Cooking up some bannok!
Spring Fever AKA Cabin Fever
Date: 2002//05/15
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Cooking up some bannok! |
Spring has been slow in coming to this part of the country! One day of above zero followed by a week of snow and sub-zero temperatures. If April showers bring May flowers – what do April snowstorms bring? For a lot of us, cabin fever! When we finally had a couple days of decent weather, I couldn’t take it anymore and headed for the bush. Even though I had other things planned and was committed to a few things, I said to heck with it, loaded some grub and the dog into the truck and drove west. Stress was getting the best of me and the only cure I knew of was fresh air. When I arrived at the cabin I saw the snow in the trees and knew that the thermometer was stilling dipping below zero at night. As far as I was concerned, that wasn’t a problem. Longjohns and a fleece bag liner would keep me warm.
Over the winter I had been thinking about pursuing some serious hiking and bivouacking for the spring and summer. The pack I had been using for years didn’t fit well and seemed kind of small at about 45cc’s so a newer and larger one would be a nice treat. Searching through my normal places such as Wal-Mart and Canadian Tire didn’t produce much to my interest. Looking through the Mountain Equipment Coop catalogue every morning excited me, but it didn’t seem to be all that worthwhile spending big money on the types of bags they offered. I wasn’t planning on climbing Everest! Curiosity drove me to visit our local climbing and hiking store, Valhalla Pure. Thanks to the great help provided by the staff I left with an Arcteryx backpack that fit perfectly. They customized the bag in ways that I never thought possible and even though it cost more than I had planned for, I felt good about my investment. With any luck this pack would last me till I can’t walk anymore, and will give me something of value to leave in my will! The weekend getaway would give me a chance to take the pack out on its maiden run.
Although I had abandoned the tent for a tarp or even less, I wanted to try a tent again just to see what I was missing. Without a fire to warm the air in a lean-to, nights could get cold and a tent may hold some heat inside. I’ve heard though that a tent protects you from the wind and a sleeping bag protects and heats the body. I was willing to try it and knew the exact spot I wanted to hike to!
I gathered up my gear and prepped some food during the afternoon. My new pack is almost twice the capacity of the old one, but I had trouble loading everything inside. Then again I used to hang a lot of stuff off the outside of my other pack. When it was loaded, the cabin door was locked, and my dog and I excitedly headed over to the pack to rig up and head down the trail. My pack wasn’t all that heavy – maybe thirty pounds? After all it didn’t have a weeks worth of food or gear, just enough to get me through the night. When I picked it up it weighed like a hundred-pound bag of cement! When I got it on my back, the hip belt done up and the load levelers set, my legs were wobbly and sweat was running off my brow. Initially I blamed the pack itself – it must weigh a lot more than my old one! The tent was what was doing it, all that weight from the poles! As I struggled down the road to the trail the thought occurred to me that I was out of shape and that was why the pack was a struggle. I couldn’t accept that idea! After all I spent the winter fairly active. Getting up from the couch and going to the kitchen to make popcorn involves some walking, and then there was the time or two when I climbed the ladder to sweep the snow from the satellite TV dish. Surfing the web involved some aerobic exercise - that mouse is heavy and pushing it around all night has to amount to something. No, I thought, all that extra weight came from the tent poles and the two liters of water!
Needless to say by the time my energy levels reached bottom not much more than a mile of trail had been covered. By then any spot looked like a good spot to pitch the tent. My dog and I finally settled on a nice area on the edge of a meadow and bordering a game trail crossroads. While setting up the tent I realized why a tarp is so efficient. To begin with it isn’t as heavy, doesn’t take long to rig up, and doesn’t consume much room. I won’t blame my tent, after all I was out of practice setting one up, but there were some problems. The spot selected would have been perfect for a tarp, but was too small for the floor size of the tent and one side of the floor rested on some brush. No problem, I just wouldn’t sleep on that side! The fly went up and out and around a small sapling in front of the tent. Again the tarp system wouldn’t have been a problem – as a matter of fact I would have made use of the sapling as a support for the lean-to. No problem! It started to trickle down rain when I had finished getting the tent up. As I sat under the vestibule staring out into the forest and the rain, it occurred to me that it was just like sitting under a tarp – maybe tents weren’t that bad after all! The rain didn’t last long and when it stopped my dog and I decided it was suppertime.
