Keeper'n Me (26 page)

I sat down and pulled the moose-hide pouch out of my pack and offered a pinch of tobacco to the land for allowing me to travel safely through it and for getting me here. I proved the fishing theory by pulling out two big jackfish with a couple of grubs I found under an old log. Then it was lunch and a nice short nap in the sun by the edge of the water. Sleep, dreamless and easy.

I found the cabin without any problem. It was sitting back of the bay about thirty yards, in the shade of two really big
birch trees. Calling it a cabin's doing it a favor. It was only a crumple of rotted logs but the outline was still there in that heap. There was grass and small saplings growing up through the middle of it all and no real sign of a trail leading up to it or away from it, but it was the cabin, all right. My heart told me that. I sat down against one of them big birch trees and stared at it for a long, long time.

There's no word in either Ojibway or English that describes the feelings that were flowing through me that afternoon. Maybe flowing's the best word of all. I was sitting there like a big open channel on the water when them waves are pouring over it, rolling and rolling and rolling. They're moving so fast on the top that they churn up things that've been resting down there a long long time. That's how it felt. Churning. Old feelings, images and dreams all churned up into motion again as I sat there leaning on that old birch tree. I closed my eyes real tight and I imagined that I could hear four small children running and playing in the shadows. The voices of adults laughing and yelling for them kids. My name. Garnet. Garnet. Peen-dig-en. Peen-dig-en, Garnet. Come in. Come in. I imagined I could see the faces of those who I would never know in this reality. My grampa. Long gray braids and deep-set eyes in a wrinkled, weathered face of many seasons. My granny. Kerchief framing another wrinkled face with a gap-toothed grin and eyes the deep, deep brown of the land. And my father. John Mukwa. A face like mine. Big broad cheekbones with curlicues of laughter at the edges and a quiet strength born of the land
and all its motions. A bush man's face.

I could hear their voices there. The ghosts of voices that filled those shriveled timbers with love and hope and happiness. The voices of an Ojibway family alive forever in a time beyond what the world could do and did not so far from then. Voices from a history that got removed. A past that never got the chance to shine in me. A glittering, magic past that was being resurrected right there in the crumpled heap of an old cabin that had given itself back to the land a long time ago. It was part of me. And there in those rotted lengths of mossy, gray-black timbers was the thing I'd been searching for all my life. The hook to hang my life on. The hook that hung on the back of a cabin door amidst the rough and tangle of the land, the past, the heritage that was my home, my future and mine alone forever. I cried.

And as those tears swept my face I offered a pinch of tobacco to the skeleton of the cabin that had become the bones of my life, to the power of the land for keeping it here, to the Creator of all things for his plan and I knew that there would be no need to search for that special place to offer my circle of prayers. And I knew that when it was time to leave this place, it would be sacred land. Sacred land. To carry it in my heart forever was my responsibility, my destiny and my dream. The land, you see, is a feeling.

I beached the canoe and moved all my things across to the site of the cabin. It took the better part of the rest of
that second day and all the while moving through the bush I couldn't shake that feeling of knowing my way around it all. Funny. Kinda like déjà vu but stronger. A memory you carry in the hands and feet. Turned out that little bay was full of fish and supper was a virtual feast of pickerel and jackfish. I made my first open-fire bannock beside that bay and felt like the great chef of the outdoors by the time I was finished. I had a few hours before sundown so I figured I'd walk around in the bush for a while and see if I could remember anything about that early life of mine.

