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Show 68 The first week at Lake Bennett we chopped firewood and piled it outside our tent. In case of a big snow. It snowed all right, for five days and nights without stopping. And I thought I had seen snow in Rock Springs, Wyoming. But since we did not have to pack anything anywhere, we loved it. We went sledding down through the pines, and we made snow angels halfway across Lake Bennett. Just before dusk we scurried back to our tent and pushed wood into our Yukon stove. And we made sourdough pancakes. We got our sourdough starter from a stampeder named Big Red who carried it in a flask around his neck. He packed with it and slept with it. He said it had never stopped bubbling since he got it in Skagway, three and a half months ago. "Keep it warm," he said, pouring a little of the precious leaven into our cup. Treat it like a baby. Don't forget it." We chopped a woodpile for that cup of fermented dough- twenty tall quaking aspens, chopped, trimmed, and cut into twelve-inch blocks to fit into Bib Red's stove. We were not likely to be careless with it. Every night we added a little flour and water to the starter. In the morning we added a pinch of salt and a pinch of soda, taking out a cup for our next starter. Next we added as much flour as we wanted-thick for biscuits, thin for pancakes. We mostly made pancakes-burned ones, soggy ones-until we |