Unless a previous camper had rigged up a fire ring that I can make use of, I prefer to use a stove to cook on out in the bush. It’s fast, efficient, and reasonably safe and leaves no trace. Not exactly primitive but I’ll take it. This area was going through the winter to spring transition. The snowmelt and rain made the earth damp, but the cold weather had kept the grass from growing. As a result the dried remains of last years growth covered the ground and I had to be extra careful! The stove used on this trip was a propane unit attached to a small lantern bottle. It fires up immediately and though the adjustment is extremely fine it can be turned down quite low. The other stove I have is a pump white gas model. It works well for longer trips but for an over nighter the propane unit is what I prefer. Supper was good, rice with steak slices and mushrooms, bannok with raisins for desert, washed down with a cup of coffee. What a life!
Out in the west country there are many animals wandering the woods and trails. Some are small such as mice and voles, some a little bigger like fox and coyotes. There’s lots of deer, moose and elk, and but there are also the big predators to be wary of. The immediate area hadn’t shown signs of bear for a few years. Someone had claimed they had seen cougar tracks in the first snow of the season along the road not far from where I was camped. I wasn’t all that convinced that the big cat was in the immediate area but I have to admit cougars have been sighted about five miles southwest of our camp. While fishing along the Tay River two years ago, we spied cougar tracks in the mud of the riverbank. In all my hiking along these trails during the last winter I had never seen a cougar track. I assumed my neighbor who had seen the track actually saw a domestic cat track which spread out as the snow melted. This would have made it looked larger than normal. Even so, why take chances? So I rigged up a bear bag. I loaded my extra food and garbage into a dry bag and hoisted up into a tree about two hundred yards from the tent. It was about twenty feet from the ground and maybe eight or ten feet from the main trunk.
Even if the bear could get up the trunk, he wouldn’t be able to grab the bag with a swing of those big ol’ paws.We always like to name our campsites, usually after a local identifying feature. For example we’ve had ‘bent tree camp’, ‘two stump camp’ and ‘mosquito camp’. This camp was named Moose Jaw Trail for the old moose jawbone laying beside the game trail where I set up the tent. There wasn’t much left of the jaw but some bone and a few teeth. It was well weathered and chewed by other critters for the calcium it contains. If you stop and relax in an area you can sometimes feel the spirits in the area. The feeling that came over me here was one of darkness, even sadness.
When I crossed the cutline to hang up my bearbag the area there seemed light and airy. Very relaxed. When I came back into the area were the moose jaw was it felt that the temperature had dropped a few degrees. In previous exploring of this area, over the years I’ve walked through here a lot, there had been evidence of predator activity. I’ve found deer legs, the occasional pile of bird feathers indicating a catch for a fox or coyote, and even parts of a porcupine. Now that I think of it, cougars are one of the few predators to even think of attacking a porcupine – maybe there was one in the area! About two hundred feet from my tent I came across two spots covered with deer hair. It was most likely the leftovers of a deer dinner for some coyotes. I suspect they chew away the hide and leave the hair behind. These clumps of hair, and there was a lot – a blanket two by two and half feet– were cut clean at the bottom of the hair. Almost like a knife cut – more like teeth cuts! This area was a definite killing zone. There is another story for the spiritual part of the evening, and I’ll tell that separately.
The spring fever that was driving me to the bush was satisfied and that night I slept well. Breakfast the next day was bannok, instant porridge and coffee. I packed up and headed back to the cabin to collect my thoughts. As I sat by the fire, the dream I had the night before ran through my mind. But was it a dream? Check out the story ‘The Moose Jaw Trail’ elsewhere on this web page. I’ll let you decide for yourself!