remember?

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. Desert Victory was a 1943 film produced by the British Ministry of Information, documenting the Allies’ North African campaign against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps. ↩︎
2. Dillon Wallace, Horace Kephart, and Dan Beard were all famous outdoorsmen. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, February 9, 1946.

“They must be a tough bunch,” commented Jimmie Frise, looking up from the newspaper.

“Who?” I inquired.

“These kids on Operation Muskox¹,” said Jim. “They’re going to drive snowmobiles loaded with fighting equipment from away up at Fort Churchill, on Hudson Bay, straight across the sub-Arctics, to Edmonton. Three thousand miles. In winter.”

“It’s time,” I informed him, “that we Canadians lost our awe of winter. What’s so wonderful about these soldiers going on a hike across northern Canada? Our mining men have been doing it for 30, 40 years.”

“Well,” said Jim, shivering, “I wouldn’t care to be with them.”

“Look,” I submitted. “We Canadians have a very great responsibility. We are one of the small handful of nations bordering on the Arctic. There’s Russia, Finland, Norway, Sweden -and us. Now, all those other nations of the Arctic are very Arctic-conscious. But we Canadians all stand with our faces to the south. We yearn over the border southward. The Swedes and Norwegians and Finns developed ages ago an Arctic culture. They have found mines, and built towns and cities, far into the Arctic. Now Russia is doing the same. But we still huddle along the U.S. border; and most young Canadians dream of Hollywood.”

“And most old Canadians,” laughed Jimmie, “dream of Florida.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “Instead of loving winter, we hate it. Instead of facing north, we huddle south. Suggest to a young man that he pack his bag and vanish into the north and he shudders. What we need is a new Horace Greeley² to say to the Canadians, ‘Go north, young man, go north!’ That way, fortune lies.”

“Maybe this Muskox expedition, if it gets enough publicity,” suggested Jim, “will inspire a lot of young men to go really north. I mean, into the real Arctic.”

“The Arctic,” I assured him, “has had any amount of publicity. Did you ever hear of Sir John Franklin³? One hundred and twenty-five years ago, when he was just a junior officer of the British navy, Lieut. John Franklin was sent on a sort of Operation Muskox by the British admiralty. He was to go overland, from somewhere in Hudson Bay, to explore the Polar sea and find out if there was a northwest passage to the Pacific.”

“Somebody,” muttered Jim, “is always looking after us. This new Operation Muskox is intended to try out military equipment in case we ever need to fight anybody on our northern frontier. Franklin was sent by the British government to find out how quickly the Royal Navy could get from the north Atlantic to the Pacific.”

“Maybe,” I pointed out, “some British merchants had friends at the admiralty. Merchants are always looking for a reduction in freight rates.”

“What happened to Franklin?” inquired Jim.

“Lieut. Franklin, with two midshipmen named Hood and Back,” I recounted, “and a naturalist by the name of Dr. Richardson, arrived at Fort York, on Hudson Bay-that’s a little south of Churchill – in 1819, and spent four years exploring. In canoes they worked in to Lake Winnipeg, then up to Lake Athabasca, then up to Great Slave lake and around it. Then down the Coppermine river to the Polar sea.”

“In 1819?” cried Jimmie.

“Eight hundred miles north and west of Churchill, where our Muskox expedition is now,” I assured him, “Franklin and his expedition…”

“Just the four of them?” protested Jim.

“No,” I admitted. “They had a character by the name of John Hepburn, an ordinary seaman, to whom Franklin more than once credits the saving of the lives of the entire expedition. They also had French-Canadian canoemen and Indian guides and hunters to supply them with game.”

“Holy smoke,” sighed Jim. “No airplanes to drop supplies to them!”

1,200 Miles on Snow-shoes

“In 1821,” I informed him, “one of the midshipmen, Back, with three Indians, spent five months travelling back over the trail for provisions, on snow-shoes, from November to March, a distance of 1,200 miles. And all he had for shelter was one blanket and one deer skin.”

“Holy…” cried Jim. “A midshipman!”

“All of Back’s snow-shoe journey.” I pointed out, “was far north of where Operation Muskox is going!”

“So it’s nothing new?” supposed Jim.

“New!” I scoffed. “Listen: About every hundred miles farther into the Arctic Franklin’s expedition from the British navy went, they would come to a large log house. And in that house, 125 years ago, they would meet a gentleman by the name of McVicar or McGillivray or McDougall or McDonald…”

“Aha,” cut in Jim, “the fur traders!”

“Who had been up there,” I finished, “all their lives, and had succeeded somebody by the name of McAndrews or Fraser or Logan, who had been living, quite cheerfully, all their lives, for a hundred years back. Jim, Scotland occupied the Arctic 200 years ago.”

“Then,” protested Jim, “why isn’t the Arctic populated now?”

“We ran out of Scotchmen,” I explained.

Jim got up and looked out the window. And shivered.

“It’s hard to believe,” he murmured.

“Skiing,” I stated, “is doing something to arouse in young Canadians a little love of winter. It’s only in cities and towns that winter looks horrible. And that’s not on account of winter. That’s because of cities and towns. We build our cities and towns for summer. In Norway, and our other Arctic neighbors, they build lovely chalets that look perfect in a winter setting. The average Canadian house, in winter, looks like a cat left out in the rain.”

“And our dress, in Canada,” contributed Jimmie. “Our Canadian styles, for coats, suits, boots and shoes, are set by a gang of gents from the suit and cloak trade in annual convention meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, or Miami, Florida. Canadians should develop a style of clothing that is Canadian. It should be based on Scottish, Norwegian and Russian fashions. We should wear heavy tweeds and homespuns. Our winter boots should be stout half-Wellingtons and thick brogues, instead of these silly St. Louis, Missouri, low shoes, with goloshes…”

“That was what I was saying,” I reminded. “We yearn over the southern border!”

“There’s nothing we can do about it” concluded Jim, still shivering at what he saw out the window – the grimy, sleety, slushy, sooty prospect of Toronto in mid-winter.

“Oho, yes there is,” I retorted.

Jim turned and looked at me sarcastically.

“We,” I enunciated, “suppose ourselves to be sportsmen. In spring, summer and autumn, we fish and hunt. We love to disport ourselves in the open air – so long as it isn’t cool.”

“Fair weather sports?” suggested Jim.

“I’m afraid that’s what we are, Jim,” I stated sadly.

“Who would want to be out rabbit hunting,” he demanded, “on a day like this?”

“I bet, out in the country, it’s a swell day,” I asserted. “What makes the day look dismal are those sloppy, grimy buildings, covered with soot and dirty snow. Out in the country even with this gray sky, I’ll bet there is a zest and tang to the air. I’ll bet the landscape, the spruce and cedars, the skyline, with the tracery of elm trees, the woodlots dark and bluish in the distance…”

“It Would Be Romantic”

“You may have something there,” said Jim with animation. “We speak of a man being ‘bushed’ from living too long in the wilderness. I wonder if we city people aren’t ‘citied’ the same way?”

“It could be,” I agreed. “Maybe that’s why Canadians as a whole dislike winter. They’re ‘citied’.”

“Personally,” stated Jim loudly, “I don’t see any reason why two guys like us – who enjoy every minute of the outdoors from May to November – couldn’t get just as big a kick out of the woods in winter.”

“There’s no fishing or shooting at this season,” I reminded.

“No, but there are winter birds and animals, to see,” declared Jim, “and tracks in the snow. A true lover of the outdoors can surely get as big a kick out of trailing a fox or a partridge in the snow… saaay, how about it?”

“We could go,” I concurred, standing up, “in honor of the boys on Operation Muskox. To show our appreciation of what that little band of Canadians is doing for Canadians as a whole, some of us old-timers ought to spend a few winter week-ends, camping on their old familiar fishing or hunting grounds.”

“Listen,” cried Jimmie enthusiastically, turning his back on the window., “how about going up and camping on Manitou Creek somewhere! Maybe at the Blue Hill where I lost that big buck two seasons ago. Man, it would be wonderful to see that country in mid-winter! It would be romantic.”

“We can drive to Fraserville,” I contributed, delighted. “And snow-shoe in to Manitou creek. It isn’t four miles.”

“We’ll camp beside Blue Hill,” exulted Jimmie, “on the sheltered side, whichever way the wind is blowing.”

“We’ll take my little silk tent,” I listed.

“And my red tarpaulin, which we’ll set up with sticks for a windbreak,” contributed Jim.

“I’ll wear snow-shoes,” I set forth.

“And I’ll wear skis,” determined Jim.

“And our sleeping bags,” I added.

“We’ll get a sled,” enthused Jim, “on which we can stow all our…”

“Nothing doing!” I interrupted firmly. “You can’t haul a sled on skis!”

“Why, you’d never feel it,” protested Jim. “A small sled, and you on snow-shoes…”

“We’ll each,” I insisted, “carry our share in pack-sacks. Our bedrolls, spare clothes, food. I’ll carry the little silk tent. You carry the tarpaulin.”

“We ought to haul a sled,” muttered Jim.

“It’s only for Saturday and Sunday,” I pointed out.

So Friday night, after the most delightful three previous, nights of planning, packing, drawing up lists, replanning, unpacking, repacking and relisting, we loaded Jim’s closed car and headed for Fraserville, where we had arranged with Joe Hurtubise, over the long-distance telephone, to spend the night at Joe’s combination general store and hotel.

The minute we got outside the city limits, we knew we were doing the right thing. Not half a mile past the last street car terminal, the whole face of nature altered. The grimy city was left behind and our headlights bored into a wonderland of white. And every mile grew more snowy and more chaste and beautiful. Not 10 miles out of town a big jack-rabbit bounded across the highway in our headlights.

“Ah, boy!” gloated Jimmie at the steering wheel.

Through silent, serene wintry country we entered small villages that looked beautiful in the white night. We proceeded slowly through a couple of larger towns, seeing once more, though not quite as repulsive, the slushy, murky ruin that a town makes of winter.

Then came the rising country where winter in its rarest beauty really comes – the beginning of the highlands of Ontario. The highway was cleanly plowed and swept, and our car soared through the gleaming night like a bird. Shadows of woods, deep shade of cedar and spruce, became more frequent. Inside the car, we could feel the new, keener freshness of the air.

Joe Hurtubise was waiting up for us and put our laden car in his shed. We had a light snack of cold pork, pumpkin pie and boiled tea, then went to bed with instructions to Joe to wake us well before 6 a.m. so we could set out on our Operation Muskox with the actual dawn.

It was a beautiful dawn. Not a soul in Fraserville was awake when we stepped out of Joe’s door into the pearly frost of a perfect morn. The cold pinched the corners of our nostrils.

Jim got into his ski harness, I harnessed on my snow-shoes and Joe helped us both get into our pack-sacks.

“Well, so long,” called Joe, who always seemed to perish with the cold,” so long boys, I still think you is nuts.”

And we set off down the road for the side road that leads to Manitou creek – an old familiar road in November.

