By 1960, Walter Arnold was getting along to be retirement age. For a man who’s always been independent and worked with his hands, it can be tough to accept the fact that you’re getting old, and it’s time to make a change. Walt was in the process of selling parts of his business, closing things out, and moving to his remote camp in the woods of northern Maine. With all that was going on, he hardly had time to write. For a few years around this time, we don’t see much writing from Walt in the magazines. When he retired to his cabin in the woods he did some writing, and a few more of his articles appeared in the magazines before it was said and done. Like everything, Arnold met these challenging times with a bit of grace and humor, explaining just how much there actually is to do in a lifestyle like his.
A Complicated Performance
First Published in Fur-Fish-Game March 1961
Walter Arnold
As I sit in my cozy cabin, early in May 1960, to write of my experiences during the past few months, I realize it has been over a year since I decided my best course was to quit the work I was doing at the farm and sell out what I could of my mail-order business and other possessions. It was quite apparent with illness in the family of the party I was working for, that changes had to be made and a more favorable climate was required for a member of that family. Maine’s fall, winter and spring weather agrees with me, but not with all people. In fact I prefer winter weather to hot summer weather. I can work, dress right and keep warm in winter, but never found a way to work and keep cool during hot summer days.
In a few words one can easily say, “Well, I think I will close out business, give up the regular work I am now doing, dispose of hobbies and other possessions I will have no use for, go up into the woods, make a new home and start life anew.“ In words there is not much to it, but just in case some reader may be harboring the same idea, please allow me to warn him: it is a most complicated performance to accomplish.
I guess we all dream about this, that or the other but seldom get to do much about the matter. I have always had my dreams of just living back in the wilderness, earning my keep through the various means present, battling it out with the elements, having the birds, moose, deer, bear and other animals for neighbors, and living in harmony with nature and God.
Leaving the farm where I had been occupied the past few years was not the only reason I made the break. I remember very clearly back to when I was very young, in my teens and my twenties. That span of time seemed like ages to me. Suddenly I awoke one day and I was in my sixties. “Wha’ Hap’ned?” I exclaimed. “I’ve been jipped – what became of those others years?” Those last thirty-five years had flashed past with the speed of a jet.
Although I have spent much of my life in the woods and on the waters of this state, very little of it has been done without outside attachments. For instance, back in the early thirties when Bill Gourley and I were traveling eight-day trap lines, besides our homes we had four camps, ran separate lines and met at a camp each night. We spent four days rain, snow or shine, reaching the far camp and then it was four days back. Believe it or not, I have awoke before daylight in the morning and would lie in bed a minute or two trying to figure out which camp I was in. It is a strange feeling but I have experienced it more than once.
My line from town to first camp was prepared so I could leave home at 10 am and reach camp by dark. Coming out I could, with good luck, be home at 1 o’clock. Upon reaching home I immediately went into action. I was conducting a good sized mail-order business. During spring, summer and early fall I spent every available minute putting up trapping scents, preparing catalogs and much other necessary works. All scents were put into shipping tubes or cases, all ready to take a shipping label. Orders coming in while I was away were quickly and easily filled by members of the family. When I returned from an eight-day trip there would be many letters to answer, goods to order, complaints, if any, taken care of and other work. Each order was listed on a separate sheet and had its own number. Number was transferred to index card of customer. If a new customer ordered a new card had to be made out, which meant a lot of work but saved much time when it became necessary to check up on a month or three month old order. I also knew who was buying goods from me each year, and how much. There were checks and money orders to be signed, and when I was selling my book “Professional Trapping” there would be many. I would work until midnight and then be up again at daybreak and go back at it before breakfast. Sometimes during the day I would drive the twelve miles to town, cash money orders, make deposits at the bank, stock up on postage stamps and do the family shopping, then head home and back to work again.
There would be orders held over for me to fill, such as Government trappers ordering in bulk and much other work, including cleaning and stretching furs brought in from the trap line. Again it would be midnight and then the next morning until nine or ten and then off to the trap line. I was never in a position to go into the woods and forget the outside world.
For many years, I spent my summers guiding nearly every day from May 1st until well into September. I had my parties lined up so that usually the day one left, another would come in. Much of my guiding was trips back onto the woods, anywhere from three days to three weeks away from home. There was no slack time anywhere for 365 days a year.
