obstacles. Thus in the first place one 
must be fitted for this life, that is, he 
must be in sympathy with the big out¬ 
doors, otherwise he will be fighting in 
the dark with a foe that has conquered 
thousands. If a man cannot see the 
beauty in the cold, unrelenting grip of 
winter, then he is better to keep to a 
warm house and a soft job. There is 
little in the trapping game to tempt 
one, as far as the financial side is con¬ 
cerned, though I do know that, through 
ignorance, thousands of men go trap¬ 
ping each year, confident that they will 
make a lot of easy money. 
Besides being physically fit for an 
outdoor life of extreme hardship, one 
must have a little moral support in 
order to withstand the solitude. There 
are days when one is forced to remain 
idle, and at such time the solitude is 
often maddening. To those who pic¬ 
ture the life of a professional trapper 
as one continual round of pleasure lies 
the blame for luring so many unfit men 
into the woods. Understand, some of 
the very great moments of my life have, 
been passed in the wilderness, often 
in the face of very great hardship. I 
have never been so near to my God as 
when alone in the wilds, yet had I not 
been an ardent lover of the outdoors 
it might have been vastly different. 
At times I have experienced such bit¬ 
ter disappoint¬ 
ments on the 
trapping trail 
that I vowed 
never to re- 
t u r n, and 
while I may 
have actually 
suffered con¬ 
siderably 
at the time, 
Memory a n d 
Re collection 
have done 
much to make 
me see things 
in their true 
light, and I 
know now that 
I was merely , 
playing the 
game w i t h a 
foe worthy of 
the best met¬ 
tle. Nature is 
playful at 
times, and 
again she is 
hard and unrelenting with her cruel, 
stinging winds and paralyzing frosts. 
It was while camped on the head¬ 
waters of Otter Creek that I made the 
mistake of going too far west in break¬ 
ing my trail, and for two or three 
days was lost in the fastness of Moose 
Mountains. Of course, I always had 
the choice of turning back to Mile 27, 
but I would not consider that, at least 
until my grub gave out and ‘I was 
forced to. One day I stood on the 
very top of a high bare knob, and, in 
looking off to the northeast saw a 
range that seemed faintly familiar. In 
a flash the whole secret of my dilemma 
came to me—I was working too far to 
the south all the time! I was certain 
that I was even then within five or six 
miles of my cabin and not more than 
TWO miles from a trapline I had run 
up toward the very hill on which I 
stood! 
1 had left my dogs behind in the 
shelter at Otter Creek, feeding them 
well before I left early that morning, 
as I expected to either camp out that 
night or make some real progress in 
the locating of my elusive trapline. I 
decided to stake everything on the one 
chance that I was right. The way I 
came down off that mountain-side was 
thrilling enough for any daredevil. It 
was too steep to snowshoe, so I took 
off my webs, placed one on top of the 
other, tied them securely together, and, 
setting down on them, started “tobog¬ 
ganing down the hill” like a blue streak 
from Hades. About the only thing I 
could say in favor of this method of 
locomotion was that it got me there at 
a surprising rate of speed. Once I 
Page 365 
slammed up against a small tree and 
nearly broke a leg; I lay there half 
fainting in the snow for several min¬ 
utes, and an awful fear flashed through 
me when I realized that this was the 
end IF my leg was broken. It pained 
me terribly when I tried to stand, but 
in a surprisingly short time I was able 
to go ahead. Luckily I was near the 
bottorp of the steep slope and soon 
came to a more gradual incline. 
I fastened the snowshoes to my feet 
and started haltingly forward; every 
step I took was a torture, but I thanked 
God that I was able to move at all. At 
such times as this one becomes very 
sober and realizes that after all he is 
a very insignificant creature. Had I 
have lain there in the snow and frozen 
there wasn’t one chance in a thousand 
that I would ever have been removed 
from there—only the wild folk would 
have passed that way. Dame Fortune 
was with me, however, and I had gone 
but a few hundred yards when I came 
across the southern extremity of my 
trapline and knew immediately right 
where I was. How I managed to make 
that four miles to my cabin I cannot 
say; it was some time after darkness 
had fallen that I crawled through the 
low door of this log hut and lighted the 
fire. 
For three days I was forced to keep 
very close to camp, but on the fourth 
my leg was so much better that I 
tackled the return trip. Instead of 
climbing the high hill which I had 
tobogganed,” down I went as far 
southeast on my main trapline as I 
could, as I knew fairly well by then 
how the land lay between there and 
M i 1 e 27. It 
was during 
this day that 
I was repaid 
for all my 
- trouble. I took 
five martens 
from my traps 
and deadfalls 
from which I 
later realized 
$260.00. Not 
a bad day’s 
catch! Well, 
no, but of 
course such 
happenings 
are very rare 
indeed. I once 
traveled over 
a hundred 
miles of this 
same trapline 
and caught a 
single weasel. 
I had been 
worrying a 
great deal 
about my dogs at the Otter Creek 
camp as I had been gone five days now, 
but though they were ravenously hun¬ 
gry and cold they were very much alive 
and raised a regular hulabaloo when 
they heard me coming 1 . I didn’t have a 
great deal of grub left, but laid over 
(Continued on page 40) 