It was easy to see why my grampa would've picked this spot for a cabin on the trapline. Water was good and fresh, lots of fish and instead of being real marshy and full of mosquitoes, this was one of them pothole lakes the glaciers made with a shoreline of trees and rock. Little streams flowed into it from out of the back country and I could see the notch in the shoreline a ways off that marked the runoff stream. All around it were hills. Not the big unclimbable hills this country's full of but smaller rolling hills that were covered in trees and thick acres of berry patch. Meant there'd be a lot of bears around but I wasn't worried about them. Around here bears still act like bears. Not like them bears out west that get fed from cars and campsites all the time and got more and more bold as the years went by. These bears here still gotta lotta respect for humans and pretty much keep their distance. I saw all that from the hill back of the camp I made by the cabin. Saw the big thickets of
trees where the deer would lie in the daytime and saw stretches of shoreline that would make perfect watering places for them if I had a mind or a gun to hunt them with. All around me I could see signs of life. Knew there were foxes, raccoons, porcupine, skunk and wolf trotting around this area regular. Knew that from the signs they left on the ground and from somewhere inside me that I couldn't identify then. Grampa knew it too and that's why he picked this place for a line cabin on the trapline.

That in itself was strange. I'd been city-raised mostly. My way of seeing and knowing was city. I'd learned a lot from my family since I'd been back but as this was the first time I'd ever really been in the boonies it was strange that I knew how to read the country like I was doing. Now there's lotsa people walking around that when you ask them how come they know so much about living in the bush and all, they'll say on accounta I'm an Indian, but in my case this wasn't true. Sure, I'm an Ojibway, but back then I sure didn't have a whole lotta knowledge about what that meant. More than what I did when I first got here but I still had lots to learn. I knew enough to get by for a few days alone long as I brought most of what I needed with me, but I knew I couldn't go it alone for long empty-handed. But there I was reading the land and knowing what it would take to survive. It was the first thing I was gonna ask Keeper about when I got home.

If there were any physical signs of my childhood around there, the land had pretty much taken them
back by then. I wandered around for an hour or so and then headed back to the cabin. The shadows were getting long by then and it was time to leave the land to the creatures of the night. I made a pot of tea and settled back to relax and think this day over. My four days were half over already. I kinda wished I could stay longer but I knew if me'n that canoe didn't appear on White Dog Lake by sundown of the fourth day there was gonna be a whole bush full of Ojibways tracking me down real quick. Comforting to know that really.

That's when I remembered about the tobacco ties. I piled a few logs on top of each other and leaned back against them while I opened the pouch. There was a big pile of loose tobacco, about three dozen square little pieces of white cloth and a spool of white thread. If I took about a fingernail's worth of tobacco it'd fit into one of them pieces of cloth. Then I could just wrap the ends tight with the thread and go on to the next one. That part was easy. The hard part was gonna be the praying.

I didn't wanna go into it just because Keeper said it was something I oughta be doing. I didn't wanna go into it just because I figured it was Indian to be doing this either. And I sure didn't wanna go into it without believing in what I was gonna do. Especially here by the old cabin.

So I sat there again long into the night. I watched them stars wheel around the deep bowl of the universe and the moon skate across it in a big arc. I listened to the land around me. I could hear the quick little movements
of the smaller animals drawn by the shiny light of the fire and from further off the howl of wolves saluting that moon. Every now and then a fish would jump in the bay and the splash would echo over the lake. Me I sat there by that fire listening and thinking. Listening and thinking. Feeling safe in this full and empty land with that blanket of darkness covering all of it. Feeling safe beside the remains of this cabin that was full of my history. Feeling safe beside this fire that burned like Ojibway fires had been burning for thousands of years. Feeling safe because of that growing sense inside me that I was really a part of all of it. Really a part of it. And the longer I sat there listening and thinking the more I started to feel and believe that it was a part of me too. The heartbeat of the land beating inside my chest. That feeling of gratitude was burning as warm and bright as that fire by the time my head fell against my chest and I collapsed into the land of dreams to run with the wolves across that full and empty land that had become my home.

It was a dream like any other. I was running. Long, loping strides that floated me over the land. My legs felt free of anything as restricting as muscle and it was like I had wings. I ran and ran and ran, seeing the trees and rocks and lakes passing by like those movies you see where they got the camera latched onto the belly of a plane flying low. Running. Effortlessly running. Bodiless almost. Then suddenly I was in a canoe. I was standing
up and paddling really slow around a big point of land. The point of land was nothing but a huge rock cliff. There were trees growing out of the face of that cliff like you see around here all the time. The bigger ones were dying from the top on down but the smaller ones were still a bright green and thick with branches. I paddled real slow and squinted to look at the sun shining on the face of that calm water.

