When I conceived of the idea of paddling the perimeter of Shingle Shanty Pond, my purpose was to search for and hopefully find Paullina Brandreth’s lean-tos. Brandreth used these lean-tos for many hunting trips in the early twentieth century on her family’s 24,000 acre property in the Adirondack mountains of New York.   They were constructed of logs felled on the spot and erected facing each other about ten feet apart. That way a fireplace could be erected between them, heating both lean-tos. She writes, “Over the fire a high roof of poles covered with heavy tar paper keeps out the rain, and makes cooking agreeable in all kinds of weather. On very sharp nights we stretched a sheet of canvas across the opening…and with this arrangement we were well protected from wind and cold.” The Brandreths used pack horses and camp employees including a manager and guide to get their equipment to camp.

I was camping on the Brandreth property in hopes of exploring, absorbing, and writing. I wanted to live (if only for a few days) in the same environment that had so influenced a woman hunter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I wanted to find an intersection of our experiences in the same place, and I wanted to write about them. A woman hunter of her era was a rarity, yet by writing under a pseudonym she was able to publish 31 articles in Field and Stream and Forest and Stream magazines, as well as three books on hunting, fishing, conservation, and camping in the wild. She was an anomaly because as Rob Wegner, the author of the new foreword to Brandreth’s book, Trails of Enchantment, writes, “Of the more than 2000 books written on the subject of deer and deer hunting…, only five are written by women.   It is one of the best books ever written on the subject…”

Many women camped and even hunted in Brandreth’s time, but none lived in camp as one of the men; most tried to maintain their ladylike manners and behaviors even in the middle of the wilderness. Brandreth was not pressured by these social mores’ because she kept her public identity a secret thereby preserving her anonymity to all but family, close friends, and acquaintances with whom she hunted.

Paullina Brandreth’s book, Trails of Enchantment, introduced me to a female writer writing about hunting. She got me excited about visiting Shingle Shanty Pond. I could retrace her steps, stand on the same ground, paddle the same water, and perhaps even sit inside the same lean-tos she and her friends and family had used. Our Nature Conservancy representative, Todd, who had brought us into the Brandreth’s, had stopped here on the way into our cabin. He had pointed down the length of the pond to a point and had said he thought a lean-to was there. He’d never seen it himself, but one of the Brandreth’s had indicated that it was down there tucked up back in the woods high above the water. I couldn’t wait to find it.

The day was sunny, a few tiny widely scattered clouds and about 72 degrees. I had a sandwich, an apple, and water. I was dressed to get wet since one usually does in a kayak. The wind barely whispered across the water, and so I paddled straight out into the middle of the pond. When you are paddling across a flat body of water, it’s hard to judge distance, and as I paddled I kept looking back to see how far I’d come from shore. The light wind was at my back, and I made good progress, paddling to the middle in about 20 minutes. Out in the middle of a lake or a pond, it’s a good idea not to think too much about exactly where you are – sitting level with deep water in a six foot plastic cigar shaped boat many pool lengths from land. The water is tannin black from the pines and spruces lining the banks. You can’t see the bottom. The bottom that is thick sucking mud. The bottom that swallows your foot and half of your calf when you stand on it. The bottom out in the middle of Shingle Shanty Pond that might be twenty, thirty, forty feet deep and is hundreds of yards from the shore. I was anxious.

I had a life vest in the boat, but I wasn’t wearing it. On shore the idea of stowing the hot cumbersome thing in the bow seemed a reasonable decision. Out in the middle of the pond, it seemed insane. What had I been thinking? Was I completely crazy? I could drown if the boat tipped. I breathed in then out. I looked around. I was sitting in perfectly calm water, the tiniest of wavelets lapping against the side of my boat. The boat couldn’t possibly tip unless I leaned way out and tipped the boat myself. The wind hadn’t changed its velocity. What was I worried about? I kept paddling and focused on my destination, the point about fifteen to twenty minutes away.

I turned around again to check on my progress and to see what my friend, Kevin was up to. I could see him getting into his kayak. I hoped he would head out towards me.   I paddled a few more strokes, then turned to see if Kevin was following me. He wasn’t. He was headed towards the opposite shore line. I yelled. He didn’t hear me. I waved. He didn’t see me. Now he was poking around the irregular shoreline looking, I supposed, for the lean-to. I thought, “Why is he over there? The lean-to is over here.” But then maybe he wasn’t looking for the lean-to. I was doing that. Maybe he was looking for something else, a different discovery.

I gave up trying to make contact and concentrated on my own adventure. As I neared the point, I found an opening between a hemlock and a large fallen tree trunk sticking out perpendicular to the bank. A dock. Now I would have something to hold onto and possibly climb onto. I tentatively put my leg over the side of the boat and on to the bottom. I sank but only to my ankle. Good. After hauling the boat up onto the steep bank, I looked for an opening or a trail that might lead to where a camp might be. I found a sort of trail up to where the ground leveled off onto a rolling rather open (by Adirondack standards) plateau. I could walk without climbing over or around lots of deadfall. The sun shone through the leaves and needles, dancing shadows on boulders, moss, and logs.

I listened. Was that rustling to my right the wind through the white pines or was it an animal? A squirrel, a chipmunk? Small animals sound very big when you’re alone in the woods on the other side of the pond from your friend. It was a chipmunk, thank goodness. The only thing I really didn’t want to see was a bear. Even a timid, scared bear would scare me. A fox, a lynx, a weasel, a marten, even a coyote would thrill me, but not a bear. I’d read and heard too many stories about bears and bear attacks.

