FIFE LAKE -- When Jerry Gauld left St. Ignace in September, starting a 517-mile backpack trip across Michigan's Upper Peninsula with his Chesapeake Bay retriever, Molly, he knew a big challenge lay ahead. He had snowshoed the route four years earlier on a solo, winter pilgrimage.
But this was different. Gauld carried little food this time, just a handful of granola bars and a bit of jerky, just in case.
The 60-year-old retired heavy equipment operator planned to live off the land, much as the early hunter-gatherers had, tapping Mother Nature's garden and his own woods sense developed from a lifetime of living close to the land.
"I'm no Euell Gibbons, but I know a lot about berries and stuff," said Gauld, a father of two who lives in Fife Lake with his wife, Kim. "I was curious to see if I could do the whole trip foraging like the hunter-gatherers.
"One thing I did learn is they worked a lot."
For 36 days, Gauld worked at feeding himself and his dog, stopping along the trail to forage, sometimes wading into a cattail swamp and getting wet.
Some were good days. Some days were not.
"It's quite a challenge," Gauld said in a cell phone interview three days north of St. Ignace. "I'm getting worried. I'm not seeing any birds."
That would change shortly after the call. Gauld carried a small .410 shotgun and a short fishing rod. He relied on Molly to flush grouse along the trail and stopped to fish good streams along the route. He shot seven grouse and woodcock the first 150 miles into the hike.
When neither fish nor fowl were found, he and Molly foraged on cranberries, raisins, apples, watercress and chantrelle and shaggy mane mushrooms. The pair ate cattail tubers and burdock and silverweed roots. Sometimes, supper was a chipmunk or red squirrel.
"I don't like to eat a lot of watercress; it gives me heartburn" Gauld said. "Most of the water-oriented stuff tastes like corn. Cattails are edible all year long. Molly really likes it."
Gauld would strike it rich occasionally. He would shoot a grouse and stuff it with wild raisins and high-bush cranberries, cook it over an open fire and enjoy the feast. An angler along the Big Two-Hearted River offered to give him a salmon for dinner. Gauld accepted the fish gladly.
"He's camped and been in the woods all his life," said Jerry's older brother, Gale Gauld. "We were all raised in the country and he's pretty self-reliant."
Jerry Gauld points to his parents as an early influence. The Gauld family lived a near subsistence lifestyle at times, foraging for food in the wild and growing their own in a family garden.
"We lived off the land," Jerry Gauld said. "My dad wasn't a farmer, but he made his living in the woods. He was a logger. My mom and dad were real pioneers to me. Our life was whatever the woods provided. It was a really great life and I have never given it up."
Gauld readily credits Molly for providing four to five meals along the trail. One of the best took place near the banks of the Baltimore River in Ontonagon County.
Gauld was hiking the trail, carrying his pack with his shotgun in the ready position, hoping a grouse would flush, but the hunting had been poor. He and Molly nibbled on fresh rose hips all day. It also had been raining.
Molly charged up a hill after what Gauld suspected was a bird. When he got to the top, he found her in the woods eating the head of a fresh northern pike that had been discarded by an angler.
"It was almost a miracle," Gauld said. "That night I built a big fire, got a bunch of cranberries by the river and found some staghorn sumac for lemonade. I baked the whole fish and ate until I was stuffed."
Gauld's route took him through some of the most remote and beautiful country in the Upper Peninsula along the North Country Trail, a National Scenic Trail that cuts through Michigan. It runs from New York to North Dakota.
There are 388 marked miles on the ground in the U.P., and another 128 miles of temporary connectors, according to Matthew Rowbotham, the mapping coordinator for the North Country Trail Association in Lowell.
Where the blue NCT trail markers disappeared, Gauld would shift to two-tracks, country roads, highways or even a locally known cross-country ski trails. The trail vanished in the middle of 17,000 acre McCormick Tract Wilderness in Baraga County. The tract is part of the Ottawa National Forest. Federal rules for wilderness prohibit marking routes and trails.
"It is a fairly well beaten path until you get into the middle of the wilderness," Gauld said. "That's where people chicken out. It's the same on the other end.
"We lost the trail twice and came out of the wilderness on an old logging road, took a compass bearing and stumbled back onto the trail and had no trouble following it from there."
It went that way for 36 days, camping in the woods, in the rain and snow, adding Iodine tablets to water to make it drinkable. There were long stretches with little food and Gauld decided to stop overnight in Grand Marais and Marquette.
He and Molly got a motel room and a burger each, and fries. Gauld replenished his meager supplies as well, buying batteries to recharge his cell phone, a tube of stuff to seal a leaky tent and a half dozen granola bars and jerky, just in case.
"To a certain extent I can say that I succeeded," said Gauld, who crossed into Wisconsin on foot at 11 a.m. Oct. 21st, weighing 20 pounds less than when he started.
"I was hoping for more fish and meat on the trip and a lot of the wild edibles start perishing at this time of year. Hunter/gatherers of the past might have been more willing to eat a worm. I wanted to know if I had their ability. I don't think I do."
http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2009/11/second_time_on_517-mile_backpa.html
