Rose Nectar
July 18th, 9:00 A.M. — I give the mosquitoes inside the tent a furious battle before giving it up and settling down to attempt to locate Camp IX on the map, but I see nothing in this country I can absolutely point to and say that this place corresponds to a definite point on the map. In the foreground, I have the unbroken boreal forest closing in on me. Low featureless hills form the horizon in every direction. No knobs or high points invite the eye as points for shooting compass readings, even when I can find a hole through the close forest cover to look out through. One rounded bend of this Little Sand River has to look very much like the next. This is oxbow country. In this soft ground the bed of the river will constantly shift. The river I follow now does not run the exact course it used when my out-of-date map was made.
Last night about six o’clock, I came to a logjam impossible to get over or under without a portage. When I stepped up on the high bank to scout the portage, I saw another equally bad logjam around the next bend. Worn-down as much by the sight of the work ahead as the work I had done, I quit for the day.
I made camp just downstream of the second logjam. Bringing the gear up the mud bank and through the brush cost me. I worked to exhaustion and beyond before I had the tent pitched and the camp set under big spruces in a grassy meadow full of wild roses. I cut away slender…
