Cold Fish is one of the stories a lot of people ask me to help them find (it’s in the book They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They?), especially in winter. It highlights the wonderful relationship between Pat and his mentor, the cantankerous old woodsman Rancid Crabtree.
As a rule Rancid tries to avoid work at all costs. But he is also prone to inventing elaborate schemes to help him avoid said work, and in the process expends a lot of energy that, to an outside observer looks an awful lot like the kind of work he is probably trying to avoid.
In this story Pat and Rancid build a fish shack with a sail on it so the wind can help move the shack from one fishing hole to another. Of course it works a little better than anticipated.