Mud Pond Carry by Henry David Thoreau

1857

Umbazookskus Lake is the head of the Penobscot in this direction, and Mud Pond is the nearest bend of the Allegash, one of the chief sources of the St. John. Mud Pond I about halfway from Umbazookskus to Chamberlain Lake, into which it empties, and to which we were bound.  The Indian said that this was the wettest carry in the State, and as the season was a very wet one, we anticipated an unpleasant walk. As usual he made one large bundle of the pork-keg, cooking utensils, and other loose traps, by tying them up in his blanket. We should be obliged to go over the carry twice, and our method was to carry one half part way, and then go back for the rest.

Our path ran close by the door of a log-hut in a clearing at the end of the carry, which the Indian, who alone entered it, found to be occupied by a Canadian and his family, and that the man had been blind for a year. He seemed peculiarly unfortunate to be taken blind there, where there were so few eyes to see for him. He could not even be lead out of that country by a dog, but must be taken down the rapids as passively as a barrel of flour. This was the first house above Chesuncock, and the last on the Penobscot waters, and was built here, no doubt, because it was the route of the lumberers in the winter and spring.

After a slight ascent from the lake through the springy soil of the Canadian’s clearing. We entered on a level and very wet and rocky path through universal dense evergreen forest, a loosely paved gutter merely, where we went leaping from rock to rock and from side to side in the vain attempt to keep out of the water and mud. We concluded that it was yet Penobscot water, though there was no flow to it .It was on this carry that the white hunter whom I met in the stage, as he told me, had shot two bears a few months before.. They stood directly in the path, and did not turn out for him. They might be excused for not turning out there, or only taking the right as the law directs. He said that at this season bears were found on the mountains and hillsides, in search of berries, and were apt to be saucy, - that we might come across them up Trout Stream; and he added, what I hardly credited, that many Indians slept in their canoes, not daring to sleep on land, on account of them.

Here commences what was called, twenty years ago, the best timber land in the State. This very spot was described as ‘covered with an abundance of pine,’ but now this appears to me, comparatively, an uncommon tree there, - and yet you did not see where any more could have stood, amid the dense growth of cedar, fir, etc. It was then proposed to cut a canal from lake to lake here, but the outlet was made further east, at Telos Lake, as we shall see.

The Indian with his canoe soon disappeared before us; but erelong he came back and told us to take a path which turned off westward, it being better walking, and , at my suggestion, he agreed to leave a bough in the regular carry at that place, that we might not pass it by mistake. Thereafter, he said, we were to keep the main path, and he added, ‘You see ‘em my tracks.’ But I had not much faith that we could distinguish his tracks, since others had passed over the carry within a few days.

We turned off at the right place, but were soon confused by numerous logging-paths, coming into the one we were on, by which lumberers had been to pick out those pines which I have mentioned. However, we kept what we considered the main path, though it was a winding one, and this, at long intervals, we distinguished a faint trace of a footstep. This, though comparatively unworn, was at first a better, or, at least, a drier road  than the regular carry which we had left. It led through an arbor-vitae wilderness of the grimmest character. The great fallen and rotten trees had been cut  through and rolled aside, and  their huge trunks abutted on the path on each side, while others still lay across it two or three feet high.

 

It was impossible for us to discern the Indian’s trail in the elastic moss, which, like a thick carpet, covered every rock and fallen tree, as well as the earth. Nevertheless, I did occasionally detect the track of a man, and I gave myself some credit for it. I carried my whole load at once, a heavy knapsack,  and a large India-rubber bag, containing our bread and a blanket, swung on a paddle; in all, about sixty pounds; but my companion preferred to make two journeys, by short stages, while I waited for him. We could not be sure that we were not depositing our loads each time further of from the true path.

As I was waiting for my companion, he would seem to be gone for a long time, and I had ample opportunity to make observations on the forest. I now first began to be seriously molested by the black-fly, a very small but perfectly formed fly of that color, about one tent of an inch long, which I first felt, and the saw, in swarms around me, as I sat by a wider  and more than usually double fork in this dark forest path. The hunters tell bloody stories about them, - how they settle in a ring about your neck, before you know it, and are wiped off in great numbers with your blood. But remembering I had a wash in my knapsack, prepared by a thoughtful hand in Bangor, I made hate to apply it to my face and hands, and was glad to find it effectual, as long as it was fresh, or for twenty minutes, nor only against black-flies, but all the insects that molested us. They would not alight on the part thus defended. It was composed of sweet-oil and oil of turpentine, with a little oil of spearmint, and camphor. However, I finally concluded that the remedy was worse than the disease. It was so disagreeable and inconvenient to have your face and hands covered with such a mixture.

