From Voyageurs National Park on FB: Called “Catamaran” by locals, Bert Upton is among the strangest of historical characters on area waters. He lived in a hut built over a dug-out at Squirrel Narrows. Found frozen to death in the 1930s by Kettle Falls pioneer Oliver Knox; Upton was perched lifeless in the snow just a half-mile from his home. Shunning civilization, Upton defined the word hermit. First spotted rowing his crude log raft on Namakan, no one knows how he got there. Upton’s accent implied an English heritage but any personal inquiries brought a stony silence. Some suspected him a man fleeing the law; others saw a bizarre outcast; everyone knew he was peculiar. Just five feet tall and wildly unkempt, Catamaran wore hacked-off pants and walked barefoot with a stick. Winter demanded shoes but no socks, a cast-off Mackinaw, and a trailing cap made from the leg of old underwear. He was oddly religious, and suspicious of being poisoned. Surviving on snared rabbits and fish, he ofte...
This is really good.
ReplyDeleteI could repost every Clickhole article.
ReplyDeleteI love it.
ReplyDeleteLet us run cackling to our dooms! I see your sun-bleached bones littering these craggy steppes. ...let us, in one last, lunatic gasp, strike fear into the hearts of the Byzantines not with the tenacity with which we fight for our lives, but with the maniacal joy with which we embrace our deaths!
mmmmminspiring words. I think I hear my mum calling.
"Let our howls of delight as we hold our own viscera aloft warp their dreams for all of their days!" Needless to say, my army didn't do so well.
ReplyDelete