On this Voices of Minnesota segment, Catherine Winter interviews Justine Kerfoot, an author notable for her stories about the Boundary Waters. Kerfoot speaks to her experiences of wanting to be a doctor and not being able to pursue it because of the Great Depression, and her work as a hunter, fisher, and guide at her family's lodge in Gunflint, Minnesota.
This is part 1 of 2.
This file was digitized with the help of a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).
Transcript:
(00:00:00) I told Mother I would she was helping to finance my college education. And so she wondered if I'd help her Summers and I said well sure I'd be glad to help her Summers and she wanted me to sort of have a picture of the area so she hired a guide and so the guy then I brought a girl up from college with me and he took us on a overnight canoe trip. It was up. The granite River to sagging the God and back
(00:00:32) again. I learned a lot about camping
(00:00:35) following that time. There was no moose season on the American side. The most seasoned was only open on the Canadian side mother thought
(00:00:45) that Maybe I should experience hunting for moose.
(00:00:50) And so she hired the same guide and I got another girl from town to company me and we went to his trapping Shack for a week. And in that week. I saw 36 moose. And so I shot a moose big deal and and hauled it all the way to Chicago really good Heavens the meat in the head
(00:01:15) and so forth. At that time you would have you were a young woman. That's right. You had spent all that time in and around the Chicago area, right? That's right. Have you ever done any of that? No hard physical
(00:01:25) carrying of things. It was course is the guide sort of played the situation up. We asked me if I didn't want to help clean the moose and I said, oh gee, you know, I was interested and yeah, I would and so he said, well you just lift this leg up and roll it over
(00:01:44) on its back.
(00:01:46) Geez, I got a hold of the leg and lift the be hell and I didn't I didn't even move it of course because it was real big and it was Heavy several hundred pounds and then I insisted upon taking everything out, you know, the legs and the head the whole rack the whole business and he said well wouldn't you like to pack the rack out? And I
(00:02:08) said, yeah he that would be really
(00:02:10) exciting. And so he loaded me up and when a moose goes through the woods
(00:02:18) there Iraq
(00:02:20) lies sort of at at an angle and they sort of lay their head back and it's just like a snow plow going through they can go through the woods like you wouldn't believe it. It serves part of the way and and no trouble at all, but when you put a whole head on your shoulder, And the rack and you started to carry you tangle with everything that the Lord ever produced and so by the time I got that down I was much wiser on accepting big loads then following that whole situation. The their mother wanted a real nice resort. And so she had hired Carpenters to build additions on to both ends of the so-called store and make a big dining room and make a big
(00:03:19) Lounge. Did you did you get a lot of guests at that time? How long did it take to get to the Noah didn't it as
(00:03:27) fishermen? The word spreads rapidly new area
(00:03:31) just opened up fish just biting like
(00:03:34) crazy and you had no trouble they came from as far away for this Chicago Minneapolis Duluth, and it was they came
(00:03:44) in hard. How did they get there? Did they drive?
(00:03:47) Our roads were the road came only as far as confident as our large the clientele was Fisher men. That came in and they often came in big buses like the bus that we have now and the buses had one horrible time because as they as they followed the terrain the ups and the Downs the bottom would want to scrape on the ups and so it was a it was always a big hassle getting them in and getting them
(00:04:20) out. How did you learn to do the guiding that you ended up doing? How did you learn to carry canoes and what to pack and you At that time
(00:04:31) there was nothing unclean not fitting for instance. There was nothing but canned goods. The first thing that the was developed
(00:04:41) to my knowledge was something called
(00:04:44) nor KN
(00:04:46) Orr soup. Oh sure. They still make that and then I still bring that camping. Yeah, and that was
(00:04:52) the that was the
(00:04:55) one type of dehydrated
(00:05:01) foods that we had and from
(00:05:04) that developed other dehydrated Foods
(00:05:08) it then became was then then it
(00:05:10) was kind of contention among all of the operators to see how much layer you could make your your packs and so it wasn't a case of
(00:05:24) holier-than-thou of us making a big move to keep the campsites free of cans and junk that was accumulated. It was just
(00:05:34) to have it later so that people could carry easier. How did you learn the the basics the how to paddle a canoe and how not get lost that sort of thing, but we did get lost and
(00:05:50) it's a terrible situation a terrible feeling I tell you but it was Fisher and Company from Eveleth that put out maps of that country. The only Trails between
(00:06:07) Lakes actually
(00:06:09) was made by the Indians originally then and by the the those that dealt in fur and so
(00:06:17) forth the Voyager the voyagers and and the Trappers
(00:06:23) and it was
(00:06:25) always a benefit to the Trappers or they
(00:06:31) they didn't want to let anybody know where they had gone. So they would land on bare rock and in follow that bare rock as far as they could before they ever
(00:06:42) you might say started the portage. So
(00:06:45) when you landed you didn't know where the devil a Portage was until you really
(00:06:50) hunted for it or or got to know it
(00:06:53) and and
(00:06:55) Fisher then wrote to the Sort few people that were doing outfitting at that time
(00:07:02) to upgrade their Maps constantly soon as we find a Portage we tell them and then they mark it on the map and then it became more usable.
