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    The Trap
    The Trap
    The Trap
    Ebook122 pages2 hours

    The Trap

    By John Smelcer

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A gripping wilderness adventure and survival story

    It was getting colder. Johnny pulled the fur-lined hood of his parka over his head and walked towards his own cabin with the sound of snow crunching beneath his boots.

    "He should be back tomorrow," he thought, as a star raced across the sky just below the North Star.

    "He should be back tomorrow for sure."


    Seventeen-year-old Johnny Least-Weasel knows that his grandfather Albert is a stubborn old man and won't stop checking his own traplines even though other men his age stopped doing so years ago. But Albert Least-Weasel has been running traplines in the Alaskan wilderness alone for the past sixty years. Nothing has ever gone wrong on the trail he knows so well.

    When Albert doesn't come back from checking his traps, with the temperature steadily plummeting, Johnny must decide quickly whether to trust his grandfather or his own instincts.

    Written in alternating chapters that relate the parallel stories of Johnny and his grandfather, John Smelcer's The Trap poignantly addresses the hardships of life in the far north, suggesting that the most dangerous traps need not be made of steel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateMay 27, 2014
    ISBN9781466872165
    The Trap
    Author

    John Smelcer

    JOHN SMELCER is the author of many nonfiction and poetry books for adults, as well as a young adult novel, The Trap. Mr. Smelcer has been a visiting professor at various universities around the world and is the associate publisher and poetry editor of the literary magazine Rosebud.

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    Reviews for The Trap

    3.5/5

    50 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Reading this immediately put me in mind of the Jack London story "To Build a Fire." In this though, the Alaska Native characters understand and respect the snow and cold, and that added an extra dimension. The writing is descriptive and plain-spoken but at times poetic. How can one not appreciate lines like "The years had been catching up with him, not slowly like the ticking second hands of his old wind-up wristwatch, but in great leaps like spawning salmon jumping waterfalls." Quietly terrific and literary.
    • 3/5
      This novel is about an old man who is on his way home from a hunting trip and accidentally gets his leg caught in one of this own traps. It accounts his struggle to survive and his grandson's journey to rescue his grandfather. This story is set in an Alaskan winter, adding to the threat of the grandfather's life and also the worry of Johnny back at the village.

      As far as a survival story goes, this novel wasn't very captivating. Although the level of danger to the grandfather, Arthur, was quite high, I wasn't able to empathise with the character because I think that the style of writing, and some of the things that were mentioned distracted from the main plot.

      Overall, in my opinion, the premise of the plot initially seemed very interesting, and reading the synopsis on the back of the book, I was intrigued. However, reading this book all the way through was difficult for me despite how short it is due to the plot going on a lot of tangents, telling the readers stories of the Indians surviving cold winters and older traditional tales that the author put in the narration in very unusual places, breaking up the flow of the main plot.

      We, as readers, didn't really get to know any of the characters very well and I feel that they could have been developed a lot more. Johnny is a 17 year old boy and apart from his love of reading and school, you don't really get to know a lot about him as a person. Likewise, the grandparents were not described very much either, although the grandfather, Arthur, was shown the most through his struggle and his attitude, which made him, overall, a strong character.

      The writing was something that I absolutely loved in this novel, and was the main reason I kept on reading. Smelcer's beautiful fluid descriptions of the Alaskan landscape and the pain that Arthur is going through adds to the cold atmosphere of the novel and really helps you visualise the environment in which these characters live.