A Strange Country

It was incredibly unfamiliar in February. It was like an undiscovered country. Jim went ahead, sliding long-legged on his skis. I came behind, wide-legging it on my snow- shoes. Up hills, down dales, past swampy bends full of silent and deathly cedars we have never noticed in November, we made good time. We halted frequently to gaze on the landscape, so strange, though we knew every yard of it in summer and autumn. Unknown valleys appeared, only a few hundred yards off the beaten path. Strange hummocks and little rocky cliffs stood forth which even in autumn, when the leaves are down; we did not know existed. We halted for chickadees. We saw a bevy of redpolls, not much bigger than chickadees, but of a rosy and innocent chubbiness, like cherubs. Several Canada jays – the gray, bullheaded silent jays – floated ghostly into sight of us to mutter mysteriously at our intrusion. We saw all kinds of tracks – squirrel, mice and what must have been a porcupine because it left a wide furrow in the snow.

“To think,” said Jim, “what we have been missing all these years.”

“You notice,” I said, “that it is getting kind of hazy. I think we ought to get in to Blue Hill and get our camp made…”

A little wind began to disturb the bare and rigid branches of the trees overhead. A few snowflakes hustled past, like vagrants. It grew grayer. Jim, leading, paused only once after a long steady march. And this time, it was to beat his arms around his chest.

“Colder, eh?” he called.

“You ought to use snow-shoes,” I informed him. “They keep you warmer than skis.”

Jim skied on. Up hill, down dale, round curves, through swamp and ever darkening woods, we bore on; and about mid-morning, coming out on a plateau, we saw Blue Hill not half a mile ahead. We studied the wind, now steadily rising, and decided the southwest side of Blue Hill would be the place to pitch our tent.

Blue Hill is one of the wildest and most rugged features of the country where we hunt deer. It is surrounded by a tangled forest of living trees and the charred remains of ancient bush fires.

But upholstered with snow, it was the simplest thing in the world to work around the southern side and find an ideal camping spot. Manitou creek, still gurgling, guaranteed us our water supply not 50 feet away. Old Blue Hill, granite and grim, broke the rising northeaster that was showering small, anxious snowflakes in intermittent gusts on us.

We downed our pack-sacks. With my snow-shoes, we dug down and found a good level spot for our tent. We strung up the tent. We cut balsam boughs for the floor of the tent, thick, deep, fragrant. We set up the tarpaulin. We unpacked our gear. I rigged a shelf of boughs in a deep snowbank for our larder. Jim got a fire going.

“I’m perished,” he said.

“I’ll be cook,” I offered.

And while the sky dropped lower and the northeast wind began to wail in the trees and shove at our tent, I proceeded with lunch.

It is astonishing how hard it is to crack an egg into a frying pan with mitts on.

Jim went into the tent, and came out immediately to stand near the fire and beat his arms around his chest.

“What’ll we do after lunch?” he quivered.

“We could mooch around, looking for wild animal tracks.” I suggested, delicately breaking another egg with my mitts on.

“It’s going to snow and drift,” said Jim, “and the tracks will be all covered up.”

“We can go for a hike, and look at some of the runways we know.” I suggested, shaking the frying pan with my mitts on.

“We don’t want to get lost, with a blizzard coming on,” warned Jim.

“We won’t get lost,” I asserted. “We know this country like a book.”

Jim stopped thumping his arms and gazed around at the landscape.

“I don’t recognize it at all,” he said hollowly. “I never saw this country before in my life…”

“Now, now, now!” I cautioned, poking the bacon with my long-handled camp fork.

“Have you been in the tent yet?” asked Jim, resuming his beating. “It’s like a damp ice-box.”

“We can open the flaps,” I explained, “and let the heat of the fire reflect in…”

Jim tied the flaps back, but the gathering wind ballooned the little tent grotesquely. It pulled loose a couple of the tie ropes from the ground.

“We’ll have to repitch the tent, with its back to the wind,” said Jimmie.

We ate our eggs and bacon, with mitts on. The sky dropped right down to earth. The wind moaned and wailed. Snow came so suddenly that we could not even see Blue Hill, a hundred yards behind us…

Just as dark fell, four hours later, Joe Hurtubise looked out his parlor window and saw us coming out of the blizzard.

He had the door open for us to stumble in.

“I knowed,” he said heartily, as he helped us off with the packs, “I knowed you wasn’t THAT nuts!”

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Editor’s Notes: One of the readers of this site has the original artwork for this story. You can see it below with the note that it was received on December 20 for issue on February 9th.

1. Operation Musk Ox was an 81 day operation by the Canadian Military at the time of this article. The goal was to determine how defendable Canada was. More can be found online here as well as video here. ↩︎
2. Horace Greely was an American newspaper publisher famous for the quote “Go west young man!” ↩︎
3. John Franklin is a well known explorer whose ships were recently discovered in 2014 and 2016 and are now designated as the Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 3, 1933.

“I’ve decided,” said Jim Frise, “not to go with you on your Quebec trip.”

“Aw,” said I.

“Those birch bark canoes you tell about,” went on Jim; “I don’t like the idea of fishing from a bark canoe.”

“They’re as steady as any other canoe,” I protested.

“Sure,” said Jim. “Since no canoe is steady.”

“Well, you can swim, can’t you?” I exclaimed. This was to have been a good trip.

“No, I can’t swim,” stated Jim coolly.

“Can’t swim!” I cried. “Can’t swim! Good heavens, man, every Canadian ought to know how to swim almost as soon as he knows how to walk. Don’t you know that one-half the area of Ontario is water?”

“Is it?” asked Jim.

“Take a look at any map,” I went on. “Especially in the newer parts of the province. The map is half blue. I tell you your life is not safe in Ontario unless you can swim.”

“I’ve got along all right so far,” said Jim. “I’ve never even been dumped out of a canoe. Let’s put it this way, every Canadian ought to know how to swim or else he ought to keep out of boats. I keep out of boats, especially birch bark canoes.”

“Swimming is as easy and natural,” I said, “as walking. How is it you never learned to swim?”

“I don’t know,” said Jim. “I guess I just never had the opportunity to learn.”

“Well, it’s never too late,” said I. “Swimming comes as natural to man as it does to a duck. If I could teach you to swim in the next few weeks would you come to Quebec with me?”

“I’m pretty sure I can never learn to swim,” put in Jim. “I just have that feeling.”

“I bet you felt that way about driving a car,” said I. “It is just the same. You think you will never, by any stretch of the imagination, be able to drive a car in traffic. And the next thing you know you are driving down Yonge St. It’s the same with swimming.”

“How would you teach me?” asked Jim.

“Well, the best way is simply to throw a man in, and he’ll swim. But the most humane way is to get a long pole, like a clothes-prop, and tie a six-foot length of clothes-line on it. Then you tie a belt around the pupil, tie the rope to the belt, have him get into the water, and then with the teacher on the bank or wharf the swimmer strokes along, with the pole holding him up, and as he goes through the motions of swimming the first thing you know he IS swimming, and the teacher quietly relaxes the support of the pole and rope. Presto! The pupil is swimming. That pole is just a moral support. It gives confidence and gets the pupil over that feeling of doubt that, by the motion of his arms and legs, he can keep himself on the surface.”

“It sounds simple,” said Jim. “Have you ever taught anybody before?”

“Scores and scores of people,” I said. “All my family. In fact up on the Georgian bay I am recognized as one of the most skillful teachers.”

“Well, well,” said Jim, gazing about uncertainly. “Well, maybe, some day I might try it. It would be good to know how to swim.”

“Listen as soon as the Humber gets warm,” I said, “let’s go out and get a quiet swimming hole and I’ll teach you, and then will you come to Quebec with me?”

“If I learn to swim,” said Jim, “so that I feel confident I could look after myself in a bark canoe I’ll go with you.”

“Sold!” I shouted.

The last warm spell I got a clothes-prop from my house and tied a stout piece of clothes-line to it and stood it ready in the garage. Jimmie had got to the place in his cartoon where he has to write the words in the balloons, as they call them in art circles, and I knew he always liked to run away from that. He hates spelling. So I walked over to him, staring at those empty spaces in Birdseye Center, and suggested that we take our first swimming lesson. At such a time Jim would accept almost any suggestion.

“Great!” he said. So we drove out and got our swimming suits and the long pole with rope.

“Where will we change into our swimming suits?” asked Jim.

“In the bushes,” said I. “Let’s be old fashioned.”

We drove out to the Humber and upstream a few miles looking for a good deep hole where Jim’s long legs wouldn’t touch bottom.

“I’m a little nervous,” confessed Jim. “I’ve started to learn to swim a dozen times in my life, but I always lost my nerve at the last minute. It’s funny how a thing like that gets into your very bones, isn’t it? I just feel I’ll never learn to swim.”

“Listen,” I assured him, “I’ll have you swimming inside of an hour.”

“It sure will make me feel good,” admitted Jim. “Whenever I’m fishing I always have that fear lurking in my mind.”

“Boy,” I cried, “to be able to sit in a canoe, even a birch bark canoe, without any sense of fear is one of the most lovely sensations in the world. Fearless! It’s a great way to be.”

We came to a nice broad place in the river, and except for a few cows in the pasture beside the stream the place was deserted.

We parked the car and got into some bushes and changed into our swim suits. Jim’s was one of those limp kind that dangled off him, while mine was just the least little bit shrunk to my form. I got the long pole, an old belt, and we strolled down to the water.

“I feel pretty funny,” said Jim, his arms wrapped around himself.

“Stage fright,” I said.

“The water looks cold,” said Jim, “and muddy.”

“I thought you were a country fellow?” I sneered.

“Suppose I just practise the motions today,” said Jim, “and then next day I’ll have the rope tied to me?”

“Suppose my neck,” I said. “The way to learn to swim is just to jump in. The perfect way is to be pushed in and have to swim. I’m going to all this trouble with pole and rope just to make it easy for you. For Pete’s sake!”

“All right,” said Jimmie, submitting to the belt being strapped around him. We were down on the bank of the pool and I fastened the rope into the belt.

“Make it good and tight,” said Jim. “Water makes knots slippery.”

“Listen, I’ve taught scores.”

I could feel Jim shivering, although the day was perfect and the water was almost lukewarm.

“Now,” said I, “wade in.”

“You go in first and give me a few lessons by demonstration,” said Jim.

“And then stand out here and shiver while holding you on the pole?” I cried. “Go ahead, I’ve got you. Wade In.”

Jim put one toe in the water and snatched it out.

“Gee,” he said, “I hate this.”

“What’s the matter?” I cried. “Haven’t I got you on a rope big enough to hold a steamboat?”

Jim stood with his arms around himself, staring at the water, and then, slowly, like a man in a trance, he stepped in and with a kind of pallid determination he waded to his waist. He looked back at me with imploring eyes.

“Don’t let go that pole,” he chattered.

“Duck,” I commanded.

Jim ducked.

“Now,” I began, lie forward in the water and take slow easy strokes with your arms and kick out behind with your legs.”

Jim squatted a couple of times and stood up.

“Are you holding me?” he quavered.

I hoisted the pole and Jim could feel the rope and bet tighten on him.

“All, right, go ahead,” I commanded.

Jim eased himself down into the water. I held up on the pole and he gave two or three rapid kicks and splashes, and stood up again, gasping and coughing.

“How’s that?” he exclaimed proudly.

“Wait till we get you over here into deeper water,” I said.

I walked along the bank and towed Jim along.

“Now swim,” I ordered.

Slowly Jim lifted one foot and then the other off bottom and started to make excited and frantic motions with his arms and legs. Puffing and sputtering and splashing.

I pulled along the bank, to get him into the deepest part of the hole.

