SPECIALISTS IN THE WOODS.
Only people who have poked around up there more or less realize howmany persons make a living out of the Maine woods. This reference isnot to the lumbermen and the pulp stuff choppers. Their presence inthe woods is a matter of course. This is a word about the army ofspecialists. One might say that they are the gleaners who follow thered-shirted reapers whose harvest is the giants of the forests. Theside issues of the Maine woods feed many mouths; and speaking aboutmouths there are, of course, the gum pickers.
Some people have an idea that spruce gum is gathered in the forest bythe lumbermen at odd jobs. It may be remarked in passing that from 4:30a. m. until dark the Maine loggers have something else to do. Theyhaven't any hankering to climb trees.
Practically all the spruce gum of commerce is gathered by men who makeit their business and work at it as steadily as a man in a factory. Youwill find the snowshoe trail of these busy chaps zigzagging throughpathless stretches, and if you happen to be up that way you will seetheir camp-fires glowing deep in many a lonely glen.
Few people behold them at their work. The constant supply of gum instore windows shows they are kept busy.
There is more or less excitement about gum picking. The standard pricefor gum is $1 a pound, and a fancy article of clear nuggets brings$1.50. Some days when lucky strikes are frequent the gum picker canclear from $5 to $10.
The gum picker can sell even the scraps and chippings. The patentspruce gum maker boils those down. Several medicine firms also make aspruce gum cough balsam.
Maine gum pickers usually travel in pairs. Some go on their own hook,others are employed by wholesale druggists. Usually they range overwide territory, sleeping here and there in the deserted logging campsthat sprinkle northern Maine. A few fresh boughs of browse in the bunksand some strips of bark over the habitable corner of the camp make theplace a comfortable home.
If a city man happens to be ordered into the woods by his physician hewould do well to take up gum picking for his pastime, even if he doesnot care for the money. There is just enough activity about it to keepa man's mind clear and his muscles healthy. It takes him abroad throughthe crisp winter air and gives him an excuse for "hucking it."
A gum picker's equipment comprises warm clothing, snowshoes,climbers--such as telegraph linemen use--a curved chisel in the handleof which a pole may be set, a good jack-knife and a gun. These are thenecessaries.
Almost as necessary is a good supply of tobacco, for if you can imaginea gum picker sitting down of an evening by the camp fire and cleaninghis day's pick of gum without clouds of smoke about his head yourimagination pictures a very cheerless scene.
There is a special thing about gum picking--the daily expenses aresmall. The men cannot register at hotels or patronize saloons. It iseither a deserted camp or the lee side of a tree at night.
As they are obliged to tote their household supplies on a moose sled,they are frugal in their diet. With plenty of work, a few bushels ofbeans, flour, and molasses, a gum picker is fixed nicely for a long andcold winter. He figures that it costs him about 50 cents a week, and ifhe is handy with his gun he reduces expenses materially.
Of course it is rather lonely sometimes in the deep woods, but there isa pretty bright side to the picture.
The gum picker rolls off his bunk in the morning, his nostrils full ofthe good green savor of the spruce boughs beneath his head all night.He fries his bacon, warms his beans and sloofs at his steaming tin oftea.
Then he has a leisurely smoke before the sputtering embers of the fire,gets his kit on his back and his gum bag under his arm, ties a lunch ofbiscuit and gingerbread in his handkerchief, straps on his snowshoes,and trudges away into the forest, his pipe trailing blue smoke behindin the sparkling air of the winter morning.
The gum picker must have a good eye for trees. A careless and myopicman would travel over acres of territory and miss the dollars rightalong. The shrewd picker, the experienced man, runs his practiced eyealong every trunk.
Here and there he sees a tall spruce marked by a seam through which itslife-blood has oozed for years. The bubbles have crept out and havebeen clarified day by day in the sun and the rain. They have absorbedthe odoriferous breath of the forest.
There they are at last, amber and garnet nuggets, ready for thepicker's chisel and for the teeth of the gum-chewing girls far away inthe city. Sometimes the picker goes up on his climbers and taps andticks and picks like a giant woodpecker. Sometimes the tree is felled.
