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9 | (continued) Winter alters this sequence only in that the water must be heated over a fire, and bathing must be done inside a tall tent, like a tipi. Assuming that the tent is well-designed, the process can be delightful, but you will find yourself more and more inclined to avoid perspiring as you go about your chores, so as not to be obliged to go to all this trouble every day. Of course such a lifestyle will have its share of awkward moments. One summer morning at the first campsite, I was in the midst of a refreshing bath after brunch, covered with soapsuds, when I heard a delicate tinkling sound, moving about not far from the ground, first several yards to my left, then around to my right. It has to be a bird, I thought, a magical little bird whose call so closely resembles the sound of a tiny metal chime, that one is hard-pressed to tell them apart…. I’m glad the tinkle was still sounding when I rinsed off; I wouldn’t have wanted to spend the rest of my life under the spell of such a delusion. Who knows how many hours I might have wasted in field and forest listening for the enchanting call of the tinkle-bird? It was a dog, alone, a big, short-haired, mixed-breed, as quiet afoot as a Faerie Queene, wearing a classic pair of dog-tags, fashioned with such care that when they struck together they sounded so much like the call of a magical little bird that I was indeed delighted that the mutt didn’t decide to bite my nuts off and run home with them in his jaws just for laughs. Maybe it’s a limitation, but birds I trust; dogs I don’t—especially when I’m blind and naked. Withal, I stayed clean, which was a great boost to my morale. I also made it a habit to hang both of my sleeping bags on the line during the day, just to air them out, though I was forever worrying about them being stolen, since they cost nearly three hundred dollars total. This is nothing compared to the price of prime eiderdown, but it’s plenty for me.
Whenever I had camped in the past, either on a canoe trip or on an assignment, I had seldom built a fire. Campfires are a joy to sit around with friends after a hard day, but without the rewards of companionship, they’re usually more trouble than they’re worth. But where I was, company or not, as the weather got colder, it became increasingly necessary to heat my bathwater, as well as to bathe inside a tipi. Urban folks will probably overestimate the difficulty of this. I admit that I did it every second day, but you really have to go out of your way to sweat in a Canadian winter, especially when you’re living outdoors, and I think it was a long youth spent living in cities that compelled me to maintain even that tight a schedule—I’ve known some free souls who would have been quite content to forego bathing entirely until the river warmed up again. About ten feet away from the tipi, I built the fireplace, a classic hearth, built to last. Near the hearth, but beyond the range of leaping sparks, was the woodpile—just a loose supply of dead conifer branches under the groundsheet. The location of a fireplace in a mature woodlot has to be chosen with some care. Forest fires are rare in winter, but they are not unknown, hence the fire has to be sited so as to minimize the chances of igniting any of the conifers, whose sap makes them quite flammable all year round. The spot I chose was under the broad boughs of an old maple, one of many that gave the whole woodlot its solemn aura of tranquillity. With my boot, I scraped the litter (dead leaves) from a circle about twelve feet across. The ground had a thin dusting of snow that day, and my circle looked like a broad, black scar on the face of nature, but was otherwise harmless. The stones for the fireplace were a job in themselves to gather, since the land as a whole in that area was not heavily littered with them. Eventually I located about a dozen, five- to fifty-pounders, and arranged them at the circle’s center in the shape of a U, with the open side facing south. My only reason for this choice of direction was that most of the houses I could see were northeast across the field, and I could cast an eye over them as I fed the fire. I seldom had hardwood to burn, but that was just as well—it was fast heat I was after, not, as I say, a leisurely focus for conviviality. Except for one unwelcome visit by Boss, in all the time I was there, nine months, not one person came to sit with me for the evening, though the village was scarcely a ten-minute walk away. |
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