WHAT ARE THOSE WHITE THINGS IN THE STEW POT?
WE used canoes and a Cessna float plane on a fly camp west of Paradise Lodge … somewhere west of Paradise Lodge in that great wild boreal forest that rolls from
Sault Ste Marie to Manitoba and beyond. Of course we did not get that far for we were not ‘coureurs de bois.’ We were just a bunch of 20 somethings doing a job that few people really wanted. Oh sure, lots of people wished they had a job like this. Lots of people wish they could roll back the time clock and become some kid of adventurer. But if the chance ever comes, most Canadians would turn it down.
Take this campsite.
What you see is a sleek Cesna 170 drawn up on a rocky point of granite that has been thrust out of a sparkling unpeopled lake. Maybe a lake full of fish ready for the taking. Paradise.
Not quite.
We flew in here as the sun was setting. Four of us with our canoe strapped to the struts of the Cessna. What daylight hours we had were spent frantically erecting our tents and making sure we had fly canvas stretched about a foot or so above the tent canvas. Otherwise, in a storm, water would work its way through the tent and soak us all and perhaps do damage to our survey implements. Pitching the tents was an ordeal made worse by the usual cloud of blood sucking bastards trying to see if they could drive anyone completely mad.
“Oh ,Alan, loves the job. You remember how he loved Scouting and the camping life”, my mother would say “He is a lucky boy…doing what he loves.”, her friends wold answer.
True. Very lucky to have spent 10 glorious summers doing geophysical surveying. But it was not all sweetness and light. When I found this photograph I remembered just what that frantic evening was really like.
We got the tents up but by then it was dark and we hadn’t taken time to eat. Fortunately we had bought some packages of preserved food. Packaged stuff, easy to carry. Only needed water and Presot a fine meal. Or so the package said when we bought the stuff. Just for campers like us.
Strange thing about the Paradise Lodge job is that I remember the grunts…the guys who did the bush tracking…the guys who got the numbers. Yet I cannot remember who was in charge. Maybe it was me. Who was the cook that night? It might have been Bob Bartlett or Serge Lavoie or my turn to cook supper. That much I do not remember. But boy do I remember that supper. What a great meal…’nforgettable’ as the song goes.
“Get some water from the lake and wedge the pot right in the embers of the fire.”
“Good…water is boiling…Now read the instructions on the package.”
“Who can read in the total blackness a Northern Ontario evening.”
“Stop talking. Cut the top of the packages that says “Beef Stew” and dump the contents in the pot. Says there are vegetables and rice mixed in with the cubes of beef.”
“All looks the same to me.”
“Dump it in…put two packages in…a celebration.”
Now that stew tasted just great. We ate as much as we could…left a fair bit in the pot for morning as that would save time. So we had a Couple of bowls each washed down with tea boiled up in a fruit juice can with a coat hanger wire handle. Next morning the stew did not look as good.
“Serge, take a look at the stew pot…what are those white things floating in gravy.”
“That’s just rice.”
“Rice does not have little nubs of black on each ent.”
“Maybe Indian rice.”
“No.”
“Then what are those things?”
“Worms…the stew is full of worms…little worms…hundreds of them.”
“Do you think we ate any?”
“We ate dozens of them…thought they were rice grains well cooked…soft.”
“Yuck!!
In retrospect, seems the worms did not do us any damage. We laughed a lot as a result and laughter can be therapeutic.
alan skeoch
March 2018