Born Naked (15 page)

As the rush of air through their great pinions sounded in our ears, we jumped up and, in what was more of a conditioned reflex than a conscious act, raised our guns. The honkers veered directly over us and we both fired. The sound of the shots seemed puny, lost in the immensity of wind and singing wings.

It had to have been pure mischance that one of the great geese was hit for, as we later admitted to each other, neither of us had aimed. Nevertheless one fell, appearing gigantic in the tenuous light as it spiralled sharply downward. It struck the water a hundred feet from shore and I saw with sick dismay that it had been winged. It swam off into the growing storm, its neck outstretched, calling… calling… calling after the ­vanished flock.

Driving back to Saskatoon that night I was filled with repugnance for what we had done. And I was experiencing an indefinable sense of loss. I felt, though I could not then have expressed it, as if I had glimpsed another, magical world—a world of Oneness—and had been denied entry into it through my own stupidity.

I never again hunted for sport, nor did my father ever try to lead me back to it. Although he continued to hunt, if in increasingly desultory fashion until we left Saskatoon for good, I believe his heart, too, was no longer in it.

 

 

 

14

 

 

DURING THE FINAL MONTHS OF
1935 and early 1936, I was the most assiduous young naturalist Saskatoon had even known or, I suspect, is ever likely to know. On Saturdays or Sundays (sometimes both) I trudged resolutely off into the countryside to look for birds. I would be gone almost every day during longer holiday periods. There were lapses, as when I was confined to bed by a bad bout of flu or when a raging blizzard shut me up at home. Otherwise I went on my self-appointed rounds with a degree of dedication which surely made me brother to the legendary postman.

Between September 22 and March 22 I made thirty-four bird hikes covering more than three hundred miles, much of that distance across the winter prairies in sub-zero weather. On January 28 I hiked all day at a temperature of –25°. I did the same at –45° on February 8, and –40° on February 21 and 23. This was cold stuff, but not cold enough to chill a passion which, in my sere and yellow years, seems almost incomprehensible.

Why did I do it? Did I really believe I was gathering priceless scientific lore about Saskatchewan birds? I hardly think so.

Was I trying to prove I was indestructible? If so, to whom? Apart from Murray Robb and Bruce Billings, one or the other of whom joined me on many of my hikes, none of my peers
knew
what I was doing. I took care that they didn't find out either for they would have thought anyone who did what I was doing was out of his mind.
A guy walks ten miles over the prairie at 40° below just to look for a bunch of birds?

If not madness, what was it that impelled me? Could it have been a subconscious yet compulsive urge to break through into the world of the Others, even under the most adverse of conditions?

I cannot tell. But I can describe what it was like.

 

Saturday, December 22nd

It's the first day of the Christmas holidays and I can't wait to get going. I'm up about six but can't get Mutt up until I pull his rug right out from under him. He's having troubles with his bladder these days so I hustle him outside right away and we both pee in the snow. It's dark and cold—thermometer says ten below—and a dusting of snow still coming down after the big storm yesterday. Perfect for snowshoeing.

Nobody else is up so I make toast and marmalade and drink about a gallon of milk. Then I get the lunch Mum made for me last night. Then put on my heavy woollen jacket that comes down to my knees. I'm already wearing thick, wool britches and long underwear. Put on my toque with my leather helmet over it and the big mitts Mum got made by some Icelanders out at Meadow Lake.

I don't bother to put on my snowshoes in town, so Mutt and I wade through the new snow to the street-car stop five blocks away. The first trolley along is the plow and it's having trouble pushing its way through. A little later a passenger trolley comes along and none too soon because, as Dad would say, it's cold as the mill-tail of Hell. We climb aboard and scrunch up close to the stove. Especially Mutt, who's still only about half awake. There's nobody on the car but us and a couple of Poles going home after clearing snow on the streets all night.

Dawn is coming by the time we get to the last stop, at the Exhibition Grounds. There's a kind of smoky light because of all the clouds overhead that you can't see but kind of feel pressing down. I strap on my snowshoes, pulling the lamp-wick bindings tight around the moosehide moccasins Dad got me from some trapper at Prince Albert. Mutt stands there waiting, lifting one foot after another to keep them warm, wishing he was back in the trolley.

