THE PRAIRIE TRAILS
The prairie trails are simply earth roads, it being impossible to get
stone for them. The very best trail is much like the worst cart road in
England. The trail is made by scooping out the earth on either side of a
wide track, and throwing it into the middle, where the clods are baked
as hard as bricks by the sun. These clods would knock the bottom out of
any car which had not a high clearance--the more so as a used trail has
ruts about two feet deep. Trail-making is usually done by a scoop drawn
by two horses, but in some places a kind of motor-plough is used. In dry
weather a simple track across the prairie made by carts and horses is
much easier going, but these tracks are impossible when the snow is
melting, or after the heavy thunderstorms of summer. Therefore all the
main trails have to be raised in the middle to let off the water, which
would otherwise stand till it formed sloughs. When once on the trail you
have to keep there, as it is either bordered by a three-foot bank whence
the earth was dug, or else it slopes straight into a slough. These
sloughs are like great ponds, their bottoms are covered with deep mud,
and if it once gets in, a car sinks deeper and deeper, and cannot be got
out. The sloughs are very beautiful, reflecting the wonderful blue of
the sky, or the marvellous colours of sunset. A prairie sunset is quite
beyond description. I have never seen such colours in England.
The flowers on the prairie are lovely, forming a changing kaleidoscope
of colour throughout the summer months. They border the trails and the
sloughs, and grow in riotous profusion on unbroken ground. When we first
took the trail I specially noticed a lovely little pale mauve anemone.
There are also many beautiful birds on the prairie, the most striking
being the red-winged blackbird--a very big blackbird with glinting red
feathers on the top of his wings. There was also a robin about twice the
size of his English cousin, and a yellow-breasted bird which sang a very
sweet little song, but never seemed to finish it. There were prairie
chickens of a greyish brown, wild duck and large snipe, and a sort of
water-hen.
The jack-rabbit was a very ubiquitous person, always jumping across the
trail. He is really a hare, greyish-brown in summer and white in winter.
Another local inhabitant who made his presence felt was the gopher,
which looks like a cross between a squirrel and a weasel. They make
their holes in the wheel-ruts of the trails, as we found by bumping
violently over their excavations. Badgers adopt the same inconvenient
habit, as we discovered to our cost when shot suddenly to the roof of
the caravan. Fortunately, they are not so common as gophers. The latter
do a great deal of damage to the wheat, so that the farmers are obliged
to poison them and the children are given so much per tail; consequently
I had little compunction in running over one occasionally when it sat up
in the middle of the trail just in front of the wheel. At first I
wondered why these beasties chose the trail for their burrows when they
had all the enormous prairie at their disposal, until it was explained
to me that the hard ground formed a better front door to their holes, as
in soft ground the soil would fall in.
We were interested in watching the farming operations en route. They
were disking and ploughing and sowing, generally driving six horses
abreast. The machines were immensely wide, too large to pass through our
widest gates, and it was a heavy alluvial soil, thus needing much
horse-power. We also saw a large number of motor tractors in use.
All the main trails are bordered with telephone poles, and a red blaze
on these poles indicates the way--_i.e._, an R or an L tells you when to
turn to the right or left. At least, it is supposed to tell you, but as
both letters are usually on the same side of the pole, it is up to you
to guess whether you turn to the right to go to Winnipeg or to Regina.
The matter is further complicated by the letters being made of paper on
some trails, in which case they are generally half torn off.
The trails, like the towns, are laid out in squares. In a town the
avenues run east and west and the streets north and south. On the trail,
when you are running north and south you find a trail running east and
west every two miles; and when you are running east and west you find a
trail going north and south every mile. But this arrangement is
complicated as you draw near to the Arctic Circle, because as the trails
are laid out in squares, these squares grow narrower in this direction
and so an extra trail, called a correction line, is added at intervals.
Also now and again an old Indian trail upsets one's calculations. You
never talk of right and left on the prairie, but always of the points of
the compass, and these points form the first lesson which a child
learns. Yet the actual compass is of no use on these rough roads, as it
gets out of order. One learns to steer by the sun and stars.
It is useless to ask for directions, you will merely be told "Go five
miles north, and three miles east and one mile south and four miles
west, and then look for the elevator at So-and-So. Ye can't miss it."
But you can miss it, very easily. Again, you are often told that a place
is "quite close" and find it to be at least five miles away.
There are no landmarks on these trails, except the elevators in the
towns near the track. The sections are marked by a small heap of stones
at their corners. There is scarcely a fence on the prairie, there being
no stock to speak of and no wood at hand for posts. There are also no
sign-posts or danger signals, and for lack of the latter we had a narrow
escape of finishing our tour before it had well begun. Soon after we
left Winnipeg, running through the main street of a little town, we
suddenly saw a great C.P.R. train cross the road in front of us with no
warning whatever. Had we been a minute or two sooner we must have been
killed. It is no unusual thing for the track to cross the trail, but in
this instance the houses prevented us from seeing the approach of the
train.
Meeting another car was an awkward matter as it meant climbing out of
the ruts and running with one wheel in the gutter. Sometimes, in trying
to avoid a mud hole or something, we ran at such an angle that I only
kept my seat by clinging to the steering-wheel, and how Winifred kept
hers is a mystery. Straw and sand are sometimes thrown into these mud
holes, in a vain endeavour to fill them up. When stuck fast in one it
was little consolation to be told that it was probably an old buffalo
wallow.
This is how Winifred described the trail in one of her letters: "The
road was long, the ruts were deep, the sloughs were lined with mud. The
road was narrow, and on each side those watery sloughs did gleam with
tempting sunset gleams of cherry, pink and gold, a warm, warm glow. They
said 'Oh, guide your car into our gleams and spend the night with us.'"