“Here comes Bob,” said Bill Bruce as they walked toward the campfire.
“I wonder if he had any more luck than I did.”
“How many did you get, Finch?” asked Cecil when Bob joined them.
“I managed to catch seven, but you should have seen the big fellow
which broke away just as I was about to land him,” replied Bob.
“That’s the usual fisherman’s story,” said Cecil. “You already have
acquired one of the prime requisites of a regular fisherman. The
largest fish always gets away. Let’s see what you caught.”
“That’s a fine rainbow,” he continued, as Bob pulled the fish, one at
a time, from his creel. “That one is a salmon trout. When we eat it
for lunch you will see that it is different from the others in that it
has salmon-colored meat. You caught a variety: rainbow, salmon, brook
and locklaven. Where were you fishing?”
“I must have walked five miles down the river,” said Bob. “I followed
up several streams for short distances, but I never seemed to catch
more than one fish in any one place.”
“That’s natural,” said Cecil. “I imagine that you were not very
careful about showing yourself over the edge of the bank. You probably
were seen by the fish before or as soon as they saw your fly.”
“Mr. Cecil is going to show us how to build a safe and sane campfire,”
said Bill.
“That’s a good idea,” said Bob. “If we are going to be in the woods as
long as we have planned, we ought to know how to build a fire that
will not start a forest fire.”
“I am glad to see that you have brought a shovel and axe with you,”
remarked Cecil. “You can never tell when you will need one or both in
the woods. Some Forest Supervisors require all campers to be equipped
with shovels and axes before they are allowed to enter a National
Forest.”
“Campfires are mighty easy things to start, but unless they are built
properly, you can never tell when they are completely extinguished.
The bed of pine needles, dried leaves and partially decayed wood in
all forests burn very easily, and it is extremely hard to be certain
that the fire has not worked its way under the surface. Many times
people have left their campfires believing that they were completely
extinguished when the entire area was honeycombed with sparks beneath
the surface. The campers left their fire thinking that they had done
their duty in regard to the rules and regulations concerning forest
fires. Shortly after they had gone, the sparks would burn through to
the surface and trouble would start for the fire-fighters. Such
occurrences are not confined to tenderfeet alone, for some men with
years of hunting and camping experience have been guilty of the same
neglect.
“In building a campfire, the first thing that should be done is to dig
up and clear away all the inflammable material in the vicinity of the
bed of the fire. If possible, the fire should be laid on hard soil or
rocks. Then a narrow trench toward the wind will furnish a draft. If
you notice, I have not much wood on that fire. A lot of wood is not
necessary for a hot flame. A small amount placed properly and renewed
as required will give a concentrated heat. Never allow the flame to
blaze higher than is needed for the cooking. When you have finished
and are leaving the vicinity, if only for a couple of hours, be sure
that the fire is out. You cannot put a fire out in the woods by
throwing dirt on it. Go to the nearest stream and get enough water to
thoroughly quench all signs of fire. The water must sink down below
the surface in soil like this and extinguish any sparks which may have
worked under the surface.”
“I see that you have your trout all ready for the pan,” said Bill. “I
think that I will clean mine.”
“Do you know how to do it as a woodsman does?” asked Cecil.
“I never cleaned one in my life,” replied Bill.
“I’ll show you how,” said Cecil. “It is the easiest way and also takes
much less time. Bring your fish down to the river.”
“There are lots of ways to clean a trout,” remarked Cecil when they
reached the water’s edge. “From the forester’s point of view, there is
only one right way. Take the fish in your hand with its belly up. Cut
a slit across just in back of its gills. Then all that you have to do
is to put your finger into the slit, grab a hold of the center of the
belly with the finger and your thumb and give a slight pull toward the
tail. The trout is cleaned. Three movements are all that are
necessary.”
“It looks quite easy the way that you do it,” said Bill. “Now I’ll try
it.”
Neither Bill nor Bob could do it anywhere as smoothly as Cecil when
they first tried it, but they became more expert as they practiced.