Now, nobody is sorrier than I am for what happened. In theory, the idea is to get your pupil in deep so that he has to trust the pole. Then, when he is actually swimming, ease off on the pole and he sees he is swimming unaided.

In pulling Jim along I put too much strain on the knot which tied the rope to the pole. It simply slipped off the end of the pole, and there, to my horror, was Jim vanishing in the muddy pool.

“Jim!” I screamed.

I did a very foolish thing. I threw the pole in to him. His head popped up and he thrashed about and got hold of the pole. But it was too light to support him. He sank again, the pole slowly sticking upright out of the water as Jim clamped himself around it.

“Jimmie!” I screamed again.

As if in reply, his head rose out of the water again and spouting a mouthful of water he croaked at me:

“Come in and save me!”

“I can’t SWIM!” I confessed wildly.

Jim sank sadly out of sight again, the pole waving drunkenly out of the pool.

I was dancing along the bank, shouting, when I saw the pole go rigid, and I knew Jim had stuck the lower end of it into the mud bottom of the swimming hole. To my joy, I saw Jim slowly emerge again, clinging to the pole like a monkey on a stick. He hung tenderly to it, as it swayed, barely holding.

“Did you say you can’t swim?” croaked Jim, spouting more water.

“Not a stroke,” I said brokenly. “Jim, I’m so sorry! Wait there until I get help.”

“No,” said Jim, coughing. “I’m going to learn to swim right now. You stay there and watch me.”

His eyes glared with a mountainous effort of the will. He took a look at the bank, six feet away. He took a deep breath. And then he let go the pole, and with strong, wide strokes, he fairly lifted himself through the water and grabbed the bank. Along the bank he pulled himself, and I was there at the beach to hold out rescuing arms to him. I dragged him on to the beach, where he sagged exhausted. He clung to me desperately.

“Jimmie!” I exulted. “You can swim!” He coughed. And he still clung tight to me.

“You can swim!” I shouted again.

Jim rose to his feet, holding desperately to my arm.

“The best way to learn,” he said, looking at me out of bloodshot eyes which glittered, “is to just be thrown in.”

“That’s what the best teachers say,” I admitted a little nervously.

“To think of you,” said Jim, “my dear friend, risking your life in birch bark canoes in Quebec, away off there, and not being able to swim!”

“I’ll learn some day,” I said brightly, “sooner or later.”

“Sooner,” said Jim.

He whirled me around. He took me by both elbows from behind, he hoisted me six feet in the air and threw me, in cold blood, right out into the middle of that deep, terrible pool.

I don’t recall much. I came up once and saw Jim in the act of sitting down on the bank.

I came up twice, and saw Jim resting his chin on his elbows, watching me. I let out a yell, but water got in it.

I saw my past life passing before me. Not all my life, but mostly the last few minutes. I wished I had told Jimmie I was only a theorist. But I felt sad for myself, because, after all, most of us are theorists, anyway. We know a lot of things, but we don’t have to be able to do them ourselves in order to tell others, do we? Politics for example. Or the gold standard.

I was just thinking about the gold standard, when I felt myself seized from behind in a terrific vise-like grip. I was hauled to the surface, and I took a vast breath of air, when suddenly I felt a terrific blow on the chin. I went away, away.

The next thing I knew I was lying on the hard beach, and Jim was jouncing me up and down around the stomach.

“Ah, back again?” he asked, turning me face up.

“Ooooooh,” I said.

“Sorry to have to sock you on the jaw,” said Jim. “But the great danger in saving a drowning man is that he is likely to struggle and drown you too. So the best thing to do is sock him on the jaw, knock him out and then you can save him in peace.”

“I see.” I said, weakly.

“As soon as you feel well enough,” said Jim, “I’ll teach you to swim.”

“Not to-day!” I cried.

“No time like the present.”

“Jimmie, in my weakened condition, you wouldn’t throw me in again!”

“It’s the best way,” said Jim. “Get it over with. After this experience, you are likely to be so afraid you will never learn. I don’t want you sitting all cringed up with fright in that birch bark canoe in Quebec.”

“I feel faint,” said I.

“Water will revive you,” said Jim.

“If I wade in myself.” I said, “and swim once across that pool, will that be enough?”

Jim considered carefully.

“All right,” he said.

“Get that pole in case I get into difficulty,” I begged.

Jim took the pole and tied the rope back on it.

“The knot may hold,” he said.

He stood by while I waded into the pool.

I felt the muddy, stoney bottom under my feet.

“Swim,” commanded Jim. “Lay forward and swim.”

I lay forward and with great splashes and coughing. I swam across the pool. But what Jimmie does not know is that I had my feet on bottom all the way across. At the far side, I turned and swam back, then turned and swam grandly – but cautiously – out toward the middle of the pool where Jim had so nearly drowned, and I touched bottom all the way.

There wasn’t a foot of that pond over my head. If Jim had not had his knees bent up in horror, as he plunged and splashed, he would not have been over his armpits.

“Good boy!” cried Jim admiringly, as I stroked grandly around the pool.

When I got tired, I crawled ashore and Jim assisted me.

“Good for you!” he shouted. “Isn’t it great to know how to swim!”

So we dried and dressed, like old friends again, and we drove back to town.

And it is nice to know not only that I am a good teacher but, what is more to the point, that from now on, one of us can swim.

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Editor’s Note: This story appeared in Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise Outdoors (1979). It was also repeated on June 8, 1940, as “The Hard Way”.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, February 6, 1943.

“How do they do it!” exclaimed Jimmie Frise.

“Who?” I inquired.

“The Russians¹,” cried Jimmie. “With the whole resources of Europe – except Britain – against them. With the trained might of Germany, backed by the enslaved production of all the rest of Europe, concentrated on them. With most of the factory owners and moneyed and managerial classes of conquered Europe hating them and really aiding the Germans.”

“And Italy,” I reminded him.

“Phoooie,” said Jim.

“Phooie nothing,” I informed him. “I bet you, when the smoke clears away, that most of the skulduggery in North Africa and the confusion of the French cliques and parties will be traced to Italy. Don’t forget, it was Italy’s fear and hatred of communism that gave rise to the Fascist party. Don’t forget that Italy set up Mussolini long before Germany set up Hitler.”

“Italy,” said Jim. “Phooie.”

“Okay,” I warned. “But when history is written, I bet you it will be Italy’s demonstration of how to set up a boogey man and organize a Fascist party that gave all the rest of the world the idea of setting up another boogey man in Germany as a barrier against Russia. It was Russia the whole world was scared of 10 years ago. It was finagling against Russia that set up this whole devil’s kettle of a war. And now Russia appears to be the savior of the world.”

“Next to Britain,” said Jim.

“Next to us,” I agreed. “Us being whatever we are. Next to the good old U.S., if you are an American. Next to China, if you are Chinese. Next to Malta, if you are Maltese.”

“Don’t be cynical,” said Jim.

“I’m not cynical,” I assured him. “I am merely reminding you that you can’t help having a point of view. And your point of view depends entirely on where you happen to be standing. You wouldn’t deny a Chinese man the right to believe that but for China’s stand against Japan, years before our war broke loose, our war would now be lost.”

“Yes, but never forget we…” began Jim.

“Us?” I cried with passionate patriotism, “we’re wonderful!”

“Well, we are!” declared Jim angrily.

“That’s what I’m saying,” I retorted.

“But I don’t think you’re sincere,” said Jim.

Source of All Troubles

“I’m this sincere,” I submitted. “That so long as you allow Americans, Frenchmen, Chinese, Argentinians, Italians and all the rest to believe they are wonderful, we have a perfect right to believe we are wonderful too. The trouble is, however, with us, and Americans, Frenchmen, Chinese, Argentinians and so forth, is, we don’t include anybody else.”

“Aw, well,” protested Jimmie, “it’s human nature you’re complaining about.”

“Never cease complaining about it, Jim,” I pleaded. “It’s the source of all our troubles.”

“A fat lot of good complaining about human nature will do,” said Jim. “Human nature is as unchangeable as the very rocks of the earth. You might as well try to change the shape of the Rocky Mountains as change human nature.”

“Jim, not a day goes by,” I informed him, “but that the shape of the Rocky Mountains is being changed. The everlasting complaint of the winds, the rains, the snow and the ice, is forever changing the shape of the mountains and of the very earth itself. And never forget, one earthquake can change their shape so tremendously, they can be sunk right out of sight under the sea.”

“Are you looking for an earthquake to change human nature?” inquired Jim.

There have been plenty of earthquakes,” I submitted, “that have changed human nature. The birth of Jesus was an earthquake. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. The invention of gunpowder was an earthquake. A peasant with a flintlock could destroy a king hedged round with battle axes. It would be a nice way to spend an evening, discussing which events in history were earthquakes that changed human nature.”

“I bet we’re not much different from the men who lived in caves,” said Jim.

“The winds of Shakespeare blew and are blowing on the granite of human nature,” I enunciated. “The rain of Charles Dickens’ tears, the snow of Alexander Hamilton’s logic, the ice of Charles Darwin’s speculations, all have eroded the Rocky Mountains of human nature…”

“See?” interrupted Jimmie triumphantly. “Every name you have mentioned is one of us!”

“When Marco Polo, in the year 1250 A.D., arrived in China,” I countered, “he found a civilization more advanced than Europe’s, and 1,500 years old.”

“Marco Polo!” scoffed Jimmie. “Who ever heard of him!”

“Each nation,” I said, “thinks it has its Shakespeares, its Dickenses, its Darwins.”

“Think is right,” said Jim.

“Well, you can’t help even us thinking,” I asserted.

“Anyway,” proclaimed Jimmie, “I think the Russians are wonderful. And I only wish I could feel we had done more to help them. I’d have more self-respect if I thought we had done something to help them. The performance they have put up, not only without much help from us but in spite of all the opposition we put in their way, across the years, makes it kind of embarrassing.”

“Geographically,” I pointed out, “they are the nearest people to Canadians in the world. We share with Russians the northern hemisphere.”

“I’ve often thought of that, this past winter, reading about the battles,” agreed Jim. “Leningrad is on a level with White Horse, in the Yukon. Lake Ladoga is on a level with Great Slave Lake.”

“Brrrrr,” I said.

“Sure,” said Jim. “Fort Churchill, away up half way on Hudson’s Bay, is south of Leningrad. The northern tip of Labrador, where it juts out towards Baffin Land, is level with Leningrad. Sure, we share the northern hemisphere with the Russians. But we haven’t occupied our share yet.”

“I had no idea,” I gasped. “I thought of Leningrad and Toronto or maybe North Bay or Timmins.”

“In the banana belt,” snorted Jim. “All of them. Even Stalingrad is away down south, about level with Winnipeg. But Leningrad is north of Juneau in Alaska. Remember all the fuss we made about the Alaska highway²?”

“Now who’s belittling us?” I demanded. “Well, I was just thinking about the railroad,” said Jim, “the Russians built over the ice of Lake Ladoga. We quit work on the Alaska highway just as winter arrived.”

“Well, some day we Canadians may have cities and towns up in northern Labrador and along the Hudson’s Bay coast,” I declared.

“There’s two million citizens in Leningrad normally,” retorted Jim.

“One thing we might have done for Russia,” I asserted, “and that is, ship her a few thousands pairs of good Canadian snowshoes.”

“Skis are better,” said Jim. “And skis come from Norway. The Russians will know all about skis.”