(00:07:13) And I think 1929 it was your family ended up losing both of its houses in Illinois.
(00:07:19) Yeah, the my dad was a very heavy Bank stockholder. And at that time there was no government coverage. The the responsibility was up to
(00:07:33) the stockholders.
(00:07:36) They had to sell their land and so forth to try to Not have all of the customers at a total loss. My dad had a number of farms. And in our home we lost the whole works. The only thing that we had left was
(00:07:58) up at gunpoint. So you had to
(00:08:00) move so we had to move that was our only home so to speak it was a big adjustment for my mother because I've been looking at that background. At Barrington and what she had done we moved up to the gun foot Trail where the only neighbors we had were Indians.
(00:08:21) Your mother had been kind of a society lady. Yes, kind of and you too. I mean you went in well relatively wealthy
(00:08:28) crowd. That's right. I mean,
(00:08:30) so what was that like where you
(00:08:32) were you at meeting any snootiness or anything but I mean we had a cook we had made always at our home and it was simply a way of life at that certain people that had certain amount of money had that type of thing and that's the way I was raised to start with and and then you're thrown to your own resources and with the It was quite an adjustment also for me, but I'm sure not as much as for my mother. So I lived through one winner and and I kept thinking well, you know this this depression isn't going to last too long. And so next year I buy that time I was doing graduate work
(00:09:25) and I kept
(00:09:25) thinking I did one year of graduate work and I had this second year to
(00:09:30) go. What were you studying? I was
(00:09:33) getting a background. for hoping to get a background to go into medicine, which is was at that time was very difficult for women also to be accepted in medical school and and I specialized in did graduate work in Paris at ology which is like malaria and all that type of thing and and I graduated I graduated I
(00:10:00) graduated
(00:10:03) Major in sociology and a minor in chemistry and a minor in philosophy. They don't let your jab it up quite that bad now, but it's the way it was
(00:10:12) then so there you were on the end of the Gunflint Trail thinking someday the depression will
(00:10:17) live. I thought well, you know next year things will break and then the third year. Yeah,
(00:10:23) I can still go back. Well after 5 years, then you're so far behind science
(00:10:30) doesn't wait for you, too. Catch up on something like that. You got to be right in with it and Advance as your as the technological changes are made and finally I realized that I was way behind I'd have to go and make it all up and I thought well,
(00:10:50) I'll give this a whack and see how far it goes. And so I
(00:10:54) learned then to paddle a canoe very fairly well with all over the And and I learned I
(00:11:06) know I didn't learn Thai toughened
(00:11:08) into being able to carry a canoe and and I learned from the Indians the easiest way to do it the easiest right way the paddle so that
(00:11:22) after a while
(00:11:23) you get strong enough so you can do
(00:11:24) it and you don't have much option.
(00:11:28) I mean it was a case of survival. So I guided canoe parties and I made a lot of portage's and the kind of student seems to Heavy
(00:11:39) after. Well, I know at that time. It must have been very unusual for people to have a female guide and I really thought it was funny when I read in the introduction to your first book Les Blacklock tells a story of you taking a party out fishing and you came back late you ran into some weather and came back late and your mother scold have been scolded the men you'd been with because you were pregnant and she
(00:12:01) And
(00:12:01) what do you mean keeping up pregnant pregnant women out in this and the men were so shocked not because they didn't know you were pregnant. But because they didn't know you were a woman I ran into that. Did you mind that being mistaken for well, you see the whole picture changes when you get up in a place like that
(00:12:21) when you operate a resort like that. there isn't such a thing as women do this and men do this the men that
(00:12:30) were in that era because they Trapped and so forth
(00:12:38) they could bake and
(00:12:38) cook not fancy,
(00:12:40) but good plain food just as well as a woman could
(00:12:44) and the woman could paddle and carry just as well as a man could and so there wasn't that differentiation.
(00:12:52) It was simply a good guide a bad guide
(00:12:57) a good responsible person or
(00:13:00) somebody that's too lazy. I mean it was that would that was the kind of division that was made not man
(00:13:08) woman kind of a thing. So you didn't run into people who know who didn't want a female guide or know how interest it was it
(00:13:16) was she a good guy? Yes. She's a good guy. She knows the
(00:13:20) lake so you didn't run into you. I mean you talk to men now who want to have a man a male fishing trip. They just want to go out and be just guys for a week. Well, it wasn't they don't. Yeah, and there aren't as many now there are very few women guides. So there were more and more years ago than there are no yes. Oh really? It didn't make any difference. What the It was the whole thing wasn't a very equal thing. I mean like came time to for instance. We had to saw wood
(00:13:51) and the women were out sighing would ride along with the men. They went into the woods and side by hand for wood for the
(00:13:59) camp. They produced meals and kids to in between times but nobody paid any attention to it because that was just that was kind of the way the Indians did things too.