As I rounded the curve of that point there were two big skinny jack pines standing there against that cliff. I stopped paddling to look at them. Suddenly, I noticed there were two eagles there. One at the top of each of those trees. They were looking at me. Not moving just looking. I watched them watching me for a long time and the canoe drifted in and bumped against the shore. There wasn't any fear, not in me and not in them birds. We just watched each other. There was a big silence like you always feel in dreams and I could feel the wind against my cheek while I watched them birds.

Just as my neck was beginning to ache from all that looking up they started to move. First one then the other. Not moving like they were gonna fly away, not like that. One of them started shrugging its shoulders around. Then the other. Kinda bouncing their shoulders around. Bouncing them forward and back. Pretty soon they were moving together, in rhythm. Shoulders moving forward and back and their heads bobbing up and down, side to side too. I watched from the canoe in that thick silence of dreams.

All of a sudden they both kinda popped offa the tops of those pine trees. Jumped. They spread their wings and drifted down to the ground in big sweeping circles, coming close together then circling further apart and then coming close together again until they landed on the ground. When they landed they kept up that shrugging and head bobbing with their wings still spread apart. Their backs were towards me when they landed but as they turned to face me I could see that they weren't eagles any longer. They were an old man and an old woman. On their arms they wore the wings of eagles and on their heads bonnets of eagle feathers that hung down over their eyes. They wore ceremonial costumes and as they danced they kept on watching me. They danced for a very short time and then when they stopped they turned to look at me one last time. They looked right into my eyes, smiled, nodded. When they leaped into the sky they were birds again and I watched them as they slowly disappeared over the far end of the lake. I could hear the soft flap, flap of their wings against the sky and it was that sound that woke me. When I opened my eyes it wasn't to the wings of eagles but to the soft lapping of the waves against the shore. The water curling over the rocks. Flap, flap, flap.

There's those that call us Indians the people of the dream. That's on accounta we spenda lotta time and energy seeking vision. Back in the old traditional times the old ones would send young guys like me out on a
four-day fast in the hills. No food, no fire, maybe a little water. They'd sit out there and pray and pray and pray. Sometimes they'd be lucky enough to be blessed with a vision sent to them by the Creator or the ancestors in the spirit world. That vision could be just about anything and was meant to be a sacred and private thing for the seeker. Gave a direction for their life. Called it a vision quest. Nowadays with the traditional ways getting left behind more and more there's not so many going out on vision quests as there used to be. Fact, when you hear about it these days it's a pretty special thing. Anyway, we Indians spent a lot of time seeking dreams and visions to give us direction and strength. One of the things the elders tell you nowadays is to try real hard to remember all your dreams, write them down even to help you. Remember them and talk them over with an elder to try and figure out what they're telling you if you can't figure them out yourself. Us we put a lot of stock in dreams. This dream of mine was powerful and I'd be talking to Keeper about it as soon as I got home. In the meantime I was sure one humble kinda guy by the time I got to moving around that third morning.

After another good breakfast of fresh fish, bannock and good old-fashioned Ojibway bush tea I started making those tobacco offerings. It was sunny and still that morning. As I sat there in the shade of those big birch trees, staring at the remains of that old cabin, I could hear the orchestra of birds all around me. Sat there for a long time with my eyes closed listening to the
sounds of creation shrugging its shoulders and moving back into life again. Was nice. Left me feeling really peaceful and as I set out all the parts of that little ceremony there were no ragged edges in my belly.

This was gonna be the first time I ever did anything without Keeper. All the time I'd been home he'd been directing me and giving me all the background to the things I was doing. My guide like he says all the time. Now, Keeper was a day's paddle away and I was about to do something important on my own and I wanted it to be done right. For Keeper and for myself.