86 On the trail of vanishing birds 



darkness, and we were often up at three in the morning to watch 

 the magnificent sunrises. Two days later, after an extremely cold 

 night, there was an early morning hailstorm followed by snow. 

 The air temperature dropped to 26F. Until the aircraft arrived 

 there was nothing more that we could do. We put in the days ex- 

 ploring the vicinity of the lake. With the Department boys and 

 Pete, who operated a mink ranch nearby and was our only near 

 neighbor, I walked around the east side of Flotten and off in 

 the foothills beyond the north end as far as Salt Creek. We found 

 the tracks of deer and black bear as well as sign in the form of 

 browsed willow tips and droppings. Pete said that the moose 

 winter in that area but leave in late February or March for muskegs 

 20 or 30 miles farther north, returning to the Salt Creek region in 

 the fall. We walked through heavy thickets of birch, alder, aspen, 

 and willow over a large tract that had once been a spruce forest. 

 The spruce had been destroyed by a great forest fire shortly after 

 this part of Saskatchewan was opened for settlement following 

 World War I. Back at the lake shore we came across an abandoned 

 Indian camp and saw a "sweating lodge/' which is the Cree version 

 of a Turkish bath. It consists of several saplings that are stuck in 

 the ground and bent to form a low framework, over which a hide 

 or piece of canvas is thrown. A number of stones are then heated 

 and placed inside the lodge. When cold water is dropped on the 

 stones they send off clouds of steam, to the delight of the Indian 

 crouching inside. There was also a Cree bath brush lying nearby, 

 a bunch of twigs and coarse grasses lashed together at one end 

 with bark fibers. 



On our recent visit to Meadow Lake I had met Lefty McLeod 

 and Cliff Lebey, who fly for the Department and who assured me 

 they would drop by for a visit. Within a few days we heard an 

 aircraft approaching, and shortly a little biplane on floats had 

 appeared, coming in for a landing. They taxied up to our beach 

 and we helped them pull the craft ashore tailfirst and secure lines 

 from each wingtip to convenient trees. They were real bush pilots 

 and had a great store of information about the surrounding coun- 

 try. Lefty, in his fringed caribou jacket and with felt hat always 

 at a jaunty angle, was the talker, and with long experience in that 