Soon they lost their awkwardness and took but a few seconds for each
fish.
“Now you have the idea,” said Cecil. “It’s a good thing to remember,
for it takes but a couple of seconds for each trout. However, don’t
try it on fish of a coarser type, for it will not work.”
“We have a steak that we brought with us,” said Bill when they
returned to the fire. “It probably will not keep much longer. We will
have to cook it, too. Bob, you had better get another pan ready.”
“Why not swing the steak?” asked Cecil.
“What do you mean, ‘swing a steak’?” asked Bill. “Is that a way to fix
it so that it will keep?”
“No, that’s a way to cook it,” said Cecil. “It always seems to taste
better after being cooked that way. I don’t know whether it is
imagination or whether the fragrance of the burning wood really does
permeate into the meat. Have you a griddle? If you have, we will try
it.”
“I’ll get the griddle,” said Bill.
Cecil took the griddle and suspended it by three wires so that it hung
in a horizontal position. He then attached the wires to a tripod made
from some saplings. By the time that he had finished, the trout had
been fried and were placed along side the fire to keep warm. Cecil
took the tripod and placed it over the fire. The steak was placed in
the griddle and gently swung back and forth just above the tops of the
flames.
“Get a stick, Bruce,” said Cecil. “You can swing this while I do
something else. As soon as the bottom starts to get brown, turn the
steak. That will keep the juice in the meat. It begins to look as if
we are going to have a real meal. I am sorry that some of my Oregon
friends did not happen along with a venison mince pie. If we had one
of them, we would be sitting on the top of the world.”
“It is nothing more than mince pie made out of venison instead of
regular meat,” he continued when he saw the surprised expression
written on the faces of the young aviators. “These Oregon people make
them during the Fall and Winter. If you ever get a chance, be sure and
taste one.”
In the meantime, Cecil was busy arranging the plates, knives, forks
and spoons on an improvised table on the top of an old tree trunk.
Smaller logs were brought up for chairs. So it was that Bill and Bob
ate their first meal in the woods. Trout, baked potatoes, bread,
butter, jam, coffee and, best of all, the steak. It was as Cecil had
said, “Better than when cooked in the ordinary manner.” It seemed to
have absorbed some of the pungent aroma of the burning wood.
Overhead the sun was masked by a roof formed by the thickly matted
trees. The smell of the timber land permeated the air, a smell which
one can only find in the forest. It seemed as if they were in the
wilderness, where they were the pioneers blazing the trail for others
to follow. To Cecil it may have been an old story, but to Bill and Bob
it was the thrill that only comes with a new and enjoyable experience.
“It seems a shame that civilized people should be responsible for the
destruction of such a place as this,” said Bill after a while. “It’s
all so beautiful, so entirely different from what we are accustomed
to. I’ll bet that the Indians never burned the forests intentionally.”
“I am not so sure about that,” commented Cecil. “According to the best
advices which we have, the Indians in some instances used to burn out
the woods so that they would not be bothered by the underbrush when
they were hunting. Once they started a fire, they never tried to put
it out. It always burned until it reached a natural barrier and then
burned itself out. However, ordinarily the Indians were very much
afraid of a forest fire, as it destroyed their villages. So it seems
that they liked to have the fires under certain conditions, but they
wanted to apply the torch themselves.”
“There must have been some mighty bad fires in those days,” said Bob.
“The lightning has always been responsible for many bad fires as far
back as we have any records,” said Cecil. “Then, again, the early
pioneers were not as careful as they might have been. There is one
case on record where a young fellow was returning home after calling
on a young lady who lived several miles away on another clearing. It
was almost dark when he started home. He was either afraid to go home
in the dark or was uncertain as to the proper trail to take. In any
event, he set a match to a long burr of a sugar pine. That made a very
good torch and served its purpose exceptionally well. However, when
the first one burned so low that it was about to scorch his fingers,
he lighted another one and threw the partly consumed one down
alongside the trail. He continued this all the way home, and as a
result there were many small fires, about equally spaced, burning
through the forest.
