Make Yourself a Pillow

The other day I met my old friend Wallace Kirkland, famed photographer of Life Magazine. Wallace was starting off on a wilderness trip, the first one for three years, for he had spent a lot of time on assignment in the far corners of the earth and was just back from Australia or Pago Pago or some outlandish place and was going up in the canoe country for a crack at the old stuff. For Wallace was an old canoe man, one of the few real cruisers who knew the Hudson's Bay watershed and the Bay itself. Just as he was taking off he said, "Sig, you haven't got a little pillow, have you? Just something to tuck under my ear. I can't sleep like I should unless I have it."

I looked at him unbelievingly and with great affection, for here was a man after my own heart. During my guiding days I had also had a little pillow, about ten by ten, full of the down from the breasts of wild ducks. I carried that little item of equipment over thousands of miles and as long as I had that tucked under my ear the rest of my body would go to sleep no matter how rough or rocky my bed. I had been laughed at time and again by other guides and chided by my parties who thought no real woodsman should give that much of a concession to comfort. But I also noticed that before a trip was over, they would be trying to get it away from me. And here a real cruiser, a man who had seen more of the wilderness than most men, was asking me for one.

I looked at him and in his eyes I saw understaning and appeal and in mine I know he saw the same plus sympathy, but I had lost my little pillow on some jaunt the year before and had nothing to give him. And then we started to talk about the great comfort in an ear pillow, how much it meant to a man's peace of mind, how he could forget how cold and bad the weather was, or how damp his blankets were if he just had a pillow. We both agreed that all things being considered a little pillow about ten by ten inches full of the softest duck down was one of the finest bits of equipment a man could take along on any camping trip. For shirts, jumpers, sweaters don't satisfy, don't promote pleasant dreams like that handful of down. It doesn't have to be big, doesn't have to weigh more than an ounce or half an ounce, can be tucked into an out-of-the-way corner of a pack anywhere, but each night it is there waiting and that is enough to make anyone happy and contented.

Well Wallace went off without his pillow and I could almost see the tears in his eyes, and, knowing what he was going to miss, I felt for him. As he pulled out of the dock, I whispered to him, "Perhaps an owl or a merganzer -- you know a rock and a food bag might do the trick." He looked at me thankfully and I saw him scanning the horizon for wings.