“Snowshoes,” I insisted. “Skis are all very well in open fields and for playing around in civilized country. But in the bush, you’ve got to have snowshoes.”

“Slow motion,” cracked Jim.

“You never hear of lumberjacks and trappers wearing skis,” I asserted, “except as a novelty. They use snowshoes. And since much of the fighting in Russia in winter is through vast forests and swamps, I bet you snowshoes would be of the most tremendous tactical importance.”

“Skis,” said Jimmie.

“Listen,” I stated warmly, “long before skis were ever heard of in this country, I was a champion snowshoer. I belonged to a snowshoe club here; and there was a Canadian Snow Shoe Association, with clubs all over Canada. And I may say we didn’t spend our time trying to wear out a couple of local hills. We didn’t wait until somebody cut a trail for us through a couple of local bush lots, either. We got out and travelled. We searched out the wildest regions of the country round about and explored it. The tougher the going, the denser the bush, the wilder the swamps, the better we liked it.”

“Waddling,” said Jim. “Bow-legged. Squish. Squish, squush, squish, squush!”

“Waddling my eye,” I cried indignantly. “An export snowshoer can drift over the ground faster than any skier, on a mile of ordinary rough bush country. Or on 20 miles. Put a skier in ordinary brush country and he’s sunk.”

“Squish, squush,” remarked Jim.

“I won my Winged Snow Shoe in 1914,” I announced. “And if you don’t believe it, I can dig my old Snow Shoe Club outfit out of the attic and show you. I’m entitled to wear a crest and a shield, with the Winged Snow Shoe. I’ve got a ceinture fleche³, too, that I won in a 10-mile cross country.”

“A what?” inquired Jim.

“Ceinture fleche,” I said. “It’s a beautiful sash.”

“Are You Game?”

“In the attic, did you say?” asked Jimmie. “Has snowshoeing gone out of fashion then?”

“Of course it has,” I said. “The young people are no longer interested in exploring and going places. They only want to go nowhere fast, down hill.”

“Now, now,” said Jim. “Don’t be hurt.”

“In a trunk in the attic,” I stated, “I have my whole old club outfit and two pairs of snowshoes. Are you game?”

“Game how?” asked Jim.

“Game to come for a hike,” I said, “right this afternoon, until I show you what snowshoes can do. I’ll take you into bush that no skier can penetrate. And maybe, if I can get you interested, you and I might start something real for Russia. We might launch a campaign to send half a million pairs of Canadian snowshoes to Russia. Great oaks from little acorns grow. You’re complaining about not having had any share in Russia’s triumph. Okay; here’s your chance to do something strategic.”

Along which lines, I persuaded Jim to come along for an old-fashioned afternoon in the open on snowshoes. I got my old club outfit from the mothballs and, though the webbing of the racquettes was dry and the frames slightly warped, 20 years in a trunk had done them little injury.

In the street car which we took to the end of the line, there were many skiers who took a lively interest in our appearance; but Jimmie insisted they were not laughing at us; it was just their youthful and joyous nature.

While the skiers headed straight away from the end of the car line to the nearest hill which they gathered on like ants on a cookie, Jim and I put on the racquettes and steered for the bush. It took me some little time to persuade Jim to let his legs hang loose, in the proper snowshoe stride, and simply drag the snowshoe over the snow, instead of tightening his legs up in a cramped curve.

“Walk,” I explained, setting the example, “with an easy loose shuffle, forgetting the snowshoes entirely. It’s not like skiing, where you have to think of the skis all the time. Just stride ahead, with loose legs, and trail each shoe naturally.”

Jim tumbled several times, because he walked too naturally, toed in, thus stepping on his own shoes, which naturally threw him on his head. But after crossing a couple of fields, he had the hang of it pretty well and we entered our first bush.

It was a dense bush. And we had not gone 50 yards in its pure and secret sanctuary before we picked up the fresh trail of a fox.

“See?” I cried. “He’s never been disturbed by any skiers. In fact, we’re the first to stir him from his security.”

We trailed the fox to the end of the wood lot and finally got a glimpse of him, his tail blowing sideways in the wind, as he raced across an icy open field for a neighboring woodlot.

“Here,” I said, “within the sound of a city’s factory whistle, we have seen a fox. That’s what snowshoers see.”

And we saw also, in the sanctuary of undisturbed bush lots, many birds such as partridges, jays, chickadees, nuthatches and a whole chime of redpolls and siskins, which are the confetti of the bird world. And in the quiet woods, we were sheltered from the cold and we climbed over windfalls and through dark deep cedar swamps where the highways of the rabbit kingdom were worn in the snow; and saw many and delightful manifestations of nature where she hides where man does not come.

Mal De Racquette

And then Jim sat on a log with a sudden exclamation.

“My leg,” he said, grasping the inside of his thigh.

“What?” I inquired.

“A red hot knife seemed to stick into me,” he said.

“Ah; mal de racquette⁴,” I informed him. “You’ve been walking with your legs tense. You didn’t walk loosely.”

“I walked the way I had to,” replied Jimmie, painfully. “Squish, squush!”

“We’ll have to head for the nearest road,” I said anxiously. “That mal de racquette is pretty serious.”

“How do you mean?” demanded Jim.

“It ties some people up,” I said, “so they have to be dragged on a toboggan. They can’t even walk.”

Jim rubbed his thigh and then stood up. He sat down again promptly.

“Hey!” he agonized.

“Does it hurt?” I inquired.

“Ooh,” said Jim, starting to sweat.

So we sat for a little while on the log and then I got some birch bark and twigs and started a fire.

“Keep warm,” I advised, “while I go and scout out where the nearest road is.”

One thing about rural Ontario, there is always a road just over the hill. So I took what I believed to be the nearest cut out of the bush lot and found a good sideroad, well packed down with ruts, less than 400 yards away from Jimmie. And as I turned around to rejoin him, my snowshoe caught in a sharp stub sticking up through the snow. I was thrown on my face and what was worse, the dry babiche⁵ webbing of the shoe was ripped not only in the toe, but right in the mid-section where my foot fits.

The webbing was so old and dry it was like wire. So when I rejoined Jim, I was moving in a rather complicated fashion. My good shoe carried me on the top of the snow. But my other leg sank each step to the knee or hip, depending on how deep the snow was.

Jimmie watched my approach with considerable relief from his pain.

“Now that,” he said, “is something! You look like one of those old-fashioned side-wheeler steamboats.”

“Jim,” I warned him, “it is going to be no fun getting out to the road.”

We extinguished the fire carefully. And then set out for the road. Part of the time Jim wore his snowshoes, and part of the time, he took them off and just waded. But it was more painful to have to lift his strained leg out of the drifts than to swing the snowshoe in a specially bow-legged stride.

But we reached the road and headed, on plain foot, towards the city and the street car terminus.

And when we stamped safely into the street car, in company with many ruddy and happy skiers, Jimmie remarked:

“What do you say if we start a movement to smuggle a few thousand pairs of snowshoes over to the Germans? That would finish them.”

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. When this was written, the battle of Stalingrad, considered to be a turning point in World War 2, was just finished. ↩︎
2. The Alaska Highway was under construction at the time. ↩︎
3. The ceinture fléchée (French, ‘arrowed sash’) is a type of colourful sash, a traditional piece of Québécois clothing linked to at least the 17th century. ↩︎
4. Mal De Racquette (Snowshoe sickness) is a term used when a person went lame while using snowshoes. ↩︎
5. Babiche is a type of cord or lacing of rawhide or sinew traditionally made by Native Americans. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, January 28, 1939.

“How’d you like to go,” asked Jimmie Frise, “on one of these ski excursions they’re running?¹“

“Heh, heh, heh,” I replied.

“They’re no end of fun,” declared Jim. “Whole trainloads of merry skiers, heading for the snow.”

“If the snow won’t come to the skiers,” I said, “the skiers go to the snow.”

“Why not?” demanded Jim. “They are running ski trains out from Boston, New York, Chicago, all over the country. When there are thousands of city-penned people just dying to romp in the snow; and hills full of snow only 50 miles away, what’s the answer?”

“Read a book,” I replied. “Light the grate fire, pull up a deep chair and snuggle down to a good book.”

“Ten years ago, that wouldn’t have been your answer,” sneered Jim.

“Oh, yes, it would,” I retorted. “Ten years ago, I preferred a deep chair to a snowbank even more than I do now. I have always maintained that winter was the season of hibernation. Nature does not intend us to go out romping in the snow. Why does she put the bear to sleep in his den, all winter; and the groundhog and all the rest of them? Why does she pack off all the birds to the south? Because the winter is fit for neither man nor beast. Because winter is no time for anybody or anything to be out. And we should take a tip from nature and stay in our dens as much as possible during the winter.”

“It’s just your age,” said Jim. “If a bear had heavy woollen underwear and a leather coat and fur-lined boots, he wouldn’t den up for the winter.”

“Physical comfort is the first law of happiness,” I decreed. “A man can have all other troubles, but if he is physically comfortable, dry, warm and at ease, he can withstand poverty, grief, fear, everything. What makes poverty unbearable is that it is so uncomfortable.”

“If you were younger,” prodded Jim, “you wouldn’t be so stuck on comfort. Young people get an actual thrill out of discomfort.”

“They can have it,” I assured him.

“One of the lovely things about youth,” went on Jim, “is that it has the stamina and resistance to deliberately submit itself to discomfort, in order to enjoy comfort all the more. They go out and ski in the cold and bitter weather, under a bleak sun, knowing that presently, after so many hours, they will be going back to a nice warm fireside. And oh, how much lovelier a fireside is, when it is contrasted with exposure and chilblains².”

“I admit that,” I admitted.

“You take an aging and lazy person like yourself,” said Jim, “who never sticks his nose out of doors in winter unless he has to: think of how little real enjoyment he must get out of a fine log fire.”

“What do you mean,” I asked, “by aging and lazy? Whom are you referring to?”

“You,” said Jim.

Glands Must Be Applauded

“Jim,” I informed him, “I resent that. I am not aging. I am younger than you. I am in the very prime of my life.”

“You are in,” said Jim, “what are called the middle 40’s. That means you’re past 45,”

“At that age,” I declared, “a man is just ripe. Just seasoned. Just perfect.”

“Unless, of course,” submitted Jim, “he folds up and quits. Unless he abandons all forms of action in favor of comfort and rest.”

“No man is more active than I am in the spring, summer and fall,” I advised. “Fishing and shooting. But winter just doesn’t appeal to me.”

“It’s the thin end of the wedge,” said Jim. “It’s the beginning of the end. You surrender to comfort and inaction in winter a couple of years more, and then you’ll reach the stage where you put off the trout fishing until the end of May, rather than the wet and cold beginning of May. Then you’ll find it a little easier to sit on the cottage veranda during the hot weather than get out and row a boat…”

Jim could tell by my expression that he was hitting pretty close to the mark. As a matter of fact, I have been postponing the trout season a couple of weeks, and I did sit on the cottage veranda quite a bit last summer. In fact, I lay on a couch on the veranda. In short, I slept a good many afternoons…

“It’s insidious,” explained Jim. “There is no year of a man’s life at which you can say he is starting to grow old. There is no dividing line. You see lots of men who are old at 30. They’ve given in. They have surrendered to a routine of life that gives them the maximum of comfort. Poor, solemn, habited men, who go through life according to a dreadful routine. The streets are full of them, solemn young men, old at 30. But thank heavens you see other men who are not old at 70, who take life on the wing, who never submit to routine, who find zest and pleasure in every hour of every day, who never go to bed at the same hour, never do the same things twice, are full of zip and ginger and answer every beckoning call of life.”

