Sometimes I had difficulty in starting my fire. If there had been daily showers for weeks, and the needles and the deadwood, as well as the ground itself, were soaked, or if in winter the deadwood were buried beneath snow and the dead limbs of standing trees difficult to break off, it was a discouraging task. Sometimes after what seemed like eons of struggling, I would get a sickly little flame flickering, when, puff! along would come a blast of wind and smother it out with snow. I did learn eventually that pitch knots were so rich in gum or resin that they would always catch fire, and so I shaved off splinters with my trusty hunting knife and used them for tinder. One night as I lighted a candle in my cabin, it came to me that a piece of it would be handy to tuck in my pocket for emergencies. Ever afterwards I carried several short, burned-down ends along on my excursions. I discovered that one of these stubs, set solidly on the ground and lighted, would start my fire under the most adverse conditions. But for them I would have had many a cold camp.
I had read of the Eskimo igloos and I tried to make them. But the snow at hand in my mountains was never packed hard enough to freeze solid so building blocks could be cut from it. It is blown about and drifted too much. I did get an idea from "Buck" in Jack London's "Call of the Wild," that I adapted. On winter explorations I always carried snowshoes, even though not compelled to wear them at the outset. These made handy shovels. When ready to make camp I selected a snowdrift three or four feet deep, and with my web shovel dug a triangular hole, about seven feet long on each side. In the angle farthest from the wind I built my fire. It soon assisted me in enlarging the corner. Opposite it, I roofed over my dugout with dead limbs, thatching them with green boughs, and finally heaping the excavated snow over all. I had a practically windproof nest which a little fire would keep snug and warm. True I had to fire up frequently throughout the night, for a big blaze is too hot in a snow-hole, but I soon learned to rouse up, put on more fuel, and drop back to sleep, all in a few minutes.
But the smoke nuisance in my early dugouts was terrible. Pittsburgh had nothing on me! Many a morning I crawled out smelling like a smoked ham, my eyes smarting, my throat sore and dry. Years later, my rambles led me to Mesa Verde and the kivas of the cliff dwellers. Those primitive people built fires deep underground, with no chimneys or flues to conduct the smoke outside. They ingeniously constructed cold air passages down to the floor of the kivas near the fire bowl. These fed the fires fresh air, causing the smoke to rise steadily and pass out through a small aperture in the roof. I tried this, and to my delight, found it rid me of the strangling plague.
I had discarded my gun, but my camera was with me always. Frequent dashing showers are common in the mountains. Often, too, I had to cross swollen streams, and sometimes got a ducking in transit. Matches, salt and camera plates were ruined by wetting, so I had to contrive a waterproof carrier for them. I hit upon a light rubber blanket, which added practically no pounds or bulk to my pack, and in it wrapped my perishables. It saved them more often than not, but even it could not protect them in some predicaments.
There, was no month of the year I didn't camp out. Naturally I was caught in many kinds of weather. In severe storms I learned to stick close to camp, lying low and waiting for the furies to relent. In the early days, as in my first camp, I attempted to return home at once, but traveling over the soft, yielding snow only sapped my strength and got me nowhere. I learned that by remaining inactive by my campfire, I conserved both food and energy and had a far better chance to reach the shelter of my cabin without mishap.
Being young and inexperienced, I was the recipient of much free advice, the most common being warnings about the imminent weather or the oncoming winter. Most of these prognosticators used the cone-storing squirrels or the beavers, working busily on their dams and houses, as barometers. But I found the old adage that only fools and newcomers could forecast weather to hold true in the mountains. I got so I didn't believe in signs. I saw the squirrels and the beavers make preparation for winter every fall. I took each day, with its vagaries, as it came and made the best of it.
Returning from one of my midwinter trips to the wilds, one day I coasted down a very steep slope and shot out of the woods into a little clearing—a snug log cabin stood there, buried in snow up to its eyes. In a snow trench, not far from the door, an old trapper was chopping wood. As I burst upon the scene he dropped his ax and stared at me. Then he found words.
"See all fools ain't dead yit," he observed with a grin. Then, as I started on he yelled after me.
"But I bet they soon will be!"