      Overall, I would give this book a 3 out of 5 stars because the wonderful writing made up for a lot of the negative opinions I have towards the plot and underdeveloped characters.
    • 1/5
      I don't like it because its boring and its very draged out.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of Johnny Least-Weasel and his grandfather Albert who are Native Americans living in Alaska. When Albert doesn't come home from checking his traplines, the responsibility of finding him falls on Johnny. The characters in this book are multifaceted and the situations are very dramatic. This book is the perfect subject for a book discussion on themes such as survival in the wild, family relationships and responsibilities, Native American culture, and tradition versus change.
    • 2/5
      I am fine with depressing books, but this book is not only depressing but tedious and boring. The characters were dull and uninteresting and the constantly falling temperatures just wasn't enough to make this book suspenseful and gripping.
    • 5/5
      This riveting story of man against the elements, set in the Alaskan wilderness, is written in chapters that alternate between the voice of an aging trapper and his teenage grandson. Caught in one of his own traps as the weather begins to drop further and further below freezing, the grandfather struggles to survive, while his wife and grandson worry as the days pass and he does not return home. This is a short book, but very well done. A great one to read when your book report is due tomorrow!
    • 5/5
      A very well-written taut suspense/adventure story about a trapper in the frozen north, caught in his own trap, trying to survive until he is rescued.
    • 4/5
      Albert Least-Weasel has been a trapper for most of his eighty years, but today is the first time he has ever experienced the terrible grip of one of his traps on his own leg. Now he is a prisoner of those cold steel jaws and the temperature in the Alaskan wilderness is beginning to plummet. Meanwhile, Albert’s grandson Johnny is at home in the village, nagged by a suspicion that something is wrong. Shouldn’t his grandfather have been back by now? And would going out to look for him be the brave or foolish thing to do? Told in alternating chapters between grandfather and grandson, this suspenseful tale of survival and bravery will be the perfect match for fans of Gary Paulsen and Jack London.
    • 3/5
      BRRR! The descriptions of being trapped in the Alaskan winter are bone chilling. Johnny Least-Weasel is a teenager. His grandfather, Albert, has gotten stuck in one of his own hunting traps. There is a lot about the culture. I was impatient with Johnny when it took him SO long to take action. Smelcer has included some vivid descriptions about Indian life in rural Alaska.

    Book preview

    The Trap - John Smelcer

    THE FIRST DAY

    Back before white men were searching for gold in the hills and streams of this North Country, there was a village much like any other small village nestled along the great river. One fall, several young men went moose hunting. A man asked if he could join them, even though he was very old and slow. Reluctantly, the young men let him come along.

    OFF IN THE DISTANCE, in a place far away from anyplace else, a yellow snowmobile pulling a long sled was slowly coming down toward the wide river through a valley of white hills, winding around trees, traversing over knolls and rises, sometimes becoming visible, sometimes moving unseen. The sun was already at its highest point, which was barely above the rim of the blue-edged horizon. That’s the way it had been for the past month and the way it would be for at least another month to come. Winter this far north was a series of short days and long nights, with mostly cold and silence in between—a time when most living things huddled or slept through the intolerable cold and dark.

    It had snowed during the night, which, like the prolonged darkness, was nothing new. It always snowed here, more so in the mountains, and the wind swept the whiteness against trees and deadfalls and the steep banks of streams or lakes. To escape the pitiless wind, sled dogs learned to dig down into the snow and to curl up into tight balls with their long, bushy tails covering their noses and eyes like fur quilts. They’d sleep that way all night, cold and dreaming of summer and sunlight warm upon them.

    Sometimes the snow buried sleeping moose or cabins, drifted over backcountry trails, and concealed treacherous openings in the great river far below, the river that wound itself through the floodplain to the sea.

    They say the People of the North have a hundred names for snow. This may not be completely true, but anyone who has lived any time on a frozen land knows that snow has more than one name.

    There is sleet, and hail so big around that the sound of it falling on a tin roof is deafening. There are dry, soft flakes that fall gently without hurry or anger, like the lazy flakes in a Christmas-card scene. There is wet snow that sticks to the branches of trees, turns to ice, and breaks their limbs when too much has gathered. Some snow falls straight down, some slantwise, and some from everywhere, even from beneath, as if the freezing earth itself is storming. There is powder snow, which, when loosely settled on a field or valley, creates an almost religious experience for those fortunate enough to be the first to break trails, leaving their long, unbroken signatures on the snow-clad landscape.

    Sometimes, when conditions are right, there is granulated snow, like sugar, loosely packed and crystalline, which gives teeth to the wind. After a very cold night, when the cold pulls out all moisture from the air, there is dry snow. On a warm winter day, a rare day, the low sun melts only the thinnest layer of snow closest to the surface and then refreezes it at night. This is crusted snow. After a trail is broken into the backcountry, the next morning there will be packed snow, hard and unyielding—a narrow road through the wilderness used by man and animal alike.

