Half-decayed wood is good; spongy, moist, unpleasant stuff, a
vegetable wet blanket. The bark of dead evergreen trees, hemlock,
spruce, or balsam, is better still. Gather a plentiful store of it.
But don't try to make a smoke yet.
Let your fire burn a while longer; cheer it up a little. Get some
clear, resolute, unquenchable coals aglow in the heart of it. Don't
try to make a smoke yet.
Now pile on your smouldering fuel. Fan it with your hat. Kneel
down and blow it, and in ten minutes you will have a smoke that will
make you wish you had never been born.
That is the proper way to make a smudge. But the easiest way is to
ask your guide to make it for you.
If he makes it in an old iron pot, so much the better, for then you
can move it around to the windward when the breeze veers, and carry
it into your tent without risk of setting everything on fire, and
even take it with you in the canoe while you are fishing.
Some of the pleasantest pictures in the angler's gallery of
remembrance are framed in the smoke that rises from a smudge.
With my eyes shut, I can call up a vision of eight birch-bark canoes
floating side by side on Moosehead Lake, on a fair June morning,
fifteen years ago. They are anchored off Green Island, riding
easily on the long, gentle waves.
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