Then we're off, cutting kitty-corner across the City Golf Club out onto the prairie. My trail from last time is buried so deep I can't see it. We tramp along for about an hour until we get to Brucie's place. From half a mile away I can smell the foxes his dad raises. Brucie's dog, Rex, hears us coming and sets up a racket. Mrs. Billings opens the door of their little old frame house and calls us in. Her Scotch accent is so thick I can't make out what she's saying but I know she's got a hot breakfast waiting. Mr. Billings has already gone to the fox pens and Bruce comes out of his little back bedroom just as I take off my coat. His long, blond hair is hanging all over his face with just his long nose sticking out. We sit at the kitchen table, my back right up to the old wood stove, and stuff ourselves on fresh bread and Saskatoon-berry jam, slices of home-cured ham, and mugs of tea.

“Where we goin' today?” Bruce asks.

“Depends on if it snows hard. If it does, I guess we better stick to the riverbank.”

“Och, ye're a pair of daft dolts!” his mother says. “One day ye'll get yersels lost and freeze as hard as they icicles.” But she's smiling. She knows we won't get lost, not with old Rex and Mutt along to find the way.

There's not much snow falling now so we decide the heck with it, we'll head out north-west away from the shelter of the river valley into the bluff country where we'll be most likely to find birds. I start off breaking trail; then, after half a mile, Brucie takes over. It's hard work. The snow is sure deep and the lazy dogs just saunter along in the path we make. Sometimes one of them gets too close and steps on the tail of someone's snowshoe and trips him up, and then there's Old Harry to pay.

Our breath makes white, fleecy puffs and freezes into hoarfrost around the edges of our helmets. There's a bit of wind out on the open prairie so we have to stop every little while and take off our mitts and rub away the white spots on our noses and cheeks.

At last we get out of the wind in amongst the bluffs behind Henry's place. First thing we flush about a dozen partridge out of a drift so close they nearly hit us with their wings. Rex takes after them but Mutt knows better. He sits with his tongue out, laughing, until Rex flounders back.

We've come to the right place. The storm must have brought a lot of animals into the bluffs looking for shelter. In the next hour we see flocks of redpolls, some pine siskins, some evening grosbeaks, a white weasel, a flock of Bohemian waxwings, and then a prairie falcon.

The falcon comes whistling out of a bluff right on the tail of a grouse that crash-lands into a snowbank and just disappears. Smart grouse! The falcon flies off and I'll bet he's pretty mad. Rex has a run at the grouse as it flaps its way out of the drift.

“Come back, stupid!” Bruce yells.

About a mile more and we come to a bunch of coyote tracks. They're so fresh the dogs take one sniff and start crowding us until we can hardly take a step without bumping into one of them. Brucie is calling them cowards when I see something up ahead on top of a rise. There's some snow falling so I can't see too clearly. We stop and stare until we make out four coyotes standing there staring right back at us.

Bruce lets out a holler. “Git outta there, you mangy bums!” He waves his arms and the coyotes just seem to melt away.

We snowshoe up the rise and right on top, where the wind has kept a patch of stubble clear, is a dead pony. We figure it's a wild one off the ranch at Beaver Creek that got lost and froze to death. It's just skin and bones. It must have been trying to paw out one last bit of stubble when it died.

Bruce says we should cut off the tail because you can sell horsehair to a guy in town who fixes furniture but I say we ought to leave it be.

“Well,” he argues, “coyotes'll only tear it up anyhow.”

“They got more right to it than us,” I tell him. I don't know if he agrees or not but it's getting too cold standing around so we go on.

After a while we know it's time for lunch. Neither of us has a watch but our bellies let us know. We pick a spot out of the wind in a thick little bluff and dig down about three feet through the drifts, using our snowshoes for shovels, until we reach the ground. Then we collect twigs and branches and some stubble straw and light a fire. The space we've cleared is just big enough for the fire and the dogs and us. I cut a couple of green branches with a “Y” at the end of each; push them butt-down into the snow and lay another stick between them and across the fire. Bruce hangs our tea billy from this stick. It's an old five-pound jam can, black with soot. We keep putting snow into it until it's mostly full of water, then we add a handful of tea and wait for it to boil. While that's going on we hang pieces of buttered bannock and bread on sticks close to the fire and put a can of pork and beans with a hole punched in the top so it won't explode, down among the coals. That's lunch, except for frozen cake and biscuits.

