Heart So Hungry Read Free

the assignment, so arrangements were quickly made for what Mina would describe as “a quiet wedding in a little church in New York.” On the last day of the first month of 1901, they began their life together as husband and wife.
    For the next five months theirs was a transient life. From the mountains of Virginia they travelled through the backwoods and along the dusty roads of North Carolina, Tennessee and Mississippi.Hubbard not only gathered research and filed articles for
Outing
, he sold freelance pieces too, one on moonshining and one about an old pirate hangout, both to
The Atlantic Monthly
.
    Mina served as his assistant, eagerly pitching in at every turn. Whether hunting, hiking, researching, writing, or simply talking of his plans for their life together, Hubbard was indefatigable, and his optimism was contagious. Mina had never felt so alive nor so loved.
    After their southern trip the couple rented a house in Wurtsboro, a village in New York’s scenic Mamakating Valley, from which Hubbard could commute to work in Manhattan. The hunting and fishing in the Mamakating Valley were excellent, and the Hubbards’ friends visited them regularly. Especially Dillon Wallace. Mina found the lawyer to be a quiet man and sometimes a bit too sombre, but of course she forgave him his melancholy air; he had every right to it.
    Mina frequently cooked for her Laddie and their guests in Wurtsboro, veritable feasts praised by everyone who sampled them—roasts of lamb or beef, mountains of mashed potatoes, honey-glazed carrots, cakes and puddings and coffee and brandy. Sometimes the Hubbards and a friend or two would venture forth on a camping trip into the mountains, and these were the suppers Mina most enjoyed, communally prepared over a campfire for appetites so huge after a day of tramping and canoeing that even the simplest of fare—fried trout and bacon, tea with biscuits and marmalade—satisfied as no banquet ever could.
    But Mina did not always accompany her husband on his camping trips. In November 1901 he travelled to the Shawangunk Mountains with Dillon Wallace, and it was on this trip that Hubbard first articulated the dream he had been harbouring since just a boy. A dream to lead an expedition of his own into uncharted territory, an exploration of unknown lands that would forever after link the name of that land with his own.
    The announcement took place after supper one evening. The men, sweetly exhausted from a day of snowshoeing through the woods, fired up their pipes and leaned back on the pine boughs in the lean-to they had built. Hubbard sat for a while staring at the campfire, all but motionless. At these times Wallace was content to empty his mind of all practical concerns, to allow the gathering night and the flutter of flames to work their magic on him.
    But Hubbard’s was a restless mind, never at peace. Abruptly he said, “Wallace, how would you like to go to Labrador with me?”
    Wallace sucked on his pipe, then blew out a lazy stream of smoke. Another camping trip, he thought. Somewhere new.
    “And where might Labrador be?” he asked. He had a vague knowledge of the area’s whereabouts, knew that it existed somewhere in the northeast corner of the continent. He imagined the fishing would be good there.
    Hubbard grabbed his knapsack, produced pencil and notebook. With excited strokes he sketched an outline of the island of Newfoundland. Above its northernmost point he drew a wavy line. “The Strait of Belle Isle,” he said. And just above the strait, like a triangular piece of lace attached to the side of Canada, was Labrador. Hubbard wasn’t surprised that Wallace knew little about the place. Little was known of it. And that, precisely, was why Labrador called to him.
    “Don’t you realize it’s the only part of the continent that hasn’t been explored? John Cabot claimed the land for England back in 1497, but all he explored was the coastline. The interior is virtually unknown.”
    In 1901