“It’s their glands,” I suggested. “Healthy glands.”

“Glands have to be encouraged,” cried Jim. “But if you just ignore a gland, if you act as if it wasn’t there, what would you do if you were a gland? Why, you’d go to sleep too. You’d relax and pretty soon you would be dormant. Glands have to be encouraged and applauded. You have to take them for a ride every now and then. You have to go out in the cold and snow and test your glands, see how they can support you, for it isn’t your lungs and heart alone that keep you going under strain, but all the little glands strung through your system like the lights on a Christmas tree, the pituitary, the endocrines, they are the little batteries and generators distributed all through your system, and they are the power plant of all your energy.”

“I’ve tested mine,” I submitted. “They’re working. But they don’t crave to be chilled and exhausted.”

“No gland,” stated Jim, “gets any satisfaction out of lying dormant. The only thing at gland can do is work. One of these winters, my boy, you are going to hug a warm hearthstone once too often, and your glands are going to sleep and you won’t be able to wake them. up. When spring comes, they’ll be drowsy. That will be the end.”

Life Is Like Fire

“Drowsy, eh?” I muttered, remembering last summer on the cottage veranda.

“Life is like fire,” concluded Jim. “You’ve got to keep it stoked.”

“What is this excursion you were talking about?” I inquired.

“There is one every week-end,” said Jim, eagerly. “The train runs wherever the snow is. Sometimes the ski train goes up Owen Sound way or over the Caledon hills. Another time, it may go out Peterboro way. All you do is buy your ticket for the ski train, which leaves at 8 a.m. and you get aboard, and go where it goes. It has diners on it, for those who don’t carry their lunches. It waits on a siding all day, amidst the snow, and at dark. it leaves for home again, after suitable tootings of the whistle to warn all the passengers of the time.”

“My, that sounds good,” I agreed. “Have they a parlor car on too, in case a fellow gets tired of skiing and just wants to sit in a parlor car seat and read a book or look out the window?”

“I suppose that could be arranged,” said Jim.

But it was not arranged. For when, in the bitter week-end morning we arrived at the station and got aboard the ski train along with a hastening throng of other gaily clad ski-bearers, there was no parlor car, nor was there any diner. There were just half a dozen hissing and steaming day coaches of the plainest and most old-fashioned degree, best suited to carrying a crowd of noisy and joyous people, with their skis, poles, haversacks, massive boots, fogging cigarettes and an overwhelming air of hilarity.

Everybody handed up their skis and poles to the baggage car boys as they passed along the platform. Everybody swarmed into the steaming coaches, fighting past other skiers who were trying to keep places for belated friends, for whom they peered and watched. from the car doors.

There were very few young people and no elderly people. The entire passenger list seemed to consist of people at that age which is most oppressive both to the young and the elderly – 28 to 35. People of this age are curiously depressing. They have the energy of youth plus the wisdom and authority of years. They are doubly fortified. They are noisy, because they are young. But you can’t frown them down, because they are mature. Unlike 20-year-olds, they have no respect whatever for gentlemen in their middle 40’s. In fact, I think the great majority of skiers are 31 years old.

At the second to last coach in the train, Jim and I managed to slip on board past a crowd of place-guarders, by the simple pretext of joining on to the tail of a throng of five for whom the door was being held. Other place-keepers were all ready to jump into position and crowd the door, but we laughed and pretended to be part of the successful crowd and so got inside the coach and by a little finagling, got a seat together. The young fellow who had the double seat turned back, with his feet on it, succumbed to my stony stare and question. “Is this seat taken?”

He was only about 25. So very grudgingly, he gave up the spare seat, hoisted all his haversacks to another place, and Jim and I turned the back over and disposed ourselves very happily in the hot and smoke-filled coach.

Joyous Trainload

It was, after all, a joyous trainload. Their colored scarves and jackets, their sturdy air, their heavy boots giving them a sort of massive and hearty quality. They made a din. In groups and couples, men and women, they shouted greetings and laughed uproariously, as 30-year-olds laugh. In belated squads, they came and pushed and shoved through the coaches, looking for seats. And by the time the train, with a reluctant grunt, got under way, I was glad I had come.

The day was gray and wintry, with promise of a blizzard, and in no time the windows we so steamed and frosted you could not see out. So we just sat and observed the motley throng catching eyes and pleasant glances every now and then, with people strange and interesting and sometimes beautiful. The ski train giddley-bumped out into the country, northerly taking the Owen Sound line for luck, because they said there were big snow hills north of the Caledon mountains.

“Normally,” I said to Jim, “people of this age do not appeal to me. I avoid them. But they seem a very hearty crowd, after all.”

“What age do you mean?” inquired Jim.

“Thirty-one,” I explained. “They’re all 31.”

“Nonsense,” said Jim, staring round at them.

And after a long time, with several wheezing stops on sidings to let freight trains crawl by, we arrived at a siding in the hills where the train stopped with several merry hoots its whistle, and everybody piled out.

The train did not wait, however, on the siding, but after discharging a great stack of skis, went on its way, the brakeman telling us that it would be back for us at 6 p.m.

In no time at all, the pile of skis was demolished and skiers with their haversacks and poles were threading away in all directions over the fields, up and down a country road that crossed near by, while others proceeded to make little bonfires to prepare tea for lunch, because it was only an hour until noon. Jim and I elected to have a fire out of deference to my devotion to the beautiful element, not to mention our mutual devotion to a pail of good boiled tea. We had cheese and onion sandwiches and leberwurst³ sandwiches, some cold fried bacon and some cakes. And under a gray and muttering sky, we lunched and chose for our direction the way that fewest people had taken. Because Jim and I are what you might call chatty skiers. We just like to slither about.

A Hard Pail of Tea

We slithered across a field to a dark wood. Around the end of the dark wood, we saw a vista of rolling fields and lonely farm houses, and all the fences drifted deep. In no time at all, we had slithered a mile or two, until the dark wood was far behind us, and other dark woods beckoned us on. We rounded a couple of them, and swung northerly to where numerous dark moving dots on the horizon proclaimed some sort of rallying point. And after another pleasant hour of slithering and stopping to observe the view until our perspiration would begin to congeal into ice, we came to the rallying point, which was a long tricky hill, with humps on it, down which 30 or 40 skiers were trying their skill sliding between ski poles set up as markers.

Women and men both were furiously toiling up this hill and abandonedly hissing down it, swerving and swooping amidst the sticks. We joined the watchers at the top, but this was an aspect of skiing neither Jimmie nor I go in for. We haven’t got much swerve in us, to be exact. Up the hill, toiling and flushed and handsome, they came, and after a quick breather, down they would go, like children. Little fires burned. Tea pails bubbled. We decided to light a little fire of our own, for warmth, because just standing watching is cold skiing.

One particularly pretty young woman whom we had observed go down the hill twice with special grace and who now arrived at the top for another go, got her eye on us. She bared lovely advertisement-style teeth at us. She even waved a mitted hand.

“Do we know her, Jim?” I inquired eagerly.

“I don’t recall her,” said Jim.

She slid over our way.

“Aren’t you slaloming?” she asked, and her voice was the husky kind.

“No,” I answered, “we’re just going to light a little fire. We’ve taken a long tour around, so we’re going to rest for a while.”

“Would you mind,” asked the beautiful young woman, she would be about 28, maybe, “putting our tea pail or your fire?”

“Not in the least,” I cried.

“Hurray,” cried the young woman, gliding smartly over to a group of men and women on the crest; “get the sack, Ted, and get our tea pail out. Grandpappy is going to boil our tea pail for us.”

So we boiled their tea pail for them, which was one of the hardest pails of tea I ever boiled in my life, and we gave it to them and they sat at another fire and then we skied back across the rolling fields to the dark wood and around it and so back to the siding where we built another and a bigger fire and sat by it, thinking, until the welcome train came in the darkness and we were two of the first aboard.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. Ski or Snow trains were common in the 1930s as a Depression era way of boosting train travel. ↩︎
2. Chilblains is a condition that causes inflamed swollen patches and blistering on the hands and feet. It’s caused by exposure to damp air that’s cold but not freezing. ↩︎
3. Leberwurst is another name for liverwurst. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, April 3, 1948.

Greg gives Jim a few lessons in the sport of bird-watching

“I won’t go!” announced Jimmie Frise.

“It’s the greatest sport in the world,” I assured him.

“Under no circumstances,” cried Jim flatly, “would I go! It sounds to me like the silliest, stupidest, vapidest, most infantile…”

“Go once,” I declared, “and you’ll wonder why you’ve been wasting all your life on sissy sports. Bird-watching, in another 10 years, will have 10,000,000 followers in North America. It’s sweeping the continent.”

“Bird-watching!” breathed Jimmie contemptuously.

“Some call it birding,” I informed him.

“Birding!” simpered Jim, puckering up his mouth. “Tatting. Crocheting. Birding!”

“Look:” I submitted. “I’ll take you out for a day’s bird-watching, and I’ll guarantee at the end of it you’ll be more exhausted than you’ve ever been with all your hunting and fishing in all your life.”

“Who wants to be exhausted?” snorted Jim.

“One thing at a time,” I reminded him. “You were trying to make out it is a sissy, old maid’s sport. I tell you, bird-watching is a strenuous sport, if you want it strenuous. On the other hand, if you just want to wander along country side roads, avoiding the bush and the swamps, that’s okay, too. But you won’t run up much of a score.”

“Score?” cried Jim. “Is there a score in this pretty game?”

“Certainly,” I explained. “This IS the game. It is to see how big a score of different species of wild birds you can run up in the one day. You compete with your friends who are out in the country with you. Or you can join a club of field naturalists or just a club of your own friends and connections. And then you try to beat the experts in that club.”

“It still sounds piffling to me,” muttered Jim.

“Okay” I changed direction. “What does any sport give you? What does golf give you? A day in the open air, zestful exercise, the company of your friends; and a little competition.”

“But golf calls for skill,” protested Jim.

“What do you think bird-watching calls for?” I exclaimed. “A great deal more skill than swinging a club. You’ve got to have physical skill to work your way, with economy and energy through thick swamps, dense bush, hill, cliff and valley. And you’ve got to have skill of eye and mind to identify the bird when you see it. With your field glasses.”

“How many birds are there?” asked Jim.

“Fifteen billion, by the last census,” I replied, “in North America.”

“I mean, how many different kinds?” said Jim, trying not to look impressed.

“In North America, 700 different kinds,” I informed him. “Around 500 different kinds in this particular section. But if you were to become a real expert, you might see 250 in your lifetime. So far, although I’ve been looking at them for 30 years, I’ve only seen and identified 170 kinds, from eagles to hummingbirds.”

“Gosh,” murmured Jim. “I had no idea. Heck, I don’t know more than a dozen different kinds, a crow, a robin, several kinds of duck, a hawk…”

“What kind of hawk?” I queried.

“Well, a hawk!” cried Jim. “Isn’t a hawk a hawk?”

“Certainly not,” I asserted. “There are 22 kinds of hawks. See? You talk about skill in golf. All your life you’ve been seeing birds out of the corner of your eye. You’ve never even looked at them. They’re creatures of beauty, mystery, charm. Most of them are HARD to see. It takes skill and intelligence.”

