Fortunately enough, school in those days was a small part of one’s life. So Mother and Father Curwood did not raise much protest against their son’s wishes, even though they had hoped and prayed that he would some day go through college. Consequently Jim had very little trouble in gaining the necessary permission, although the necessity of gathering material for the editor of Golden Days was a fabrication. The editor of that magazine had never even heard of Jim Curwood....
Several days later Jim started out on his lone venture, still wondering why Skinny had never answered his letter. He was starting out into the Big Marsh Country and the “Land of the Bad” alone. Carrying his gun in one hand and his dunnage in the other, his tramping was to be a solitary one. In those days there were no automobiles and the country was low and flat. There was nothing but timberland, swamps, lakes, creatures of the wilds and the rushing white waters of the rivers.
As Jim began hiking on the first day of his trip, the sun was just beginning to peep through the trees. At the end of that day the sun was sinking behind the western horizon in a glorious burst of color. He had made something like thirty miles and he was to spend his first night out in one of the cabins of one of his swamp Indian friends and feast upon the usual meal of fried muskrat.
By sunup the following morning Jim Curwood was in the little town of St. Charles, and it was here that he rented a leaky boat.
Jim was on his way down the Bad long before most people are ready to sit down to their morning meal.
A half mile or so down the river from St. Charles, Jim entered a region supremely and gloriously wild. It was strangely and unusually quiet; and along this particular point the Bad river was very deep and wide, and all but currentless. Bordered on both sides by many types of trees: spruce, willows, jackpine, maple and beech that seemed to be bending their heads down to the water’s edge, and long entwining vines that looked as if they were just waiting to fasten their deathlike grips about Jim’s young neck. It was all mysterious and terrifying, but Jim loved it all. He loved and almost worshipped every single thing regardless of how wild and spooky it looked.
J.C. WEBER
The farther he pushed along, the more he began to realize that he was well within the swamp territory and uncut timberlands, a place so primeval and mysterious that it fairly rang with the sound of adventure. It was deathly still and quiet.