I have had my fling at the more artificial things, such as spending several winters putting on a trappers’ exhibit, log cabin and all, for one of the big sport show companies in Boston and New York. I have been on radio programs, TV, and in fact was approached not too long ago as to whether I would be interested in helping to put on a weekly outdoor TV program.
I have had my old face in news reels to the extent that I heard from friends all over the nation, as far away as Texas, stating they saw me. Now to me, those things are artificial – just simply put-on stuff. I realize many will disagree with me in this matter, but I am simply stating how I feel about it. Being so busy and occupied in so many different occupations was no doubt where those missing years disappeared. Anyhow they are gone and that’s that.
As Omar Khayyam expressed it:
“The moving finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on; nor all thy piety no wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears blot out a word of it.”
For me the past is the past. It has been a good past too, even though it was speedy. Now, after having been here at camp eight months, mostly by myself, it seems like I am just starting to live, but I am still busy.
I started working out for others at around age twelve. The spring I became fourteen found me celebrating my birthday on the long lumber drive. We rolled out of bed before daylight in the morning, ate breakfast by a camp fire, ate first lunch at 10 a.m., second lunch at 2 p.m., and supper around dark. We worked, snow, rain or shine, waded around in cold water all day. At night we crawled into bed under the field blanket with our wet clothes on, pants, shirts, stockings and all. Our caulked boots, wet, of course, were put under our heads with a dry shirt or something over them for a pillow. If left outside they would be frozen in the morning so you could not get into them for some time. They might get stolen, too. I have stood out at lunches and started out eating baked beans in a pouring rain and before I finished would be eating bean soup. These are not exaggerations, either, as any old-time driver will tell you. Good men received as high as $2.50 a day, with free board and sleeping quarters.
Up until I was around twenty-three I worked at many different jobs; such as at lumbering, farming, saw mills, fish hatcheries, fur farming, cutting cord wood, trapping and other occupations. I even tried pearling for a couple weeks one summer. I found pearls about every day, some even larger than the head of a pin. When I thought I was financially well fixed for life I mailed them in. The company returned them to me with a nice letter explaining something about size and luster that valuable pearls should have but urged me to keep at it as I might strike it rich sooner or later. After due consideration something inside told me I was in a business where I was likely to get no richer mighty fast. My funds were running low and no one was offering to grubstake me until I did strike it rich, so I retired from the profession. To me, such things as meeting up with a big moose in the woods, or seeing one swimming the pond and trying to catch him with the canoe, or watching otter at play is the real thing. I believe my greatest thrill this past year was when a mother bear with two cubs went into the water just above camp to swim across the pond. I worked in around with the canoe before I was spotted. The old bear did a lot of work and much grunting but made little speed. I got them turned the direction I desired and forced them in onto the marsh where I could watch them climb out and take off. My rifle was handy and I had plenty of time to get it and shoot them, but there is no bounty on them and they were not worth a nickel to me in here, so why shoot them? In hunting season, yes.
As room is limited here at the camps, I was forced to dispose of many of my possessions before moving in for good. Sometime around the first of March, 1959, I started to unload my accumulation of stamps. I owned many thousands of them. I ran ads in three well-known philatelic magazines and spent many days making up packets and mailing them out. It was midsummer before I was through with this. This was only one of the many jobs I was forced to do.
From some time the middle of May until November, I have no idea the number of trips I made with my station wagon from Cumberland Center to Greenville, around 170 miles one way. I would then load goods into a plane and fly to camp, and spend anywhere from two to five days doing work at camp.
I needed a bedroom on the back of the main camp, so I purchased 500 feet of boards at Greenville and chartered a plane to fly them in. I spent many days doing a good neat job in building this room onto the back of the camp. A doorway had to be cut through and a tight-fitting door put in. It seemed like I never would get that room completed. It’s not easy to attach a room against the round logs of a camp and make an air tight job so the place will be warm in weather as cold as 35 below zero – a lot of puttering work to it all.
When I was ready to put tar paper on the roof of the new room the north side roof of the main camp needed new paper as well, so I did that and covered the new room, which killed the greater part of a day.
The outside walls of my storehouse, which is now my workshop, had been papered only on three sides when built, and this paper had seen its best days. I spent another day here and papered all four sides, a good tight job. I spent many hours remodeling the inside of this building and making it into a workshop, among other things an extra window was put in, a stove installed and a solid work bench constructed from two-inch spruce planks.
