[SPECIALISTS IN THE WOODS.]
Only people who have poked around up there more or less realize how many persons make a living out of the Maine woods. This reference is not to the lumbermen and the pulp stuff choppers. Their presence in the woods is a matter of course. This is a word about the army of specialists. One might say that they are the gleaners who follow the red-shirted reapers whose harvest is the giants of the forests. The side issues of the Maine woods feed many mouths; and speaking about mouths there are, of course, the gum pickers.
Some people have an idea that spruce gum is gathered in the forest by the lumbermen at odd jobs. It may be remarked in passing that from 4:30 a. m. until dark the Maine loggers have something else to do. They haven't any hankering to climb trees.
Practically all the spruce gum of commerce is gathered by men who make it their business and work at it as steadily as a man in a factory. You will find the snowshoe trail of these busy chaps zigzagging through pathless stretches, and if you happen to be up that way you will see their camp-fires glowing deep in many a lonely glen.
Few people behold them at their work. The constant supply of gum in store windows shows they are kept busy.
There is more or less excitement about gum picking. The standard price for gum is $1 a pound, and a fancy article of clear nuggets brings $1.50. Some days when lucky strikes are frequent the gum picker can clear from $5 to $10.
The gum picker can sell even the scraps and chippings. The patent spruce gum maker boils those down. Several medicine firms also make a spruce gum cough balsam.
Maine gum pickers usually travel in pairs. Some go on their own hook, others are employed by wholesale druggists. Usually they range over wide territory, sleeping here and there in the deserted logging camps that sprinkle northern Maine. A few fresh boughs of browse in the bunks and some strips of bark over the habitable corner of the camp make the place a comfortable home.
If a city man happens to be ordered into the woods by his physician he would do well to take up gum picking for his pastime, even if he does not care for the money. There is just enough activity about it to keep a man's mind clear and his muscles healthy. It takes him abroad through the crisp winter air and gives him an excuse for "hucking it."