Fogg’s Horn The Miscreant Meanderings Of Our Man Markus
Smoke Scenes
I am sure most of you think of me as the consummate boulevardier, the kind of guy for whom “outdoors” means a seat on the terrace. But I have my plein air credentials. I never made Eagle Scout, but my mother sewed more than a few woodsy badges on my sash. I got one for canoeing, and I still keep a sixteen-foot Old Town in the garage at Casa Fogg. Paddling in circles around a lake, though, isn’t my style. I like to go places, Point A to Point B, the farther apart the better. My most ambitious trip involved taking the canoe on VIA’s westbound Canadian from Montreal into the wilds of Ontario, there to be deposited at trackside with no way of reaching civilization but to paddle a 55-mile route through a string of lakes and portages to a flyblown outpost where I could catch an eastbound train. (I know, I could have remained in the same place and caught the return train in situ. I also could have stayed at the Ritz on rue Sherbrooke for a week.) Did I say “I”? No, it was “we.” There were two of us. For the sake of having a drinking buddy, fireside chatterbox, and bow paddle, I brought along my friend Jack.
Jack wasn’t Mr. Outdoors — at one point along the way, he commented, “Whoever said that the proper study of man is man sure had that right” — but in all the important ways he was the ideal paddling pal. He had no problem helping to heft bourbon, cognac and calvados on portages, he could catch pickerel on a spinner, and he knew how to cook them (we also packed along lemon, butter, oil, seasonings, and a plastic vial of Pinot Gris). The fact that he smoked cigarettes was no big deal, since we’d be out in the open, and I was sure he’d suck down the last of the day’s forty or fifty before getting into the tent. No, the problem wasn’t that he smoked. It was that he picked the canoe trip as the time to quit. We were out past Sudbury somewhere. The train had made a scheduled stop at a depot on the edge of the wilderness. Suddenly Jack shot up out of his seat in our compartment, clutching a carton of Merit Lights. He took off down the corridor and returned less than a minute later — good thing, since the train was about to pull out — empty-handed. “I dropped the carton on the side of the tracks,” he told me. “Some Hoser will find 5