“That young fellow was quite proud of his achievement. He had found a
new means of illuminating the trail at night, but the early settlers
were not so pleased with his accomplishment. There were not many of
these pioneers in the locality and they had a mighty hard time in
putting out those fires. The pine needles along the trail burned fast
and furious for quite a while.”
“How can you tell the age of a tree?” asked Bill.
“That can’t be done until the tree is cut down,” said Cecil. “Each
year during the life of a tree a complete coating of fibre is formed
around the trunk of a tree underneath the bark. These coatings take
the form of rings and are called ‘Annual Rings.’ They are formed in
regular sequence around the center. By counting the rings the age of
the tree is determined.”
“Why go to all that trouble?” asked Bob. “If there is one ring for
each year and the rings are all the same size, why not measure the
diameter of the tree and divide by the distance between the rings?”
“It would be much simpler if we could do it that way, but
unfortunately the distance is not the same in any two different kinds
of trees, or even in the same tree,” replied Cecil. “There are many
things that affect the growth of trees. For instance, if a young tree
is crowded for light and room, the rings will be very close together.
Then if the surrounding trees dies or are cut down and the crowded
condition relieved, the young tree will grow much faster and the
distance between two rings may be the same as that between seven or
eight rings during the period of slow growth. Two trees growing side
by side, although they may be of the same species, may have entirely
differently spaced annual rings.”
“How large do trees get?” asked Bill.
“That depends upon the species,” replied Cecil. “One of the giant
trees in the Sequoia National Park was undermined by a creek a short
time ago and fell. That, as you know, was a Redwood. They made a cross
section of that tree seventy feet above the base and it measured
eleven feet in diameter. The tree was 280 feet tall and had a base
diameter of twenty-one feet. The annual rings showed it to be 1,932
years old. Of course those trees are the oldest living things in the
world.
“Other species do not get so large in the trunk but grow higher. You
yourself remarked about that flagpole at San Francisco. That tree must
have been over five hundred feet tall when it was standing here in
these woods, and yet its trunk probably did not measure over fifteen
feet in diameter. You can see some of the large Douglas fir and pines
over there. They have not such large trunks but their tops are well up
in the air. The average is well over three hundred feet. Take the
Juniper, for instance; it is rare that we find one over ten feet in
diameter. The foresters in Nevada made quite a news item out of one
they found up in the mountains at the head of Broncho Creek. It was
located at an altitude of about eight thousand feet and was a monster
of its kind. For its diameter near the base was fifteen feet. It is
rarely ever that we find a black walnut over fifty inches in diameter
when fifty years old. An inch a year is a rapid growth for that tree.
“Well, boys, this is all very pleasant, but I must be moving along,”
he continued. “It looks as if this is going to be a bad summer for
fires. The woods, as you can see, are well dried out, for we have not
had any rain for several weeks. If fires start, they will be mighty
hard to put out. As you may judge, I am a regular bug on this forest
fire business. I like the woods and am always working to protect it.
Nothing would suit me better than to be able to continue with you on
your fishing trip, where I could really enjoy the woods, but I have to
get up to the Supervisor’s headquarters in the Cascade Forest. They
had a bad fire there yesterday and it may be burning now. I may see
you on the way back. Much obliged for the lunch. Don’t forget to put
out your fire.”
“We are much obliged to you for starting us out right,” said Bill as
Cecil walked over to his car. “I hope that you can stop over with us.
Good-bye.”
The boys cleaned up after their meal and sat for a while loafing under
the trees.
“Where will we spend the night?” asked Bob.
“Let’s go up the river a little farther,” said Bill.
They poured water on their fire and were packing their equipment in
the car when Bill stopped working. He had caught the smell of burning
wood. There was no smoke coming from his campfire, but the odor was
unmistakable.
“Bob, there’s a fire somewhere around here. I can smell it.”