Three large slate-colored birds of the jay genus, the Canada jay, moose-bird, meat-bird, or what not, came flitting silently and by degrees towards me, and hopped down the limbs inquisitively to within seven or eight feet. They were more clumsy and not nearly so handsome as the blue-jay. Fish-hawks, from the lake, uttered their sharp whistling notes low over the top of the forest near me, as if they were anxious about a nest there.

After I had sat there some time, I noticed at this fork in the path a tree which had been blazed, and the letters ‘Chamb. L.’ written in it with red chalk. This I knew to be Chamberlain Lake. So I concluded that on the whole we were on the right course, though we had come nearly two miles, and saw no signs of Mud Pond. I did harbor a suspicion that we might be on the direct course to Chamberlain Lake, leaving out Mud Pond. This I found on my map would be about five miles northeasterly, and I then took the bearing by my compass.

My companion having returned with his bag, and also defended his face and hands with the insect wash, we set forward again. The walking rapidly grew worse, and the path more indistinct, and at length, after passing trough a patch of Calla palustris [water arum], still abundantly in bloom, we found ourselves in a more open and regular swamp, made less passable than ordinary by the unusual wetness of the season. We sank a foot deep in water and mud at every step, and sometimes up our knees, and the trail was almost obliterated, being no more than a musquash [muskrat] leaves in similar places, when he parts the floating sedge. In fact, it was probably was a musquash trail in some places. We concluded that if Mud Pond was as muddy as the approach to it was wet, it certainly deserved its name.

It would have been amusing to behold the dogged and deliberate pace at which we entered the swamp, without interchanging a word, as if determined to go through it, though it should come up to our necks. Having penetrated a considerable distance into this, and found a tussock on which we could deposit our loads, though there was no place to sit, my companion went back for the rest of his pack. I thought to observe on this carry when we crossed the dividing line between the Penobscot and St. John, but as my feet had hardly been out of the water the whole distance, and it was all level and stagnant, I began to despair of finding it.

I remember hearing a good deal about the ‘highlands’ dividing the waters of the Penobscot from those of the St. John, as well as the St. Lawrence, at the time of the north-east boundary dispute, and I observed by my map, that the line claimed by Great Britain as the boundary prior to 1824 passed between Umbazookskus Lake and Mud Pond, so that we had either crossed or were then on it. These, then, according to her interpretation of the treaty of ’83, were the ‘highlands which divide those rivers that empty into  the  St. Lawrence from those that fall into the Atlantic Ocean.’ Truly an interesting spot to stand on, - if that were it, - though you could not sit down there. I thought that if the commissioners themselves, and the king of Holland with them, had spent a few days here, with their packs upon their backs, looking for that ‘highland, they would have had an interesting time, and perhaps it would have modified their views of the question somewhat. The king of Holland would have been in his element. Such were my meditations while my companion was gone back for his bag.

It was a cedar swamp, through which the peculiar note of the white-throated sparrow rang loud and clear. There grew the side-saddle flower, Labrador tea, Kalmia glauca [pale laurel], and, what was new to me, the Low Birch [Betula pumila], a little round-leaf shrub, two or three feet high only. We thought to name this swamp after the latter.

After a long while my companion came back, and the Indian with him. We had taken the wrong road, and the Indian had lost us. He had very wisely gone back to the Canadian’s camp, and asked him which way we had probably gone, since he could better understand the ways of white men, and he told him correctly that we had undoubtedly taken the supply road to Lake Chamberlain (slender supplies they would get over such a road at this season). The Indian was greatly surprised that we should have taken what he called a ‘tow’ (i.e., tote or toting or supply) road, instead of a carry path – that we had not followed his tracks, -said it was ‘strange,’ and evidently though little of our woodcraft.

Having held a consultation, and eaten a mouthful of bread, we concluded that it would perhaps be nearer for us two now to keep onto Chamberlain Lake, omitting Mud Pond, than to go back and start anew for the last place, though the Indian had never been through this way, and knew nothing about it. In the meantime he would go back and finish carrying his canoe and bundle to Mud Pond, cross that and go down its outlet and up Chamberlain Lake, and trust to meet us there before night. It was now a little after noon. He supposed that the water in which we stood had flowed back from Mud Pond which could not be far off eastward, but was unapproachable through the dense cedar swamp.

Keeping on, we were erelong agreeably disappointed by reaching firmer ground, and we crossed a ridge where the path was more distinct, but there was never any outlook the forest. While descending the last, I saw many specimens of the great round-leaf orchis, of large size, one which I measured had leaves, as usual, flat on the ground, nine and  a half inches long, and nine wide, and was two feet high. The dark, damp wilderness is favorable to some of these orchidaceous plants, though they are too delicate for cultivation. I also saw the swamp gooseberry (Ribes lacustre), with green fruit, and all in low ground, where it was not too wet, the Rubus triflorus [dwarf raspberry] in fruit. At one place I heard a very clear and piercing note from a small hawk, like a single note from a white-throated sparrow, only very much louder, as he dashed through the tree-tops over my head. I wondered that he had allowed himself to be disturbed by our presence, since it seemed as if he could not easily find his nest again himself in that wilderness.

