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North With Doc
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The plaintive call of a loon. The rhythmic drumming of a ruffed grouse. The matronly chuckling of a nesting mallard. The full bore nasal honk of a sleeping fisherman. These are but a few of the distinctive sounds during our annual stay at a Northwest Ontario fishing camp.
Well over 30 years ago, when Knobby Clark was just getting started in the fly-in fishing business out of Sioux Lookout, our group of novice fishermen arrived fit and fresh-faced from the States. We'd spend an entire week in the Bush, catch a truckload of pike and walleyes, and return to civilization revitalized.
Over the years, Knobby hasn't changed a bit. The excitement of fishing a remote lake is still there. So is the annual renewing of our friendships, and the near-gourmet meals. But now when we return from our fishing adventure, we tend to be bone weary, irritable, and looking forward to quietly sleeping in our own beds again.
I can explain the problem like this: If snoring were an Olympic event, Doc would have a rack of gold medals a forklift couldn't budge.
 It was sometime after dark and well before sunrise. We'd spent a hugely productive 10 hours in the boats, three hours on conversation and feasting, and four hours of card playing. Then we'd brushed, splashed, and crashed. The cabin had three bedrooms with two beds in each. Due to the luck of the draw, I was in the same room as my dentist. I would much rather have been undergoing a triple root canal with a brace and bit, and no anesthetic.
Repeated verbal assaults had done nothing to halt Doc's raging blats, so I unzipped my sleeping bag, rolled out, and kicked at the offending lump across the way. My aim was a tad low so I managed to jam several toes into the iron bed frame.
The resulting screams of pain not only stopped Doc from his hideous huffing and snarking, but woke up the others as well.
I stumped out to the combination kitchen and poker parlor, found the light switch, and was checking for broken bones when Doc, the policeman, banker, and attorney arrived. The plant manager headed straight for the bathroom and, fortunate for the rest of us, shut the door tightly.
I thought condolences would be in order. Instead, Doc said, "You know in the movie '10' when Bo Derek runs up the beach in slow motion?"
"Oh, yeah. One of my favorites of all time," the banker said. We were lost in thought for a moment while picturing the sensual scene.
"Well," Doc said, "she was in my dream, running toward me, and I had my arms open wide for a hot-blooded, full-body embrace, when some jerk kicked sand in my face." He looked accusingly in my direction.
"Doc, if Bo Derek had heard the noises coming from your head, she would have been running the other way," I said.
"Are you implying I was snoring?"
"Is that what you call it? Snoring?" the policeman asked. "I thought it was someone power washing graffiti off a tin shed."
"Sounded to me more like Aunt Lucy grinding up U-bolts in her margarita blender," I said.
"Doc, you have denied you snore for 25 years," the attorney said. "Don't you remember the time we recorded you and did a play-back at breakfast?"
"A hoax," Doc said. "Nobody could possibly make that much racket and sleep through it."
"So you think we are imagining what we hear?" the banker asked.
"Maybe you are hearing yourselves," Doc said. "It's a wonder I get any sleep at all, having to listen to the croaks and groans you guys crank out."
"Before I was even half asleep, someone in your room sounded like a 1957 John Deere dragging a harrow over a concrete parking lot," the policeman said.
"Well, it wasn't me," I said, "so there's only one other possibility."
"OK," Doc said. "You got me. I admit I may have been snoring just a little. I don't know why, but sometimes when I am really exhausted, it just happens."
"At home, too?" the banker asked.
"My wife has forced me to sleep in the garage a couple times."
"Is there a medical problem?" I asked.
"Not that anyone can find. I've tried those nose strips, pills, you name it."
"So we're looking at six sleepless nights in the Bush?" the attorney asked, a deadly scowl on his face.
"Not especially," Doc said, and he went rummaging around in his suitcase, returning with a six pack of ear plugs."
"Since I can't stop the source, I'll stop the reception," Doc said.
 We were all very appreciative for the gift of silence, and immediately rolled the soft rubber cylinders, and installed them in our ear canals. In a matter of seconds all the sounds in the world went away. The lapping roll and hiss of the lake against the shore, the calls of owls, even the occasional pinecone tossed on the cabin roof by squirrels. All gone. When the plant manager emerged from the bathroom we saw him pump his arms, gulp air, and unload one of his earsplitting eructations, but we heard absolutely nothing. Amazing.
It was sometime after dark and well before sunrise. I was having a dream where Bo Derek was flouncing toward me on the beach in slow motion. Oh, boy. All at once a 400 car freight train passed between us, and I was wide awake. The ear plugs worked fine for Doc's higher frequency snerts and gacks. But the low frequency rumble generated somewhere deep in his sinuses made the bedsprings buzz, my fillings rattle, and my ears itch.
I unzipped my sleeping bag, leaned out, got a good grip on a size nine insulated boot, and took careful aim at my fishing buddy in the adjacent bunk. Obviously, I had much too early uttered, "Thanks, Doc."
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