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

by A. Hyatt Verrill

The trail was easy to follow, for it had evidently once served as a logging-road, and for hour after hour we plodded on. That such a road must inevitably lead to the settlements I felt sure, for no one would have wasted time and labor in cutting a wide road for hauling lumber unless it led out of the forest. Even if it led me to an isolated sawmill or a rude lumbermen’s camp it would serve my purpose.

At noon we stopped to rest and ate our midday meal of venison, and once more started on. My back ached from carrying the unaccustomed load of my packs, and my feet were sore. I had never walked long distances since finding the log cabin, and during most of the time I had traveled on snow-shoes.

The road wound and turned about and in several places forked or branched, and I was often in doubt as to which trail to take. The only way was to investigate, and I went many miles out of my way, only to find that these side trails led merely to cleared spots where the trees had been felled and cut for timber.

But while it was disappointing to be led astray, yet the presence of the cleared spaces and the diverging roads encouraged me greatly, for I knew that I was no longer in the heart of the vast wilderness, but was in a district which had been visited by large numbers of men and it could not be very far from the outposts of civilization.

How long a time had passed since the road had been cut or the lumbermen had labored here I could only guess, but the size of the young shoots which had sprung up, the moss and lichens which had grown upon the rotting stumps and discarded branches of the felled trees, and the thickets or brush which had partially obliterated the roadway convinced me that no active work had been carried on here for several years. This rather surprised and discouraged me, for I could see no reason for abandoning work, since there was an abundance of good timber still standing, and I rather feared that only a deserted camp or a burned and abandoned mill might lie at the end of my journey. However, I argued that there were many other reasons which might account for the matter. Perhaps, I thought, the lumbermen had been stealing timber from government land and had been driven off, or possibly better transportation facilities in some other district had made lumbering less profitable here. Finally I contented myself with the thought that even if I found no inhabited camp or village at the end of the trail there must, at least, be a large river, an old railway, or a well-marked lumber road leading out to civilization, and once I struck this my way would be easy.

About mid-afternoon I heard the sound of rushing water ahead, and a few moments later we came to the banks of a river with the road leading directly to the water’s edge. Before me stretched a hundred feet of tumbling, foaming torrent, and on the farther bank, opposite to where I stood, I could plainly see the continuation of the old wood road.

I was as badly off as ever, and, thoroughly disheartened, I threw myself upon the ground. Evidently to follow the road and escape from the forest I must cross the stream, and I realized how inexcusably stupid I had been not to have thought of this contingency before. I might have known that the lumber road had been used in winter and that on the ice the loads of timber could be hauled across brooks and rivers which would be impassable now, but not until I had been brought face to face with such conditions did the idea enter my head.

No doubt, I thought, the stream might be forded later in the season, for it was now abnormally high with the spring freshets. But I was in no mood to wait for weeks, or perhaps months, for the water to fall enough to allow me to wade across, and I knew that to attempt to swim through the icy current would be suicidal and would result in the loss of my outfit, even if I reached the other side alive. There seemed to be but one thing to be done, which was to walk up the stream to some narrower, shallower spot where it could be forded, and then, after crossing, retrace my way on the farther side until I once more came to the road. Sooner or later I knew that I must find a point where I could cross in safety, and as anything was better than sitting here and cursing my luck, I rose and proceeded up the river.

Had the stream been slightly lower I could have followed its shores at the edge of the woods and traveling would have been comparatively easy, but with the river in flood the water swept to the trees along the borders and I was compelled to make my way through the forest.

For hour after hour I trudged steadily on, encouraged somewhat by finding the river was decreasing in width and that here and there ledges and boulders jutted above the surface of the waters.