Part III: Wadena Fishes the Big Hard-Hearted River (The Cabin)

It is good now to move away from the ugly mire of religion and politics for a while and back to the topics of life and relationships (of people and of cats) in the ongoing tale of Wadena and the Big Hard-Hearted River.

(If you haven't read the preceding episodes yet, better click here for background.)

The Cabin:

"It's a bobcat," Wadena said. Her cat voice was a bit muffled, speaking from within the backpack.

I wasn't listening. I was looking up from the riverbank through the heavy brush, stepping slowly sideways and thinking I was seeing things. It was a darker shape against the sky at the top of the hillside above, screened by the brush and trees. And that shape had squared off lines.....like the roof of a cabin. There were no cabins on this part of the river, I was sure of that.

We were miles from any road. The sun was already low in the west and dark came quickly in September. We were cold and wet, tired, hurt and hungry and a cabin was exactly what we needed. But there couldn't be one here. "You're imagining things," I said to myself.

The muffled cat voice from even deeper within the backpack answered me. "No, I'm not. It's been following and watching us. And bobcats will kill and eat cats like me, you know.....if given a chance. I saw it on Animal Planet." There was a pause. And then, "Of course......we wouldn't give them a chance, would we?"

I was walking up a little hill and pushing brush aside and seeing......what was definitely a cabin, and only about 75 yards away. "It IS a cabin, " I said.

Wadena popped her head out of the backpack. "You're not listening to me! What ARE you talking about?"

"There's a cabin up the hill. We're going up to check it out," I said.

I planted my walking-stick and moved up the hill. Going uphill was putting new strains on my bad ankle and I moved sideways as I climbed, leading with my good leg, pushing against the walking-stick and taking small steps and stopping often. I was trying to take a direct route to the cabin but I had to detour around some deadfalls that created a tangled and impassable jungle of fallen tree trunks, brush and branches. I was just beginning to realize how tired and wet and cold I was. The rain had stopped, but the leaves were still throwing off chilling droplets when I moved them. My clothes were soaked. It would be dark in about an hour and there was no way we were going to get out of the woods tonight without help.

"I don't see any cabin." Wadena had her front paws out of the backpack, straining to see ahead.

"It's here, all right." And, as I pushed through and parted a clump of high-bush cranberries, scattering drops of water and dark red fruit as a way of making an entrance, there it was.

It was a solid little cabin, set on a pretty island of high ground in the middle of a swamp. It was a primitive native, made mostly of material cut and gathered right there in the woods.....logs, hand-made wooden shingles, and some boards for siding that must have been hauled in through the swamp in winter. It stood secure and protected by a few old-growth maples and oaks that grew close around it. It was, I realized, also protected by the swamp in a wet year, because getting here involved a long and difficult passage through that swamp.

As we came around to the front we were surprised to see that the cabin faced a tiny lake. It was little more than a pond, roughly the size of a football field. The surface was mirror-still and swamp-water dark and the shores showed no hint of the work of humans. A solitary beaver left a flowing v-shaped wake as it paddled home along the shore and several small rings on the water showed that trout were present.

White birch trees on the other side glowed, tinted gold as they reflected the fleeting rays of a sun that had come from behind cold clouds and mist just in time to glide below the horizon for the day. Red sky at night meant good weather tomorrow. Maybe.

I took a bucket and walked down to get some water. A time-tested and dust-covered old Grumman canoe was resting bottom-up beside the path to the lake. Both path and canoe were overgrown with wildflowers and brush and looked like they hadn't been used for a long time, at least not this year. There was no one around. The cabin door had no lock, only rusted wire twisted through a latch. There was firewood piled under a lean-to outside and that made me think of how nice it would feel to be dry and warm.

I untangled the wire and opened the door. The interior was dusty, but dry and neat and a small wood stove against the wall looked usable. There were two bunks with rolled-up sleeping bags on them. The floor was plain wood planks and the room smelled of cedar and pine.

"Ok," I said. "Good news. We're sleeping inside tonight."

"Whoa. What about home? What about supper? What about my bed?"

I put the backpack down beside the steps and grabbed some wood from the woodpile, picking out smaller pieces for kindling. "We can't make it any farther. We'll be fine here. We'll start a fire, get warmed up and see if there's anything to eat."

Wadena climbed out of the backpack and shot into the cabin like a gray streak. "Close that door. That bobcat is still watching us."

"What bobcat?"

"Duh! The bobcat I TOLD you about! The one that's been watching me like I watch the birds outside the windows at home. Only there's no glass between this bobcat and me. You know......THAT bobcat?"

"Oh." Her words came back to me. "Ok. Well, if it is a bobcat you'll be ...."

"No 'if' about it. It's a bobcat. Close the door."

I closed the door. I opened the draft and damper on the old stove and put in some newspaper, small woodchips and bark with larger pieces of wood above. I struck a match and lit the papers. The wood was all nice and dry and the flames spread quickly and hungrily through it. Warmth came fast as I put in two larger chunks of wood. It felt very good to have the fire. The wood popped and snapped. Hearing it roar strongly, feeling the warmth, seeing the bright flickering behind the clouded window in the stove door....all of this brought back long-dead memories of the wonder of fire. I had forgotten how good that wood smoke could smell when you were cold and wet.

It would be a good place to spend the night. And not getting home would cause no problems. One good thing about being recently divorced is that you can usually disappear for a night or two and nobody will notice. That's a bad thing in a way, but it's also a good thing. It did not outweigh the other bad things about being alone, but at least I knew that no one would get upset about my failure to come home. It was hard to know which was preferable--no one caring or someone beset by worry. I found some candles and lit them, because darkness was now fully upon us.

Wadena was stretched out beside the stove, maximizing her exposure to the heat, absorbing as much as she could get. "This is better," she said. "Now, about supper...."

The water was boiling on the stove and I was already rummaging in the pantry. I found instant coffee, crackers, two tins of sardines and a large can of baked beans. It was like finding treasure. We ate like a starving man and a starving cat. The river had not fed us well, but an unexpected cabin had made up for it.

Wadena was soon washing her paws. "A fresh fish would have been better, but this was very, very good."

We had the sleeping bags near the stove, me inside one and Wadena curled on top of the other. My wet clothes were hung and drying. I had to agree with the cat. This was very, very good. My ankle would slow us down, but we'd walk out in the morning. My maps and the lake and my compass now told me exactly where we were. The lake showed up as the lowest part of the swamp on the map, but the shape gave it away. The hard-working beavers had turned it into a lake some years ago.

We had been lost, but were lost no more. We'd have tough going for about a mile, then walk ridges through most of the swamp and then have about a mile of easy walking on high ground to the road and the car. I had wrapped my ankle and it was feeling better.

I put more wood in the stove and blew out the candles. The glow from the smoked glass in the door of the stove threw a soft red flickering light that moved against the dark log walls.

"This is why cats don't get married," Wadena said.

"Why?"

"Because we're free. Free as the wind. That's the way we like it."

I thought about it. "There's much to be said for freedom.........but, there's also a lot to be said for having someone to love."

"I love fish," Wadena said.

I sighed and crawled deeper into the warm sleeping bag. "In the morning, we'll catch a fish in the lake. A big one."

Wadena said nothing. She was asleep. The quiet night sounds outside the cabin and the soft crackling of the fire were soothing me to sleep as well.

More later.