Marooned in the Forest: The Story of a Primitive Fight for Life

by A. Hyatt Verrill

At last I did succeed in producing a nondescript, ridiculous thing which bore a remote resemblance to a snow-shoe, and, anxious to test its practicability before attempting to make its mate, I placed it on the snow outside my door and stepped cautiously upon it. For a moment it supported me upon the surface of the snow, and I was just commencing to congratulate myself upon my success when, without warning, the frame doubled up, the netting collapsed, and my foot plunged into the snow, throwing me sprawling in the drift. Floundering about, I extricated myself, fished up the wrecked thing upon which I had spent so much toil, and re-entered the cabin, heartily sick of snow-shoe making.

But as I busied myself preparing a meal my thoughts constantly reverted to the snow-shoes, for I realized that they were a real necessity, and I strove to reason out the causes for my failure and to devise some method of overcoming the difficulties. My experience with stone arrow-heads had taught me a lesson and had showed me how simple an apparently difficult thing may be, once you discover the secret of doing it properly, and I had little doubt that to make a serviceable pair of snow-shoes would prove very easy, if I only knew how.

I decided that the main difficulty lay in making a network which was strong enough to support my weight and which brought an equal strain upon all sides of the frame. Then I began to wonder why a net was really necessary and why an unbroken flat center would not serve the purpose as well or even better. The Norwegian skees, I knew, were merely narrow, flat boards, and yet they supported men upon the snow, and if this was the case why shouldn’t any flat object of the same area support my weight, regardless of its form? This led me to enumerate the objects which were within my reach and which would present a broad, flat surface to the snow, and I thought of birch bark. This, however, I felt sure, was too soft and pliable for the purpose, and I bent all my energies to devising some method of stiffening the bark and keeping it spread flat.

I thought of lashing sticks across it, but I realized that unless the bark was crisscrossed by a number of sticks such a method would be useless, and that so many sticks would make the shoes far too heavy. Then it occurred to me that the bark might be lashed within a frame, but this idea I also discarded, as I knew the bark would split and break under my feet, and then, like a flash of light, I thought of skins. Why was it not feasible to cut a piece of stout hide to the proper form, lash it within an oval frame to hold it taut, and thus make snow-shoes without the labor and difficulties of weaving a netting?

I was so pleased at my idea that I immediately started to put my plan into concrete form. Feeling that the frames must be far stronger than those I had used before, I selected heavier poles, and then, finding it was impossible to bend them in a complete circle or oval, I made each frame of two separate pieces, each forming half an oval, and joined the ends together by lashings. Stout braces were then placed within these frames to spread them apart and to strengthen the ends of the withes where they were joined, and these were firmly secured by additional lashings.

HOW THE SNOW-SHOES WERE MADE

The next thing was to fit the hide inside the frames, and here I once more came face to face with a problem which took some time to solve. Of rabbit or hare skins I had an abundance, but these, I knew, were too frail and delicate to serve my purpose. The ’coon-skins were about my limbs as leggings, the two porcupine-skins had been converted into moccasins, and nothing else remained save the bear-skin robe.

I disliked cutting into this, and, moreover, I wanted hide minus hair, but there was nothing else to be done and, with some misgivings, I cut two oval pieces, of the size and shape of the frames, from my bear-skin. With my knife I cut and shaved the hair from these pieces of hide, and then, by means of roots, thongs, and strips of bark, I lashed the oval pieces of skin inside the frames. The result of all this work was a pair of platter-like objects of rawhide, and, while the stiff skin was far from smooth or tight, I judged that they might hold me up. I hurried out to try them. Placing the two queer contraptions upon the snow, I clambered upon them, and to my great delight found they scarcely sank into the snow at all around the edges, but the centers sagged badly, and I found it difficult to maintain my balance upon them.

I had not yet fitted straps or fastenings for my feet, but I felt sure that to travel over the snow would be quite impossible if the centers of the snow-shoes sagged to such an extent, and that, while the principle was all right, I must manage to draw the hide smooth and tight before my invention would prove a success.