Muskrat Ramble - II

I took two more photographs of the muskrat as he swam upstream - just above Twin Bridges - with the second shot showing him about to go into a 'lead' under the bank.  As I was thinking about my good luck in getting these photos I remembered that this was one of the places that my father back in the late '40s had ran a trap-line for muskrats.  We would be up before day light walking in the cold morning from where ever we lived at the time to all these places I now photograph along the river while he 'looked' his traps - all set underwater and usually in the leads where the muskrats would be returning home from foraging for food.  It was a brutish way of earning a living both for the muskrats and for my dad.  He would take off his coat and any under garments save a tee-shirt, then lay on the bank on his belly and thrust his bare arm into the freezing cold water both to check his trap and to set or re-set it.  When he would stand up after, to put his heavy clothing back on, steam like vapor would be evaporating off his arm floating upward in the cold while I shivered just thinking about it.