“And a lot of time,” complained Jim.

“Well, you spend a lot of time on other recreation,” I reminded.” But golf is limited by the season. So is hunting. So is fishing. Any sport you like to mention has to be given up at some season of the year. Bird- watching, on the other hand, is an all-the-year-’round game. These clubs and gangs of bird-watchers – you’ll find them in every city and town, centered around the schools or the sportsmen’s clubs – are out hunting from January 1 to the next December 31. They get a far bigger kick out of running up a score of 20 different birds on a February day than 100 on a May day.”

“You mean,” demanded Jim, “that these nuts go out in the dead of winter?”

“Certainly,” I gloated. “That’s the point. If it’s fresh air and exercise you want, a day in the country, with your friends, and with hunting as the object…”

“Queer hunting,” protested Jim.

“You mean you don’t kill anything?” I asked. “That is its chief charm. Do you know, doctors and psychiatrists are recommending bird-watching to bored and worried people all over the world?”

“The trouble is, I’m a dub,” explained Jim. “I don’t, know more than a dozen or so birds to start with. What equipment do you need?”

“Well, everybody’s a dub, when they start golf or bridge or fishing,” I pointed out. “All the equipment you need is a pair of field glasses and a pocket field guide to the birds, so you can identify them when you see them.”

Jim stared moodily out of the window. April is a funny time of year. Too early for golf. Too late for skiing. Too soon for fishing. Too muddy to start on the garden.

“I’ll go,” he announced grimly.

So, at 7 am, which is early for a Sunday anywhere, I tooted outside Jimmie’s; and he emerged in his old hunting clothes and boots, with an old pair of army field glasses around his neck and a paper bag of sandwiches in his hand. We drove to a suburban cross-roads where our particular party was to rendez-vous. There were five carloads, and the hunting party consisted of two bank managers, a fur dealer, a university professor of history, a locomotive engineer, three brokers, a plumber, a doctor, two mechanics and one poet. They were all dressed in dowdy old clothes and hunting boots. The only things they had in common were field glasses hung around their necks, long peaked caps and paper bags full of lunch.

I introduced Jim to the gang. One or two of the party had already started to score. You can pick up plenty of wild birds right within the city limits. The history professor, for instance, had detoured through a city park on his way to the rendez-vous, and he had scored already – song sparrow, bluebird, chickadee, sparrow hawk, pheasant, flicker, downy woodpecker, junco, blue jay and winter wren.

After a short palaver as to where we would all meet for lunch, in case any of us got lost chasing will o’ the wisps, we piled into our cars and the procession started away from the suburbs at a nice slow pace. You don’t race, bird-watching. Everybody is watching.

“A funny bunch,” announced Jim, as we fell in the rear of the parade.” They look like a bunch of crap- shooters.”

“Or deer-hunters,” I agreed, “or hound men going out for a fox. You see: it doesn’t matter what the game is…”

Half a mile up the road, the lead car spotted a bird hunched on a low tree off in the field. The whole cavalcade halted violently, everybody bailed out and levelled their field glasses. It was a migrant shrike. Everybody took out their score cards and entered the shrike. Jim studied the bird long and carefully; and then I showed him its color print in the little field guide.

“Never saw it before!” he stated with surprise.

“Oh, yes you have,” I assured him. “You never recognized it before. Up till now, it was just a bird of some kind. Score one, Mr. Frise.”

We dropped a little behind as I pointed out song sparrow, blue bird, junco, a pair of mourning doves rising off the road, their lovely flight so shy and wild; a chipping sparrow and a phoebe. “Just little flutters along the roadside,” marvelled Jim, “unless you stop and take a look.”

He levelled his glasses through the car window at each of them; and then took pleasure in hunting them up in the little book.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” he muttered, as he took out his score card and marked them down.

We overtook the main party, where they had all bailed out to identify a large hawk beating and soaring over a field some distance away. It turned out to be a red-tailed hawk, and Jim was amazed to discover, in his field glasses, that it had a red tail!

So we proceeded, by main road and occasionally turning off side roads, to do the concession square, and so back to the main road. We added savannah sparrow, tree swallow and a beautiful little sparrow hawk to our score. Jim was profoundly impressed at the comparison between the tiny, robin-sized sparrow hawk and the huge red tail he had seen a few minutes before. Both hawks! He pondered, scoring his card.

The caravan wandered up the highway, off the side roads, with distance increasing between cars from time to time as something caught the eye; and then closing up again into a compact convoy. At a dense swamp, we all got out and entered the cedars to look for some long-eared owls the history professor had seen in there the week before. But we found none.

We were about two hours out from the city when we got detached from the convoy. I had stopped the car to let Jim see a kildeer plover. He had seen lots of them before; but never through field glasses. When we took up the chase again, we came to a backwoods crossroad; and the other cars were nowhere in sight.

As we sat cogitating, something compact, brown and swift flashed across the road a few yards away. “A woodcock!” shouted Jim.

“A jack snipe,” I corrected.

“A woodcock!” insisted Jim, with newborn authority. “I guess I know a woodcock when I see it. I’ve shot plenty of them.”

I turned the car along the side road, and we coasted slowly, watching out the windows into the brushy swamp. A hundred yards down, I stopped and we got out.

“What do you say?” I suggested. “Let’s go in and try to identify it.”

“That’s my idea,” declared Jim. “That’s real bird-watching.”

So we left the car and slipped as cautiously as we could into the underbrush. Underfoot, the first hepatica, the barely open anemone. We kept close together and thrust, yard by yard, into the brushy willow and alder, watching every foot of ground ahead. We came to wet spots that we had to circle. We encountered cedar patches, which we wove through. We worked east, we worked west: but nary a woodcock nor even a jack snipe did we see; nor any other bird. And we were sweating and our legs ached. And we decided to go back out to the car.

Which we did. And when we reached the road, there was no car! We walked back to the corner. No car. We walked the full concession, with heavy feet. No car. We hailed a passing farmer in a truck and asked him had he noticed a yellow car.

“Not on the sixth line,” he confessed.

Had he seen a convoy of five cars full of bird-watchers?

“Bird what?” he asked suspiciously.

“Our car must be stolen,” I pleaded. “Could you give us a lift, while we look around?”

He drove us slowly along the side road, up and around the concession. He took us to his farm house, where we put in a call to the county constable.

“If it’s stolen,” said the constable, “they can’t get out of this area without having been seen by one of the gas stations, I’ll call you back in 20 minutes.”

We sat drinking tea with the farmer and his wife.

“What were you doing in there?” the farmer asked, cautiously.

“We’re b…”, I stuttered, “we’re naturalists.”

“Ah, bugs and things,” said the farmer, much relieved. The phone rang. It was the county constable.

“We’ve located your car,” he said. “It’s been abandoned. It’s down on the fifth line.”

So the farmer drove us down to the fifth line.

And there was our car, exactly where we had left it! It seems, when you go bird watching you can get badly turned around. What is more, you can cross a road without being aware of it. For the farmer had driven us, in his truck, entirely around the concession in which we believed we had been hunting.

“You get sort of,” said Jimmie, “sort of hypnotized by…uh…”

“Bugs and things,” agreed the farmer, gently.

We got into the car and drove back to the highway: and thus to the lunch hour rendez-vous by a stream, where we found our five carloads of fellow bird watchers deep in their paper bags.

The professor of history had a score of 48, the locomotive engineer 47, and all the rest in the forties. They all wore the relaxed and cheery air of men who had been thoroughly washed out by wild fresh air. Their legs spread out, heavy and tired. They munched their sandwiches. The winners looked cocky and proud. The losers looked subdued and defiant.

No money had changed hands. Nothing was killed. The hunt was ended. The friends were sprawled about, aware of one another.

“You’ve got something,” admitted Jim, in a low voice, from behind his ham sandwich.

---

Editor’s Notes: Tatting is a technique for handcrafting lace.

Hepatica and Anemone are in the buttercup family.

Any of the bird types can be searched for if you are interested.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 5, 1936.

“Mushrooms,” said Jimmie Frise, “are now in season.”

“For me,” I replied, “mushrooms have no season. I like mushrooms on a nice rare steak. I like mushrooms on toast, soaked in their own butter gravy. But, most of all, I like mushrooms in June or January, February or December.”

“But you admit,” asked Jim, “that the best mushrooms are the ones you pick yourself in the woods and cook yourself, about nine p.m. at night at the conclusion of a lovely September day out in the open, mushroom hunting.”

“No, Jim,” I said, “I can’t say I do. As a matter of fact, I have never done that. But my feeling is, I prefer a good professionally grown mushroom that you can buy at any store to the wild article precisely as I prefer a nice piece of high grade beef to a hunk of wild venison.”

“I thought you were a sportsman,” sighed Jim.

“A man can be a sportsman,” I explained, “and still like good food. If your idea of a sportsman is one who sits out in a frozen bog all day nibbling dry sandwiches and then comes in to a good meal of lukewarm canned beans and tea that would make your toes open and shut or float an egg, then I am not a sportsman. I like good edible tasty food, that’s all.”

“Good edible tasty food,” said Jim, “makes me think of a dull, sickening thud or something. It makes me think of fat men who live in furnished rooms all alone and go through life gently and silently staring at everything and nobody knows their name. Good tasty food. It makes me think of the kind of woman you describe as a great little housekeeper. Ugh.”

“You like good food,” I protested.

“Yes, but now and then I like a little adventure,” said Jim. “I like to surprise my insides. Imagine being insides. Imagine spending your whole life at the mercy of somebody outside who does all the picking and choosing. And all you have to do every day for all your life is receive a lot of guck, always the same, never anything new, never any excitement.”

“Radishes,” I pointed out, “onions.”

“Pah,” said Jim. “I believe in giving my insides a surprise every now and then. I like to go to one of these Italian restaurants and eat one of those great big soup plates full of rubbery spaghetti, four feet long doused with meat sauce, red hot peppers, paprika and spices.”

“So do I,” I admitted. “Within reason.”

“Reason nothing,” said Jim. “You just ought to feel my insides when I start sliding that spaghetti down, all cool and smooth and hot and scratchy. Boy, my insides fairly shout with joy.”

“A tall thin cold glass of water,” I agreed, “often gives me that feeling of cheering.”

“A tin dipper full,” corrected Jim, “from a pump.”

“I never really can enjoy a drink from a pump,” I explained, “because of looking down the end of my nose for wrigglers or thinking of pollution.”

Jim studied me for a long moment.

Men Who Lived Gloriously

“There is no thrill,” said he, “like the wild thrill. No flavor like the gamey flavor. We are the flabby descendants of ages of men before us who lived gloriously on what they killed or picked up in the forest. It took us countless ages to arrive at roast beef and ham and eggs.”

“During which time,” I pointed out, “millions died in agony from eating the wrong thing.”

“If you like,” agreed Jim. “But certain things wake in us an ancient thrill, a sense of freedom, a feeling of reality, and among them are mushrooms and venison and partridges and speckled trout.”

“Hear, hear,” I confessed immediately.

“My suggestion is,” said Jim, “that this week-end, we go mushrooming. This is the time of year. Mushrooms are to be gathered at all times of the year, from spring to autumn. But the autumn is the best time.”

“How about toadstools?” I asked

“There are only a few poisonous species,” explained Jim. “And hundreds of edible species.”