We saw and heard several times the red squirrel, and often, as before observed, the bluish scales of the fir cones which it had left on a rock or fallen tree. This, according to the Indian, is the only squirrel found in those woods, except for a very few striped ones. It must have a solitary time in that dark evergreen forest, where there is so little life, seventy-five miles from a road as we had come. I wondered how he could call any particular tree there his home; and yet he would run up the stem of one out of myriads, as if it were an old road known to him. How can a hawk ever find him there? I fancied that he must be glad to see us, though he did seem to chide us. One of those somber fir and spruce woods is not complete unless you hear from out of its cavernous mossy and twiggy recesses his fine alarum, -his spruce voice, like the working of the sap through some crack in a tree – the working of the spruce-beer. Such an impertinent fellow would occasionally try to alarm the wood about me. “Oh, ‘ said I, ‘I am well acquainted with your family, I know our cousins in Concord very well. Guess the mail’s irregular in these parts, and you’d like to hear from ‘em.’ But my overtures were in vain, for he would withdraw by his aerial turnpikes into a more distant cedar-top, and spring his rattle again.

We entered another swap, at a necessarily low pace, where the walking was worse than ever, not only on account of the water, but the fallen timber, which often obliterated the indistinct trail entirely. The fallen trees were so numerous, that for long distances the route was through a succession of small yards, where we climbed over fences as high as out heads, down into water often up to out knees, and then over another fence into a second yard, and so on; and going back for his bag my companion once lost his way and came back without it. In many places the canoe would have run except for the fallen timber. Again it would be more open, but equally wet, too wet for trees to grow, and no place to sit down.

It was a mossy swamp, which required the long legs of a moose to traverse, and it is very likely that we scared some in our transit, though we saw none. It was ready to echo the growl of a bear, the howl of a wolf, or the scream of a panther; but we you get fairly into the middle of these grim forests, you are surprised to find that the larger inhabitants are not at home commonly, but have left only a puny red squirrel to bark at you. Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling. I did, however, see one dead porcupine; perhaps he has succumbed to the difficulties of the way. These bristly fellows are a very suitable small fruit of such unkempt wildernesses.

Making a logging road in the Maine woods is called ‘swamping it,’ and they that do the work are called ‘swampers.’ I now perceive the fitness of the term. This was the most perfectly swamped of all the roads I ever saw. Nature must have cooperated with art here. However, I suppose they would tell you that this name took its origin from the fact that the chief work of road-makers in those woods is to make swamps passable. We came to a stream where the bridge, which had been made of logs tied together with cedar bark, had been broken up, and we got over it as we could. This probably emptied into Mud Pond, and perhaps the Indian might have come up it and taken us in there if he had known it. Such as it was, this ruined bridge was the chief evidence that we were on a path of any kind.

We then crossed another low rising ground, and I , who wore shoes, had the opportunity to wring out my stockings, but my companion, who used boots, had found that this was not a safe experiment for him, for he might not be able to get his wet boots on again. He went over the whole ground, or water, three times, for which reason our progress was very slow; beside that the water softened our feet, and to some extent unfitted them for walking. As I sat waiting for him, it would naturally seem an unaccountable time that he was gone. Therefore, as I could see through the woods that the sun was getting low, and it was uncertain how far the lake might be, even if we were on the right course, and in what part of the world we should find ourselves nightfall, I proposed that I should push through with what speed I could, leaving boughs to mark my path, and find the lake and Indian, if possible, before night, and send the latter back to carry my companions bag.

Having gone about a mile, and got into low ground again, I heard a noise like the note of an owl, which I soon discovered to be made by the Indian, and, answering him, we soon came together. He had reached the lake, after crossing Mud Pond, and running some rapids below it, and had come up about a mile and a half on our path. If he had not come back to meet us, we probably should not have found him that night, for the path branched once or twice before reaching this particular part of the lake. So he went back for my companion and his bag, while I kept on.

Having waded trough another steam, where the bridge of logs had been broken up and half floated away, - and this was not altogether worse than our ordinary walking, since it was less muddy, - we continued on, through alternate mud and water, to the shore of Apmoojenegamook Lake, which wee reached in season for a late supper, instead of dining there, as we expected, having gone without our dinner. It was at least five miles by the way we had come, and as my companion had gone over most of it three time, he had walked full a dozen miles, bad as it was. In the winter, when the water is frozen, and the snow I four feet deep, it is no doubt a tolerable path to a footman. As it was, I would not have missed that walk for a good deal.

If you want an exact recipe for making such a road, take one part Mud Pond, and dilute it with equal parts of Umbazookskus and Apmoojenegamook; then send to family of musquash through to locate it, look after the grades and culverts, and finish it to their minds, and let a hurricane follow to do the fencing.