A bunch of chickadees come to visit while we eat. They fly right down and one lands on my arm, walks to my hand, and helps himself to a beakful of bannock. The others get so excited it feels like the air is getting thick with chickadees. They sure know a soft touch when they find one.

The fire has burned down and we are slurping the last of the tea with lots of sugar in it when a magpie comes calling. He wags his big, black tail and yells down to us, “Got-any-grub-anygrub-anygrub-anygrub?” Brucie laughs and tosses him a crust. He catches it in mid-air and flops off to gulp it down before some other magpie sees him.

Now the snow starts coming down thicker and it's beginning to blow. Soon it'll be drifting. Time for us to head home. We douse the fire and take off, right into the wind. It's from the south but cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey is what Brucie says.

Pretty soon we can't see more than a few feet and our eyes are gumming up with snow. We reach the road near Henry's place and head along it. The drifts are so deep we can't find the road in places but the dogs know and they take the lead. Near the corner at the crossroads something big and white spins off a telephone pole and dives straight down at Mutt. He yelps and jumps aside. It's a snowy owl—big as a barn it looks! It must have thought for a minute Mutt was something it could eat. When it saw the mistake it back-pedalled up and away and vanished into the drift. I guess times are hard all over, not just for people.

Around 4 o'clock we get to Brucie's place but don't even see it until Rex leads us up the lane. By this time the ground drift's got so thick it wouldn't be smart for me to try and get back to town. Mr. Billings says I should stay the night, and he rings up Dad on the old party line, and it's okay.

We eat stewed rabbits for supper. Then we listen to the battery radio for a while before we go to bed. Me and Brucie sleep under a thick, old feather quilt, and Mutt and Rex sleep crowded together behind the stove. It goes to thirty below in the night and the wind howls like banshees but we're all snug as bugs in a rug.

 

ALTHOUGH MY PARENTS
generally approved of my activities, the zeal with which I was now pursuing my ornithological interests sometimes gave them pause.

Not content with trying to find out all I could about the external aspects of birds, I became interested in their internal machinery. Whenever I found a dead one that winter I would bring it home, thaw it out, and dissect it in the seclusion of my room. This could be a messy business, as on the occasion when the bird was an over-ripe prairie chicken. My mother attributed the consequent odour to “unwashed boy,” and never knew what lurked for several days in an old pan under my bed.

My parents did, however, know about the woodpecker.

They were giving a dinner party one Sunday in January. It was a small, select party for adults only, very formal. The diners were having dessert when, in the midst of a solemn conversation about King George the Fifth's grave illness, I burst into the dining room, dancing with excitement, and bearing aloft a tin plate.

Since there was apparently nothing to be seen on the plate, Angus thought (or so he later said) I was playing Salome without the head. He had begun to reprove me for interrupting my elders, when I stopped him.

“Dad! Dad! I've
found
them! I've
got
them!”

One of the guests was Bessie Woodward, wife of the owner of Saskatoon's daily newspaper, the
Star Phoenix.
Now she asked politely, “Got what, Farley?”

“The testes of a hairy woodpecker! Just look!”

Whereupon I thrust my offering before her startled eyes. The testes were minute but I produced a magnifying glass so the guests could have a close look. Some people left their desserts unfinished.

Whatever Mrs. Woodward thought about it, her husband must have been intrigued. A week or so later he sent me a note asking if I would be interested in writing a weekly column about birds in the
Star
's Saturday supplement for young people. This was a four-page tabloid called “Prairie Pals” which enjoyed a tremendous popularity with kids of all ages in those days before comic books.

The demise of
Nature Lore
had left me with no outlet for my writing so I seized upon this opportunity with an avidity which was not entirely untainted. Mr. Woodward had said I might be paid for my work if it proved acceptable.

I went all out. School work was neglected even more than usual. I wrote every day after school, picking with two fingers at my father's portable typewriter. I would have written every evening too but the sound of me clicking away apparently got to Angus and he reclaimed his typewriter after dinner to work on what he hoped might be a novel.

In mid-February I sent off a batch of four pieces then sat back to wait, alternating between gloom and hope. I heard nothing directly from the
Star
but when I opened “Prairie Pals” on the last day of the month, there I was in print, and this time in
real
print. The column was called “Birds of the Season” and an introductory paragraph by the editors informed all and sundry that it “came from the talented pen of young Farley Mowat of Saskatoon.”