Bears normally avoid people and run before you see them. But if you surprise a female with cubs or worse come between a female with cubs, she may attack or at least charge. Bears that are old, sick or starving may also view you as prey, especially if they have become familiar with humans. When bears attack they threaten first by standing on their hind legs and sniffing to see what you are. Then they may stomp one foot, growl, hiss, pant, make jaw-popping noises or charge within a few meters and stop. According to the Northwest Territories Wildlife and Fisheries web site, you should never run from a bear. If threatened you have three options: shoot to kill if you have a firearm, play dead only if it is a grizzly bear, or fight back if attacked by a black bear.

About 4600 black bears live in New York. If one is threatened according to the Northwest Territories web site you should “act aggressively. Defend yourself with whatever means are available. You want to appear dominant and frighten the bear. Jump up and down and shout. Wave your arms. It may help to raise your jacket or pack to make you look bigger.” I didn’t have a jacket or a pack.

According to Lynn L. Rogers, PhD of the Wildlife Research Institute, my chances of being attacked by a black bear were slim. She says that the biggest misconception about black bears is “that they are likely to attack people in defense of cubs”, which I had just read was true on three other web sites.  According to her, “they are highly unlikely to do this.” She goes on to say that she and other black bear researchers often capture screaming cubs in the presence of bluff-charging mothers with no attacks and that black bear mothers have not been known to kill anyone in defense of cubs. I find that hard to believe since she also states that almost three dozen people in North America have been killed by black bears in the past one hundred years. Rogers says that my chances of being killed by a domestic dog, bees, or lightning are vastly greater. Being murdered is 90,000 times more likely. I still don’t feel safe: a bluffing, charging bear is just as scary as a serious, attacking bear.

After searching around the area and trying to get up my courage to go more than one hundred yards into the tangle of brush and deadfall, I gave up. My bare legs were scratched and bruised. My adventurous spirit was lagging. I walked back to my boat, climbed in, and paddled out into bright sunshine. Kevin was waving to me from the opposite shore. Perhaps he had found something. Perhaps I had been looking in the wrong place.

I paddled across to Kevin and relayed my mini adventure without either a lean-to discovery or a bear sighting. We paddled side by side around the corner of a cove and decided to pull ashore and take a look. The bank was steep here too but then the forest opened up for a good acre and we could see that this peninsula would be an ideal spot for a hunting camp.   We walked up to the top where the ground leveled out all around us. We looked to the left and right and decided first to check out the left side nearest the point. It seemed the most likely. Deep lime green moss covered everything and was a carpet for every imaginable size of stick, stone, log, and boulder. The widely scattered pines cast a shadowy, dusky light. The moss sponged underfoot, as we walked over and around.

You can’t walk in any sort of straight line in the Adirondack woods because most of the Adirondacks has been lumbered at least a few times and this woods was no exception. The lumberjacks leave behind branches and parts of tree that aren’t worth hauling out. As the woods grows back, brush and saplings grow in between all of the lumberjack’s litter. Walking through this landscape is a lot like walking through a huge game of pick up sticks, climbing over, under, and around all of the overlapping tangle of downed trees and branches, brush and new growth.

By contrast, a virgin forest is wide open and its floor is free of debris. It’s easy to walk through, but you’re bound to slow down and look up. And when you do, you’ll feel as if you’re in holy place, a gothic cathedral, quiet and reverent. Old woods have a spirit new ones don’t have for ancient woods have been around for several hundred years. They’ve seen a lot. As you walk around their five foot diameter trunks, you notice these woods smell different than younger woods. Old pine needles and mossy dampness. You breathe in their serenity and immortality and feel you’re on hallowed ground.

Since we arrived here a few hundred years ago, we’ve cut down almost every tree from the Atlantic Ocean to the plains in the Midwest. Still virgin forests do exist, and they are mightily protected in all the states that possess them. They are what this land used to look like everywhere. It must have been quite a sight for those early settlers, awe inspiring and frightening at the same time. What an undertaking to cut those giants down to make way for houses and hayfields.

This young forest at Shingle Shanty Pond is like most of America’s woods, young and messy. When we reached the peninsula point, we didn’t find any sign of a manmade structure so we backtracked looking on the east and then the west shores . Each time we thought we saw a dark lean-to-like hump in the distance and climbed over, under and around to get to it, we were wrong. Only a lump of dead fall. There had to be something of the Brandreth’s here. Something left behind. We knew they had used this pond as a primary hunting and fishing camp. Where was it? Nothing to the east, west, north or south.

Maybe we could come back another time and search some other likely places along the shore. As we paddled back side by side, we breathed and smiled and looked up at the breezy puffs of cloud and saw a raven fly overhead. He cawed once and then disappeared over the ridge. Back at the picnic table, we took out towels and biodegradable soap and went for a bath, scrubbing and rinsing away the dirt and disappointment in the tea colored water. As we stood on the sandy bottom, we laughed about our overconfidence at finding the place on our first try. Setting out with one goal and finding something else is usually the way of it.

I wonder why we human beings cling to our heart’s and mind’s desire with such tenacity and then when it isn’t fulfilled, we’re so disappointed and dissatisfied with what we receive or experience instead? It’s a mystery because what we usually get instead is better than what we had imagined we wanted. Yes, it is different, perhaps not as exciting, but it’s good just the same. We didn’t discover Paulina Brandreth’s lean-to, but we could look again tomorrow or another year. Instead, we discovered the giddy excitement and anticipation of discovery, the adrenalin rush of a possible bear sighting, the echo of a single raven’s caw as he flew overhead, mossy, dark, sometimes scary forests, and sunshine sparkling off of tea colored wavelets.

 

 

 

 

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