portage

  ‘‘I guess the wind must be stronger than it looks,’’ he said, gliding into the calm area at the end of the lake where the portage started. ‘‘Half a day gone. .’’
  He pulled the canoe up on the bank and considered the situation. He had to carry everything half a mile and he couldn’t do it all at once.
  He tied the tent inside the canoe near the center, and under the cross-thwarts he tied the paddles, centering their weight, and the bow and the quiver of arrows. There was a yoke for portaging built into the canoe, shaped to fit around the neck and rest on the shoulders.
  He put one backpack up in a tree on a bearproof rope, and the other one he slipped onto his back.
  Then he moved to the canoe, flipped it belly-up and moved beneath it and took the weight of the yoke on his shoulders.
  At first it felt as if his legs would sink into the ground.
  But the canoe balanced well and when he started off he gained a momentum that kept him going. It only took him twenty minutes to walk the portage. There wasn’t a trail — the grass had grown up and covered any tracks — but there was a long clearing and in the dim past somebody had taken an ax and cut marks in the trees to show the direction.
  Probably, Brian thought, Native Americans when they trapped through here. The ax marks were very old, healed over and often nearly covered with bark, so some were just a dimple.
  Still, it meant people had been here before and it made Brian wonder about them. Fifty years ago, he thought, or maybe more — seventy-five. The trees were huge pines, the marks well off the ground. Whoever had made them was probably gone now, dead, nothing left but his mark.
  He left the canoe at the next lake, tied the pack up in a tree — though he hadn’t seen any signs of bear— and, carrying the bow with an arrow ready and the quiver on his back, he went back for the other pack.
  It took him only ten minutes to get back. He let the pack down, took the quiver off his back and put the pack back on, and with the quiver in one hand and the bow with a broadhead nocked to the string in the other he started for the canoe.