‘Cache Lake’ nifty> Tale reflects on life in the wilderness

CACHE LAKE COUNTRY: LIFE IN THE NORTH WOODS, by John J. Rowlands, The Countryman Press, 1998 (reissue of 1947 edition), 272 pages, paperback, $14.

For those jittery about the impending Y2K disaster, the reissue of John Rowlands’ “Cache Lake Country” has happened in the nick of time. Part Thoreauvian appreciation and part Edisonian compendium, this nifty little book provides a way to obtain seemingly every down-to-earth human necessity.

First published in 1947, years after Rowlands discovered during a canoe trip “the lake of [his] boyhood dreams,” “Cache Lake Country” is a meandering, pleasant reflection on life in the wilderness. Rowlands somehow got appointed by a lumber company to monitor their trees and spent several years in a cabin located on Cache Lake — his wry name for the place “you will never find” on a map.

In fact, the one explicit mystery of the book is Cache Lake’s geographical location. The publisher claims Rowlands’ initial expedition was in “the wilds of Maine,” but most of the author’s clues as to his whereabouts are deliberately veiled.

His companions in the woods are a camping buddy called Hank and a Cree Indian named Chief Tibeash. As the book’s descriptive wanderings unfold through the seasons, a convention of much nature writing, Rowlands makes hundreds of interesting observations to which Thoreau himself would have warmed. Among the details are occasional stories of encounters with Cree Indians, suggesting Cache Lake must be nearer the western than the eastern border of Maine — if it’s in Maine at all: The Cree traditionally occupy more northerly parts of Quebec and Ontario.

Wherever it is, it’s gorgeous north country, and Rowlands’ depictions of the dead cold of February, the ice-out time in spring, the fragrant heat of summer and the sharp autumn air are simple and direct, but refreshing and articulate. The realms of Thoreau’s transcendental philosophy are not explored after the first page, but Rowlands’ easygoing manner discloses intelligence and true feeling.

It is an innocent, awestruck 1940s feeling, accompanied by pragmatic inventiveness. When Rowlands is not depicting the rugged pleasures of life hundreds of miles from civilization, he is describing in playful but concise language how to build something you’re apt to need there. And if Rowlands’ prose is not clear enough for you, Hank’s down-home drawings illuminate virtually every page.

From this book you can learn to make snowshoes, compasses, a radio and a sundial, all from items you might have lying around the shed. He gives instructions for preserving fish, gathering wild rice, making buckskin, digging an underground refrigerator and driving away black flies. Hank gets it in his head one day to make an iceboat, and Chief Tibeash is of course full of ancient woods knowledge, which Rowlands generously shares.

The directions for constructing contraptions are woven deftly into the general narrative; Rowlands, who died in 1976, was a skillful writer. In addition to being a woodsman, he was a public relations officer at MIT, a miner and a respected journalist with connections at top levels of the federal government.

The prose and sensibility of “Cache Lake Country” date clearly to the time of the book’s original publication, and this turns out to be one of its strengths. Its style and atmosphere provide a crystal-clear feel for a moment in America’s recent past, when the wilderness was still pristine, civilization still might hold more hope than cynicism, and an intelligent person could still regard the world with boyish enthusiasm without forgetting that, well, bad things do happen — you just have to be ready for them.

So on Jan. 1, 2000, if your electricity has winked out and the banks have misplaced your cash and the gas station attendants are shrugging and saying, “There’s nothing we can do,” “Cache Lake Country” will be the ideal book to have. It contains a palatable appreciation of vast nature and a collection of instructions for building the practical gadgets you’ll need to survive comfortably.

As Rowlands intended, you will immediately want to live on Cache Lake. And if his subtle clue midway through the book is correct, it’s somewhere along the 47th parallel — either in Quebec, or maybe near Allagash; I can’t find it on my maps.