    In high winds, when little snow is falling, the wind can sweep up snow from fields, shake it loose from trees, and swirl it about the world like a blender. This is a flurry. Add a great deal of new snow and you have a blizzard—so dense the earth and sky seem to merge into one whiteness.

    In late spring, when the sun hangs on the horizon longer and longer each day, there can be slush, more water than ice.

    Only the foolish would say there is one word for snow. Anything that lasts so long and buries a world must be many-named.

    *   *   *

    Rounding the last turn, disappearing for a minute and then coming into view again, the snowmobile dragged itself and its sled up to a stand of trees and stopped. For an instant, the only sound in the hills was the gentle push of a breeze and the groan of a man rising from the machine.

    He stood and looked out across the great land that his ancestors had lived on since the beginning. How long, he did not know. No one knew. But he knew this was his land. Every single place had a name. The names were ancient, and sometimes no one could remember what they meant or why, but that did not matter. The land had always known its place. The names given to it by man only comforted man. They mattered not at all to the hills or the far white mountains, the quiet river below or the large tree in its winter sleep, gently swaying and creaking in the wind.

    When he stepped from the machine, he sank almost to his waist in snow. It was loose, the way snow is in the first hours after it falls, before it has time to change its mind and become something else. With his teeth, he pulled off his sealskin gloves, which fell and hung loosely, one at each hip because they were tied together across the shoulders of his parka.

    The sun was so low it reflected off the icy crystals of snow, nearly blinding the man who held a naked hand against his forehead and slowly turned to look out across the world. Small clouds of breath billowed and faded as cold began to settle in his fingers.

    He squinted hard and for a long time watched and listened. The sky was dark blue and contrasted against the blanketed white of the earth. It was a beautiful place, lovely and deadly all at once, a land of great power. Its voice seemed to ring out from its highest mountains, to be carried by the wind off glaciers down toward the sea, and to say that it could kill you in a second. Those who perish here cannot hear the voice to heed its warning.

    Most men have become deaf. They can barely hear each other anymore, much less nature’s whisperings. Nature is not tailored to man. It exists for itself.

    After a few minutes, the man turned toward the trees, pulled off his brown fur hat, and placed it on the black seat of the machine. The seat was cracked in a few places, and the back part was entirely covered in gray duct tape. The machine and the man had covered many miles together. He was old, with fairly long dark hair and only a whisper of a black mustache. A shadow of a rough beard was just beginning to grow, black and gray, salt and pepper, the stubble from a few days without a razor. His face was weathered, and deep lines ran across it like the ever-changing channels of the river in the valley below. It wasn’t a face forged simply by age, but a face that had been exposed too long in a land where time is measured not by the slow ticking hands of clocks, but by the quiet changing of seasons. It was a face weathered by erosion, like canyons or deserts.

    The old man looked at something hanging from one of the lowest branches of a tree, a rabbit dangling from a string tied around one leg. It was frozen rigid and swayed slightly in the breeze pouring down from the mountains, across the hills, and out across the flats where villages nestled along the wide river’s edge. He could see that it was whole, that no animal had tried to pull it down from the tree.

    He had strung it up a few days earlier as bait to trap fox or wolverine, lynx or wolf. At the base of the tree, secured by a rusted chain bolted to it, he had placed a steel trap, its sharp teeth spread apart and open in wait for a paw to step on it, for the furred weight to trigger a latch that would send the metal teeth crushing into flesh and bone.

    He had set such traps under trees all along the two branches of his trapline, each some twenty miles long from beginning to end. He would set them a mile apart, hang the rabbit, and return in a few days to see what had been drawn in by the scent. Most of the time, there would be nothing but the rabbit, but sometimes there would be another animal. Sometimes it was still alive and its leg would be bleeding, the snow red all around the trap, and, in some cases much of the paw would be chewed away in the animal’s attempt to break free. Sometimes the animal was already dead and frozen stiff, having fallen victim to the

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