“Jim, if there were only the one poisonous species,” I stated, “it would be too much.”

“Wait a minute,” said Jim. “I’ve got a government bluebook on mushrooms here somewhere. I’ll show you how simple it is.”

He hunted around through his files of old newspapers, straw hats, discarded suspenders, old snapshots he had lost for years, and so forth, the usual artist’s files, and then he produced the pamphlet.

“See,” he said, “it’s got pictures. Here’s one I’ve often eaten. Look. Deadly Agaric. No, no, but that one. That is deadly. Wait a minute. Here it is. See this lovely one. The Destroying Angel. No, no, wait a minute. That’s the worst one of all. I’ve got its picture right here. Somewhere.”

He thumbed through the pamphlet, showing me dozens of photographs of the worst-looking creations the Lord ever made. What day these flat, flabby, pallid things were made is not mentioned in the Good Book.

“Ah, here it is,” cried Jim, exhibiting a dreadful bulbous-looking monster that seemed to have a skin disease. This is the Shaggy Mane.”

“Has it got hair on it?” I protested.

“Certainly not,” said Jim. “That’s a poetic name for it. Nothing in nature has such poetic names as mushrooms. My boy, I assure you once you have tried mushroom hunting you will become a mushroom hunter for life. In the cool September weather, in the early morning when everything is fresh and dewy, you go forth into the woods and along the margins of meadows, searching on the ground for these quaint little elfin creations of nature. They are white and cream and tawny brown. Pearly and bluish. They grow secretly in the shadow of trees, along the edges of old logs, in clusters where the long grass suddenly thins. In olden days, the people thought the fairies made mushrooms for chairs and parasols. They thought where the rings of mushrooms grew the fairies had been dancing.”

“I wouldn’t wonder,” I said darkly.

“Mushroom hunting in September,” declared Jim, “is as delightful a pastime as bird watching in May. Besides, you can’t eat songbirds, but you can eat mushrooms.”

“I might go with you,” I said, “but only for the fresh air.”

“Here,” said Jim, turning to the government pamphlet again, “are the rules about how to avoid the poisonous species. Listen. It says, ‘Avoid fungi when in the button or unexpanded stage; also those in which the flesh has begun to decay, even if only slightly, and those that contain larvae or worm holes.”

“How delicious,” I said.

“Avoid all fungi which have stalks with a swollen base,” continued Jim, “surrounded by a cup-like or scaly envelope, especially if the gills are white.”

“It sounds like a snake and a fish combined,” I declared.

“Avoid all fungi,” continued Jim, eloquently, “having a milky juice, unless the milk is reddish.”

“Ah,” said I, “reddish milk is O.K. huh?”

“Avoid all fungi,” read Jim, “which have a bitter, unpleasant taste or an unpleasant odor.”

“I’d be sure to like those,” I agreed, “straight off.”

“You see,” said Jim. “Here it is in cold type, perfectly plain and simple. We can’t go wrong.”

“I tell you, Jim,” I said. “You collect mushrooms, and I’ll collect poison ivy.”

Baskets on Our Arms

But Jim is a man of imagination, and Saturday dawn he had me up and away to that country of beechwoods and pine and ash which lies amidst the limestone of Guelph and Georgetown, and across meadows soaked with dew we strode upward toward the skyline carrying baskets on our arms.

And sure enough, along the edge of a lovely beech wood we found in the meadow little encampments of the common mushroom. And I must confess that it was a pleasure to find them, and to kneel down and pick them, all firm and cool, and see how easily and crisply they broke apart, cap from stem. Jim and I soon had the bottoms of the baskets covered with them.

Into the woods we walked slowly, studying each tree trunk carefully, and finding amidst the pine woods the fluted stalk or Fall Morel, a curiously twisted and wrinkled thing like an old, old lady, but really only a day old; and incredibly yellow coral fungi which Jim said were beautiful to eat, but which looked to me like asparagus gone to the dogs.

On dead trees we found flat fungi as red as Chinese lacquer, and in a quiet and lovely grove of birch trees, already fading to yellow, we came upon a lonely little thing of beauty, white as alabaster, curved and beautiful as a child’s hand, rising like a dream out of the rotting earth mould.

“And here,” said Jim, proudly, “is my dear friend. Amanita Verna, the Destroying Angel. This frail and ghostly little plant has enough deadly poison in him to kill a tableful of guardsmen.”

So we looked at it for quite a few minutes and thought of our poor ancestors who didn’t have government pamphlets or any other knowledge, and then we kicked it to pieces and stamped on it, and wiped our boots on good wet meadow grass and went down afar to another beech-edged meadow to fill our baskets with the common mushroom.

Lunch we had with us in a box, and his we ate on one of those hills looking north across a thousand farms in autumn chintz. The afternoon we wasted splendidly turning up roads never seen before, and stopping at the gates of a hundred farms to see the apples on the trees, or observe the fat cattle or simply to try and guess what some distant farmer was doing. And usually we couldn’t guess.

And through the afternoon haze we turned homeward for the feast.

“Now comes,” said Jim, “the best part of mushroom hunting. Mushrooms are best the day they are picked.”

And his family being on a picnic, we went to Jim’s for the party. We sorted our baskets and set out only the choicest of our joint catch. Washed them and dried them. Put on aprons. Dedicated one whole pound of butter to the feast, and heated the big iron frying-pan.

“I’ll fry,” said Jim, “and you dance attendance on me. Heat the plates. Set the table.”

“Bread?” said I.

“Would you eat a woollen blanket with pate de fois gras?” demanded Jim. “Just mushrooms. Nothing else. This is a feast.”

And into the browning butter Jim sliced the plump mushrooms, where they swelled and curved and darkened and shrank. And on to an oven platter he ladled them out.

“Not done too much,” he explained, “yet not underdone.”

And, in due time, we had fried in butter enough of the succulent nubbins to make a fine black heap on two large plates and an odor so wild and strange and teasing as to make us almost perspire with expectancy.

“Fall to,” cried Jim.

And we fell to, as only men who have been abroad in September can fall. And with our forks we ladled up mouthfuls of the hot and buttery darkness and found them as they should be, chewy, yet tender,

To tell the truth, right at the very start, I imagined I detected a faint bitterness. I did not like to say anything about it, because after all it was a feast and Jim was full of pride. But after I had got down about half of my pile, I slowed up a bit and looked at Jim. And, to my horror, I caught Jim looking at me with a slight look of horror in his eyes.

“Do you – ah,” I said, “detect a slight bitterness?”

“I do,” said Jim, hollowly. We pushed our plates away.

“How soon,” I asked, huskily, “do the pains begin?”

“Sometimes,” said Jim, in a thin voice, “not for two days.”

We stared at each other. What a strange way for our long friendship to end. Boy and man, come Michaelmas, blame near a quarter century. And now toadstool gets us.

“Jim,” I said, “look through this basket here and see which of us is likely guilty. I would feel easier if I thought you had poisoned me rather than vice versa.”

“Let’s leave it,” said Jim, rising sharply to his feet and clutching his stomach. “Here come the pains.”

Sure enough pains.

“Call a doctor,” I commanded.

“No use, no use,” said Jim. “I don’t think there is a cure known for fungus poisoning.”

“Will it hurt much?” I enquired.

“After all,” said Jim, turning green, “does that matter?”

“You’re quite right,” I agreed, slipping back and getting a good grip of my central neighborhood.

And then Jim’s family walked in, loudly, gaily, full of picnic.

“What on earth,” they cried, “are you cooking in that iron frying-pan?”

“Mushrooms,” said we, concealing our agony bravely.

“Did you rinse it out, for goodness sake?” they asked.

“No,” said we.

“Well, it was full of laundry soap the last time I saw it,” said the family, loudly laughing. “And that was this morning. That hasn’t been a cooking pan for about ten years.”

“We didn’t eat any yet,” said Jim. “We were just going to, when you came in.”

“Ha, ha,” said I. “Wouldn’t that have been comic, if we had eaten any.”

But Jim, looking at me, took me by the arm and led me out the back kitchen into the garden, under the stars, and we two walked up and down, pausing now and again, and walking up and down, along the back or bushy end of the garden, until nearly ten o’clock.

---

Editor’s Notes: Greg and Jim describe spaghetti as a rare and unusual treat, as in the 1930s, Italian food would still be “ethnic food”.

“Dance attendance on me” is an archaic term meaning “obey every command I give”.

Michaelmas is a Christian feast day on September 29. So Greg is describing his friendship with Jim dating back 25 years by that date. This would date back to the early 1910s, which would make sense since Jim’s first comic in the Toronto Star was late in 1910, and Greg started working for the Star in 1912.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 20, 1935.

“The editor,” said Jimmie Frise, “is off for a few days buying paintings for the picture section.”

“Then,” I said, “let’s go fishing.”

“Not fishing,” said Jimmie. “I am tired of fishing. Let’s go camping. There is a sort of anxiety and hurry about going fishing. Camping, you can just dope along.”

“Morally,” I hesitated, “we are justified in sneaking off like this when the editor goes away. Because it is far, far better that we should take care of our health than that we should just stick to the mere letter of the law. We aren’t Pharisees, I hope.”

“Both for the sake of our employers,” said Jim, “as well as for the sake of our families and dependents we should use our initiative in the matter of keeping well and efficient. How long do you suppose the editor will be away?”

“Let’s take a chance on four days,” I estimated.

“I feel poorly,” admitted Jim. “I really do. I feel the need of a few days drowsing in the shade beside some cool lake. The editor doesn’t go away now as much as he used to, does he?”

“We don’t get quite as much opportunity for using our initiative in the matter of our health and well-being,” I confessed. “Let’s take a chance on three days. Nobody will notice it.”

“You remember the time he came back in two days?” warned Jimmie.

“We must remember,” I said, “not to get sunburned. When a boss comes back and finds his whole staff all sunburned it gives rise to suspicions. We working-class people are pretty dumb. You notice the assistant bosses always go golfing on dull afternoons?”

“By jove,” admitted Jim.

“With our families all away,” I proposed, “we can just go on a nice little camping trip, the kind all men want to take but never can. Most men are prisoners. They can’t do what they like at the office. And they can’t do what they like at home. And when the so-called holidays come the poor fellow has to go where the family tell him. Now’s our chance for a three-day escape from prison. Where will we go? Peterborough? Parry Sound?”

“Suppose,” said Jim, “suppose we just get in the car, with a tent and some pots and pans and some grub, and turn either left or right at every fourth gallon of gas?”

“A perfect idea,” I cried. “You drive and I’ll watch the gas. And at every fourth gallon we’ll take the next turn.”

“Real gipsies,” exulted Jimmie. “Wotting not whither we goeth.”

“We won’t fish. We won’t even hunt birds’ nests. We’ll just dangle along all day and when five o’clock comes we’ll look for a place to pitch our tent and there we’ll pitch it.”

“And,” sang Jimmie, “if we don’t feel like getting up in the morning we won’t. And if we find a nice shady spot, by a cool lake, we’ll just stay there. We don’t have to keep on going, do we?”

“Not at all,” I agreed. “The only rule will be, however, that at every fourth gallon we take the first turn, either to the right or the left, it doesn’t matter.”

“Swell,” said Jim.

To The Wide Open Spaces

So, after making a few discreet inquiries around the editor’s secretary and trying to find out from the art department how many paintings it needed for the next while, Jimmie and I quietly slipped away and went to our homes and packed.