The chinking in the main camp had been in ever since the camp was built. It was parched and dried out and daylight could be seen through the many places. I figured a few hours’ work would make it as good as new. I would have saved time had I pushed it all out, gathered fresh moss and re-chinked. However, I started in, working an hour or so every now and then, adding fresh moss to the old. Some places I went to the trouble of hewing out triangle shaped strips of dry cedar and would drive in the moss and then force the strips of cedar in against the moss and nail them. This will keep a pressure against the moss and hold it tight for a long time, and also makes a better and cleaner looking job. Before I was through with this task I found every crack between logs in the whole camp had to be gone over and cold weather had set in before it was finished.
At the farm I had planted a small vegetable garden, which had to be attended to and watered several times. As we killed or sold off the hens there were two different hen rooms which had to be all cleaned out and manure hauled out and spread in the fields. Paint was starting to peel off the whole front of the big two-car garage and required parts of three afternoons to repaint this and part of the house. I have no idea the hours I spent on the farm machinery. We did not know whether it would all be sold or not. I washed and cleaned every piece and then rubbed a coating of oil over all metal parts. Tractor, wagon, rake, plow, snow plow, cultivator, moving machine and all. Most of it looked as good as new when completed.
In cutting down my mail order business I was fortunate to sell the buck call part to another party. It required at least a day to get all this packed and shipped. The dog training scent business was also sold outright and more time was spent in sealing, packing and shipping many quart cans. The trapping scent business would not sell outright and I was disposing of stock on hand, throughout the summer, selling mostly at cost and below cost, and as nearly all of this was mail order, there were many, many hours spent on this work alone.
Here is something that may amuse the reader. It amuses me now, but it did not at the time. I really got trapped. Here is how it came about. For example, let’s say, under regular business conditions, a ten-bottle, $10.00 order going to a certain zone would require $1.25 postage. Now in selling at the rates I did last summer, in some instances a $10.00 order would mean 25 or 30 bottles; when this was packed for shipment to the same zone, the postage would be at least $2.50 to $3.00. I did not take this into consideration when I set my prices, but believe me, I did think of it more than once before the summer was over. I sure prepared a blind set that time and then walked into it.
Time and time again I would start on some minor job, as I thought, and before I finished would kill most of the day. There are only so many minutes in a day and when they have been used up that day is done. Here is an example. Years ago when I built this camp I cut out a trail to the top of the hill back of the camp. In reaching the top one probably travels 100 feet but also during the climb, reaches an elevation of at least 40 feet. I use this trail when going for spring water and for other purposes. Near the top is a long flat rock and several times I have slipped on this; once I came down on my back and turned a rib and was lame for several weeks. There was a chance to improve the trail and avoid this rock, but a huge boulder was right where I wished to cut through. In the camp yard I had a peeled, dry spruce log around twelve feet long and six inches at the butt, which I was to use in making a ridge pole for the new room. The time came when I wished to cut it down to nine feet and use it. I had planned before using it to take it up to the boulder, flatten out the butt, dig down side of the boulder and shove the log down, then set up myself locking, double blocks and fasten to the other end of the log which would be high in the air and then with the blocks I would develop a powerful leverage. I was up early and figured I would soon have the boulder out and by 7:30 would be back to work on the camp. The boulder objected strenuously. It was bound in with the other small rocks. At 12:30 I finally had it rolled out of my way. I’d never worked harder in my life and was lame and pooped. This boulder turned out to be about round and three feet in diameter. By the time I had gotten lunch and eaten, there was not much left of that day.
By midsummer I had sold out clean on some of the trapping scent items. One day I arrived back to the farm and there awaiting me was a large order from a branch of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. They have been good customers and this was one of the few orders for the summer with a profit connected, so I felt I should try and fill it. There was a large amount of ground beaver castor required and at that time I was about cleaned out on this item. I ordered dry castor from two different dealers and the next trip it had arrived. I put in at least two days just working on that order, grinding castor, making up other preparations, cleaning up the power grinder, which is a real job, bottling the goods, packing and shipping. It seemed as though any direction I turned there were jobs popping up waiting to be taken care of.
My canoe received rough usage, bringing in rocks and gravel, and it started to leak. First I put on small patches, but finally was forced to take time off and recover nearly the whole bottom. Had I done this at the beginning it would have saved much time.
