87 Northern search 



region he was extremely interesting. He said that the lakes just to 

 the north of us and at a higher elevation Primrose, Canoe, 

 Keely, etc. were now clear of ice for the first time (this was 

 May 28). We made coffee and also fed them the first corn bread 

 they had ever eaten with syrup. They declared it better than the 

 local "bannock/' which is a Scottish johnnycake made of white 

 flour. Evelyn promised to cook a batch every time they landed 

 at Flotten, as long as our corn meal held out. We had the two 

 young biologists from the Department as our guests for supper 

 that evening and sat late around our fire, talking and listening to 

 the night. They were leaving next day for another assignment. A 

 few weeks later their canoe turned over in a deep lake farther to 

 the south and one of them, who was wearing rubber hip boots, 

 was drowned. The news of this tragedy was the saddest experience 

 of our entire summer. 



June brought with it gnats and mosquitoes, and the first Sunday 

 visitors from "outside." Our little interlude of wilderness camping 

 was at an end. It also brought a welcome rise in the thermometer. 

 The birds at Flotten were in full voice: chipping sparrows, white- 

 throats, juncos, all trilling for dear life. And the big loons were 

 now at the peak of their vocal efforts. We thought this wild and 

 tremulous call the most beautiful sound on the lake. Bobby went 

 ashore on Baldy Island on June 3 and found two duck nests, one 

 evidently a mallard's and the other a widgeon's. The females were 

 still laying. On this day the temperature climbed into the 70s for 

 the first time and Evelyn boiled clothes with a vengeance, for it 

 was perfect drying weather. The sudden warmth also brought 

 other changes. The mosquitoes increased, a whole colony of large 

 black ants swarmed out of a dead spruce stump, and butterflies 

 appeared to flit about in the sunshine. All at once it was summer, 

 or something very much like it. 



In the afternoon Lefty McLeod dropped out of the sky for coffee 

 and corn bread and to tell me there was no message from Bob 

 Smith. On the sixth, he came in again with a letter from Smith 

 and another from Larry Walkinshaw, who was searching possible 

 whooping-crane areas farther east and south. Smith wrote that 

 he would reach Flotten that day or the next. As the afternoon 



