Spring roared in, April, May and half of June passed, and Teddy decided to make another try for his furs and traps. I went along again, what the heck, it was almost summer. By this time he had bought a six wheel drive ATV, it was shaped like a bathtub with big flotation tires and was called a Vamoose. The roads were good and we got to the creek in good time on the high ground. We unloaded the Vamoose from the truck using ramps, loaded our camping stuff and headed off.

When we got into the swamps the Vamoose showed its neither-fish-nor-fowl weakness, it floated just fine, but couldn't make any forward progress because of the build up of reeds, grass and duckweed in front. It would float and spin all six wheels happily, but move, no go.
So I bailed out into the swamp, expecting to find an oozy bottom somewhere down there from which I could push. Just about knee deep I encounterd the bottom, ice, a solid sheet of the stuff under the whole srea. This was the middle of June, people! Still, it was better footing than I expected, but the pushing and weight reduction didn't progress the parade by more than six inches. Other, clever means were needed. "Give us the tools and we'll finish the job." said Churchill. Two people in a swamp buggy in the middle of nowhere could qualify in that regard. A winch, even a hand powered one, would have been handy to have, as would a sky-hook, but we had neither. We did have a cable come-along and a lot of polypropelene rope, so that's what we used, connecting to a solid stump, pulling through the soggy bits, a twelve foot gain and then reset the whole rig. That and a lot of pushing got us through to the higher ground and we were on our way. The delays had eaten up most of the day so when we got to the cabin we set up a tent and ate food from the snow bank cache that was still frozen. A bear had got into the line cabin in the spring and ripped up all the fur, annoying Teddy enough that if brother bruin had stuck his head out of the bush it might have turned into a brawl. As it was we slept with no bear visitors, listening to the nighthawks hunting bugs and a few wolves howling in the distance, and got home the next day, with a few pauses for winching again. The adventure was done, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

That July we left Keg River for good to move to Wabasca, where Denise would teach for the next four years. Someday I should take a trip to the old place, someday.

Back to KEG RIVER