"This," you say, as you step from the canoe and help to fling the cargo
ashore, "this looks like good camping ground."
The place is more open than is usual, comparatively level, and a dozen
feet above the river, which, brawling over a ledge, spreads into an
attractive pool. The place also faces the west, where there is promise
of a fine sunset; a number of large birches are in sight, and an
abundance of balsam. "And," you remark, stooping to untie the tent-bag,
"there are not many flies."
Instantly a mosquito sings in your ear, and as you still his song you
recall a recent statement by the scientist Klein, that an insect's wings
flap four hundred times in a second. The mind does not readily grasp so
rapid a motion, but you accept the figures on trust, as you accept the
distances of interstellar spaces.
Very soon you discover that you were in error about the fewness of the
flies. They are all there--mosquitoes, black-flies, deer-flies, and
punkies, besides other species strictly vegetarian. So you drop the
tent-bag and build a smudge. Experience has taught you to make a small
but hot fire, and when this is well under way you kick open a rotted,
moss-grown cedar and scoop up handfuls of damp mould. This, piled on and
banked around the fire, provides a smudge that is continuous and
effective. We built smudges morning, noon, and night. Whenever a halt
was called, if only for five minutes, I reached mechanically for a strip
of birchbark and a handful of twigs. At one camping place the ring of
smudges suggested the magic fire circle in "Die Walkuere." Brunhilde lay
in her tent, in a reek of smoke, while Wotan, in no humor for song,
heaped vegetable tinder upon the defending fires. More than once the
darkening forest and the steel-gray sky of a Canadian twilight have set
me humming the motives of "The Ring," and I shall always remember a
pretty picture in an earlier cruise. "Jess" was a stable boy who drove
our team to the point where roads ceased, and during a halt in the
expedition this exuberant youth reclined upon a log, and with a pipe
fashioned from a reed sought to imitate responsively the song of the
white-throated sparrow. He looked for all the world like Siegfried in
his forest.
"Smudge." It is not a poetic word--mere mention of it would distress Mr.
Yeats; but it is potent as "Sesame" to unlock the treasures of memory.
And before the laggard Spring comes round again many of us will sigh for
a whiff of yellow, acrid smoke, curling from a smoldering fire in the
heart of the enchanted wood.