The gum king of the Moosehead region is a rather cranky old chap, whohas been at the business ever since he was a youth. He roams all overthat region and has reduced the thing to a science.
At regular intervals he makes a trip through some remote district andwounds the spruces with his ax and chisel. Then after a few years hetravels around that way and gathers the gum.
It is only in Maine that the great gum nuggets with centres like thered of a dying coal are obtained, and the folks that chew gum say thatfor yanking qualities this gum beats the world.
The Maine hoop pole man makes even better wages than his brother thegum picker. The hoop pole man follows along in the wake of the loggers.
He barbers the face of the hillsides of stuff that no one else wants.He is after the second growth, as the young birch and ash are called.These spring up around the rotting stumps.
The hoop pole man takes a horse with him in his tours. He cuts thepoles, and the horse hauls them to camp by daylight. Evenings the poleman fashions the hoops with a draw shave, sitting beside a roaring fireand sucking at his black pipe.
Sometimes the poles are sold round, but the harvester who trims hisown stuff and shaves the hoops receives two or three cents each forthe finished products, and that pays. The hoop pole business is prettysteady work, but the evenings are pleasant, after all, with the slishof shaves, the crackle of the fire and the rumble of story telling.Even the rabbit, up-ending outside, looks in through the windows at thelight and warmth, waggles his ears and wishes he might join the group.
As soon as the hoop poles are sold each is marked across with red chalka little way from the end. For some time in certain parts of Mainepersons did a snug business by stealing poles, but nowadays no dealerwill buy any that have been thus marked. Yet sometimes the canny thiefcuts off the ends that bear the chalk mark.
A while ago one man sold his hoop poles to a dealer, who marked themand laid them in his sled. Then the seller came around by night, stolethe poles, cut them off and sold them to another dealer as hoops forhalf barrels. It may be seen, therefore, that the city man doesn't knowall the tricks. If this enterprising hoop pole man could have got thehoops once more he could have trimmed them down and disposed of them ashoops for nail kegs.
Then there is the axe handle man. He needs ash of a larger growth thanthe hoop pole saplings. The trees are chopped in the fall, and then bymeans of a "froe" and axe each handle is roughly blocked out. Then theyare buried so that they may season without cracking.
As an additional precaution against parting of the fibres the broad endof each handle is daubed with a sort of paint the principal ingredientof which is grease. Ash goes to pieces easily if the sun gets at it andthe axe handle man must be careful of his wares. The rough handles aresent away to the factory as soon as the snow comes.
Of all tough jobs the ship knee man has the worst in the woods. Theknees bring good prices, but the man who gets them out earns every cent.
He goes prospecting with an axe, hunting for hack or back juniper ortamarack. When one is found he looks to see if it has the proper crookin its root. If the right angle is there and the root proves sound hesets to work digging it out--and it is a muscle racking job.
The man who is after hemlock bark for the tanneries is another chap whostrays far in the woods, for the bark is away back nowadays.
The Indian who hunts after basket stuff or birch bark for a canoe hullis the most patient searcher. The big birches are few and far betweenin the Maine woods, and
sometimes an Indian from the Penobscot orPassamaquoddy tribe will tramp a hundred miles before he finds a treethat will yield a piece of bark without knothole or crack and whichwill be large enough for a canoe.
A number of men are now making good money in the Maine woods bysearching the brooks for fresh water clams. They are getting somegood pearls from these bivalves. Some hunters in the Moosehead regionrecently found a pearl valued at $200.
The most unsocial folk in the Maine forests are the trappers. Theydon't want anyone within twenty miles of them. Gunners will steal fromthe traps, they believe, and lumbermen scare away game. Even bobcatsrob them, as bloody smears near a rifled trap indicate.
Some of the old trappers have a twenty-mile circuit of traps and resentit if any neighbors come that way. Some of the biggest rough andtumbles that the Maine beavers have ever witnessed have been foughtout by bow-legged old trappers who have chanced to cross trails andhave believed that they were being crowded on a hundred square miles ofterritory.