In my shop I have gallon and five-gallon lots of both kerosene and gasoline, at least twenty-five gallons of both. I did not like the idea of storing this in my shop, or the idea of storing both together for fear of getting hold of the wrong can in a hurry. Against the back of the toilet I built a solid snow and rainproof compartment in which I could store all the kerosene as well as other odd items. This was around four feet long three feet wide and four feet high at the back. I put in a holder for my little Neptune motor, covered entire box with tar paper; put hinges on a cover and built up a standing place in front. In this I keep all gasoline, the outboard motor, anchors and ropes, trout basket and other items connected with canoes and motors. This does not sound like much, but before everything was completed another day was used up.
I had planned to do considerable work on my old trails and blaze and clear out a new trail up into the mountains. I never did get to do much at this except to put in a new foot bridge.
The opening of that deer season came and I got just what I wanted in two hours hunting. A big, fat doe which for me is the best eating and I was not hunting for sport but for meat. This deer was about two miles from camp. I hung her up by the side of a small brook where I had water to do what washing I wished. I skinned her out and cut the carcass into several pieces and made two trips packing the meat to camp. I was occupied nearly all the next day cutting meat into steaks, chops, scrap meat for burger and chunks to put into a weak salt brine. I got out the grinder and ground the burger, boiled water and allowed to cool to make a weak brine, packaged the steaks and chops in meal sized packages and placed these into my small sized gas refrigerator. With a smoked shoulder and many other items this filled up nearly all available space. I learned something from this experience, with the refrigerator full and having little air space in there, everything freezes, which pleases me very much. The meats remained frozen until real cold weather set in after which I shut off the gas as everything would remain frozen anyhow. The refrigerator is in the shop which I did not heat during the fall or early winter.
My breakfast consists mainly of cereal, hot or dry, muffins, bacon and eggs, coffee and sometimes canned fruit. I never eat a hearty lunch so it is the evening meal that I have meats or a real hearty supper. Some evening it will be a fresh pot of baked beans, or a pork roast, macaroni and cheese which I love, maybe a can salmon stew another favorite of mine and other items. I average about once a week preparing a supper of venison so this deer, well taken care of, lasted me a long time. I even shared it with friends who dropped in. I ate the last, a venison stew, around April 1st.
When trapping season opened November 1st, I was not even here. I was on my last trip down to Cumberland Center, and also had to take three days and go to Doxer-Foxcroft to help my daughter get her home ready for winter, putting on double windows, banking the house, putting the furnace into working order and other odd jobs.
During the spring and summer I had planned to really get down to trapping the first season in here, but I did not. I did do considerable gumming and some trapping, but there were some sections I never got to set even one trap. There were too many other jobs that came first. After all, this is now my home, and my most important task is to really get set and settled. This summer I plan to build a 19×8 log building to use as a canoe house and wood shed that will hold a winter’s supply of stove wood. I have trails to clear out and new ones to establish and much gumming to do. This coming fall I believe November 1st will find me ready for trapping. I did experience and see some interesting incidents in the trapping I did do and am ready to start an article relating to those activities.
From November 22nd to December 16th I had no plane service here, and knowing about conditions realized I was stuck. I had important mail to go out so I set out on foot, over mountains, blow-downs and through slippery snow which was not deep enough for snowshoes. There is now no open trail out of here. I went to the Canadian Pacific Railroad station, Onawa. There is a post office there where I left my mail, called up Greenville and asked them to send my first class mail down to Onawa. That meant another trip out in a couple days, a long sixteen mile round trip. I then had mail that required attention so made the third trip out. Needless to say, with my old legs covering sixteen miles over that traveling in a day, I did no other work during that day. No more of that.
This fall I will stick it out here around camp, mail or no mail. However, they tell me last fall was an exception and sometimes the ice freezes fast so they will shed the pontoons and are using skis in ten days. I hope so. The last of March sap started to run and I tapped a few trees, had a good sap run and boiled down seven gallons of maple syrup. I sold three galloons and saved the rest for my own use.
A two foot yellow birch standing near camp was hollow at the stump and a danger to the camps, so during April that was brought down and all worked into stove wood. All brush and rotted wood was burned.
During the winter after every big storm the snow blows into the dooryard, which means nearly half a day shoveling that all out and over the banks of the pond, and a trail out to water hole in the pond has to be cleaned out.
There are always jobs to be done. I was intending to write several articles this past winter, but never found the time. I have just finished the first one – this is it.
And then – now and then some friend in writing will ask “What on earth do you find to do up there to keep busy and interested the year around? I suppose you do a lot of reading.”