“Don’t take much,” ruled Jim. “Your little tent, and my outboard motor…”

“We’re not going fishing,” I cut in.

“It will be handy to have along, in case we want to go for a spin somewhere.”

“And my gasoline stove,” I added.

“And Rusty,” submitted Jim.

Rusty, his Irish water spaniel, had been left home by the family because it takes him so long to get acquainted with the other dogs up at the cottage. In fact, it takes the whole two months, July and August, for Rusty to get on speaking terms with the dogs of the beach.

“Very well, bring Rusty,” I conceded. “You can’t very well leave him for three days.”

And soon Jimmie and I were, with a carefully filled and measured gas tank, on our way up Yonge St. for the wide open spaces.

It was a beautiful day. We who rarely see the highways except when they are frantic with week-end traffic can have no real appreciation of this beautiful land of ours as it appears when leisure fills the main roads and the lush fields wave and blow in the summer wind.

“Ah, Jimmie,” I said, “to think of all those poor chaps and poor girls back in town, sweltering over desks, dancing attendance on machines, tools, boxes, bales. Couldn’t life be wonderful if only we knew how to arrange it?”

“Canada,” said Jim, waving one arm off the steering wheel, “Canada, my own!”

The lazy miles whipped by.

“Curious,” said Jim, “that we put on speed every time we hit a good pavement and so the sooner get off it on to a bad one. Why don’t we go slow over a good highway and fast over a bad one?”

“It would be more sensible,” I confessed.

So we cut down to twenty-five miles an hour and felt Yonge St., beyond Aurora, peel off under us yard by yard at a lovely sight-seeing pace.

It was between Barrie and Orillia that the four-gallon mark arrived, at which we had to turn either right or left. So we turned right, across country road that led us down to Lake Simcoe.

“This means.” said Jim, “that we should follow around the lake and cross into the Kawartha district.”

“So be it,” I agreed.

And through Atherley we drove, following the highway southward and looking, since evening was drawing on, for a handsome place to pitch our gipsy tent.

“Clouding up,” commented Jim.

And out of the west, large majestic white clouds were rearing themselves vastly, with bright, gleaming edges and dark shadows in their midst.

“Did you get the tent repaired that place?” Jim asked.

“I can put a towel over it,” I said, “It isn’t much of a hole.”

“Let’s turn left over towards Bobcaygeon,” said Jim.

“Not till four gallons are gone,” I pointed out.

“But we’ll be back in Whitby before another four gallons,” protested Jim.

“We’ll find a good spot along here soon,” I said, looking out at the clouds.

“What I like about Ontario is the infinite variety. All kinds of earth, rock and soil. All different trees, hardwood here, spruce there. And all kinds of weather. There is no sameness about this country. If it had stayed bright and blue all day, like it was this afternoon, we’d soon weary of it.”

“I like a storm,” agreed Jim, also looking over his shoulder. “There is something bracing about it.”

And Rusty, sleeping on the dunnage bags in back, got up and yawned and looked out, too. He whined.

“There’s a spot,” exclaimed Jim.

We were north of Brechin somewhere, and off to the left, sweet rolling meadows, sloped with spruce and cedar and topped with clusters of birch and pine, beckoned us.

Without conversation. Jim took a rutty little side road. In five minutes we were stopped at the foot of as perfect a camping spot as ever gipsies found. A small, bright brook went by the sloping meadow. Birches on a flat-topped hillock stood ready to shelter our little tent. Grass and herbage made a ready couch for our blankets.

“My own Canadian home,” lilted Jim.

And a faint mutter of thunder applauded him.

“Here,” I said, “let’s get the tent up right away.”

So while Rusty went exploring. Jim and I cheerfully unloaded the car and carried the little silk tent up the slope. Picked a level spot for it to pitch. Strung the rope between two graceful birches. And in five minutes, our home was ready.

“Let ‘er rain,” laughed Jimmie.

And we looked at the mighty towering clouds, which now were much higher and higher, and from them hung down ragged smoke-colored remnants, sweeping towards us.

“Let’s get the stuff in the tent,” I cried.

Blankets and corrugated box of grub, gasoline stove and pots and pans.

“I’ll just bring this outboard motor in,” said Jimmie.

“Leave it,” I hurried, two big drops starting to swing down at us. “There isn’t room in the tent.”

“Car doesn’t lock,” shouted Jimmie, for a gale suddenly bent everything over. “Sure to be stolen if I leave it in the car.”

So he staggered the engine up and we just shoved into the tent as the first deluge plunged down out of the clouds.

“Here, Rusty. Rusty, whit, whit,” whistled Jimmie, Rusty having disappeared.

“Shut the flaps,” I shouted.

The little tent was all cluttered and abulge with bundles, boxes, stove, engine, pots and what not. I sat on the stove and Jim on the tank of his engine.

And the little tent bellied and clapped loudly with the gale, while a regular thunder of rain beat, like bursting ocean waves, against the frail silk.

“These summer showers,” I cried, “are soon over.”

Troubles Multiply

“Thank goodness,” called back Jimmie, “we have your little gasoline stove. Dry wood won’t be found after this.”

“We forgot to get gas for it,” I remembered. “We can siphon some out of your tank.”

“If we have a siphon,” shouted Jim.

And then thunder roared and lightning hissed and cracked, and Jim found a small stream starting to run under the tent and across the ground.

“Get off the stove,” said Jim, “and I’ll set the grub box on it to keep it dry.”

“So I stand up?” I inquired.

I half stood up and half sat down, while the walls of the tent sagged looser and looser, and the thunder growled and the ground grew all wet, and we kept shifting things around in the cramped tent.

“I wish I knew where Rusty is,” said Jim.

“Fighting some local dog,” I suggested.

“Rusty hates rain,” said Jim.

“Sure, he’s a water spaniel,” I explained. Jim peeped out the tent flaps.

“Very black over by the east,” he said.

“Sometimes, these summer storms that come up in the late afternoon,” I said, “mean an all-night rain. And a westerly blow.”

“Rusty, Rusty, whit, whit,” went Jim out the tent flaps.

“Aw, let him alone,” I exclaimed, “He’s probably found somebody his own size.”

The rain seemed to slacken.

“Jim,” I said, “while I’m seeing if there is any gas in this stove tank, take a run down to the brook and get a pail of water so we can make tea. It looks like an indoor supper to-night.”

When Jim was gone with the pail, I looked, and as I fully expected, there was no gas in the stove tank.

Jim scratched hastily in through the flaps.

“The creek,” he said, wiping rain off his face, “is running yellow mud. Pure mud.”

So we sat and listened to the thunder and blinked to the lightning and shoved articles of furniture up against the corners of the tent to keep the steadily sagging walls from coming entirely in upon us.

Ants, spiders, striped worms and small beetles began climbing up everything that was dry, such as us.

“Pshaw,” said Jim, “think of our poor ancestors who came to this country in the early days. They didn’t even have tents. They had to rush up some kind of a roof over their heads, made of split logs. Think of bring huddled in here with all your family, including little babies, in a storm like this. And they had storms like this in 1800.”

“Our ancestors,” I taught Jim, “were simpler folk than we. They came from mud huts in Ireland and shacks made of granite rocks in the Highlands. My ancestors used to have the chickens roost on the foot of the bed when they first came to Ontario.”

“What I mean,” said Jim, pulling his feet up under him, “is that we ought to have, just underneath our skins, the makings of good men. Tough men. Men who can suffer hardship like this. It can’t have gone out of us completely in only two or three generations.”

“I wish I had my plus-fours on,” I said. “Did you ever have an ant up your pant leg? I don’t think our ancestors wore pants.”

“Think,” said Jimmie, brushing off couple of spiders and a small green hump worm, “of our Scottish ancestors, coming to this country in kilts.”

But a loud flash and bang of lightning made us stop thinking of our ancestors.

The ground was now squishy under our feet. The rent in the tent that we had got last fall was dripping water into the left rear corner, and I was in the right.

“Skunk,” said Jim suddenly.

“Phew,” said I.

And Rusty thrust his dripping wet face in the flaps.

“Get out,” I yelled.

Rusty backed out. But in a moment, he thrust his head in again, this time gripping in his wide jaws, and his eyes glancing proudly above, a black and white object limp in his jaws. And of overpowering fragrance.

“Get out. Scat.”

Even Jimmie threw a pail at him.

Hating To Admit Defeat

And so we had whines from Rusty outside, to add to the things we had to listen to, as the darkness continued to deepen, and the thunder went away and then came suddenly and surprisingly back again. And the wind changed direction and began shoving at the front flaps.

“Jim,” I said, “we can’t stay here.”

“Let’s wait and see,” said Jim.

“Put that engine out and give us some room,” I insisted.

“Nothing doing,” replied Jim.

“We have no water, no wood, no gas for the stove,” I complained.

“Maybe it will clear,” said Jim.

“That dog,” I said, “has put the kibosh on everything. I can hardly breathe.”

“We have to take him home in the car,” pointed out Jim.

“I say we beat it,” I concluded.

“Where to?” asked Jim.

One hates to admit defeat. I gazed hopelessly about the little tent, its dripping walls sagging close to our heads.

“Jimmie,” I cried, looking about at the grass and herbage on which our beds were to be laid. “What’s that plant right beside you there!”

“Gee,” said Jim, drawing up his hand.

It was three-leaved, glossy green, reddish tinges at the base of the leaves. It was cool, cold, cruel looking.

“Poison ivy, Jim.” I gasped.

“I guess we had better go,” agreed Jim half rising, which was all he could do.

And as we stepped out the door, a long glorious blade of evening sunlight burst across the glade. The dripping world shone and sparkled. Rusty barked hoarsely and started to show us his latest victim.

“How about it?” asked Jim. “We’ll go. But where?”

“Home,” I said, for both of us.

And into the back of the car we stuffed the soaking tent, just bundled in anyhow, and the engine and the stove and the grub box. Jim scrubbed Rusty with bunches of grass, to no purpose.

“Zing,” said something.

“Now the mosquitoes,” said I.

And before we had the car loaded, the soft, muggy summer evening was alive with great big after-the-storm mosquitoes, focusing on our ankles and wrists.

“Make it snappy,” said Jim.

“I’m ready,” I snorted. “What about Rusty?”

“Whit, whit,” said Jim to Rusty, and Rusty, all damp clambered in.

And under a radiant, starry sky, we drove down to Whitby.

“Four gallons, exactly,” said I, as we rounded the turn to Toronto.

And so to bed.

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Editor’s Notes: The Pharisees were a Jewish social movement that were legal experts in traditions, so when Greg said “we aren’t Pharisees”, he meant that they were not strict rule-followers.

Jim was quoting the Bible, John 12:35, specifically the Tyndale Bible of the 16th century, “He that walketh in the darke wotteth not whither he goeth.” This would be more recently translated as “Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. “

Brechin Ontario is on the northeast edge of Lake Simcoe.

A Dunnage bag was the type of large bag that sailors would use to carry their belongings. It would more commonly be referred to as a duffle bag today.

“My Own Canadian Home” was a patriotic song written in 1887. It was considered “Canada’s National Song”, but it’s popularity faded by the mid-20th century.

Plus fours are trousers that extend four inches below the knee, and were popular for sporting activities.

This story appeared in Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise Outdoors (1979).