“He was dead all right. True fact. Toes up and eyes wide. A blue bullet hole smack dab in the middle of his forehead.”
This is what I remember from the first story I ever heard about cabin fever, though it didn’t have such a handy moniker at the time. Having grown up in the cattle country of southern Alberta, it’s not surprising the tale was about a couple of guys who holed up for the winter in a small log shack on the eastern slope of the Rockies. When spring finally arrived, the first visitor to happen by found the dead one stiff in his bunk. The other dude had high-tailed it across the border to the States but he left behind a pencil scrawled note:
“Brodie took to putting on airs,” he wrote, “so I fixed his wagon.”
A bit extreme perhaps but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. The final act of pulling the trigger had undoubtedly built up one transgression on top another. Peeing too close to the cabin door in the morning, spitting in the woodbox, never washing his socks, reading the dictionary every night and like that until the shooter had it up to there, couldn’t take it no more, not one more minute; pulled his hogleg and let fly. BLAM!!
Upon moving North in 1969, I soon began picking up on weird stories of bizarre behavior attributed, so it was said, to a strange malady called fièvre de cabine, cabin fever. It generally strikes a person during the long, cold and interminably dark severity of winter. You get bored, edgy and irritable. You find it difficult to relax and hard to concentrate. You’re restless and frustrated with doggone near everything. Or, maybe you seem to be immobilized by an all-encompassing feeling of lethargy. And you can’t get it together to do anything about your dilemma.
Folks react to cabin fever in a variety of ways. For some, there’s a real craving for carbohydrates and sweets. They overeat and may gain weight. Some get drunk. Feel better, then worse. Some take to rather peculiar acts to try to shake it off. Take Chuck McGillvery, for instance. Four months in the cabin in the dark most of the time was beginning to get tedious. He figured he needed some action, yeah, that would be just the ticket. He poked a couple more chunks in the stove, pulled on his boots, yanked his parka around his shoulders and slammed out the door. Outside, he grabbed the ice chisel and shoved off the porch, stomped on down the lake trail and out onto the ice.
Chuck worked up a wholesome sweat smashing a hole – nonstop – three feet wide down through four feet of ice. When he had her done, McGillvery stripped off all his clothes and jumped bare ass in the black water. WHOOOOSH!
Chuck’s closest neighbors, Don and Nan Taylor, had been watching this whole drama unfold from start to finish with no little interest, both of them with their elbow plunked on the table, binoculars snugged to their eyeballs.
“Looks like Chuck fell off the shelf.” Don murmured. “I told him he should find himself a woman.”
“Oh shush,” Nan countered, “just a touch of cabin fever is all, he’ll be okay now.”
By this time, Chuck was hauling his freight just as fast as his bare feet could fly over the hard packed snow back towards the warm cabin. He was pounding up the trail, breath rasping through his throat, freezing parts flapping in the breeze, and laughing like a maniac. But by the Lord Harry, he felt some better.
That was a story from the Gold Range, Yellowknife’s notorious bar, about 30 years ago. McGillvery isn’t his real name but some folks will recognize the guy. He’s still around; a lot calmer these days.
Introductory excerpt from UpHere magazine article.
