a Walk to Remember

March 2020 - My account of a four day expedition by snowshoe across 50 kilometres of forest and bay in the James Bay region of Quebec's north.

The expedition occurs as the world is shutting down to slow the spread of COVID-19. Nevertheless, we decide to exterminate any sense of unease nibbling away at us and to go forward with our plans. Besides, where better to be during a pandemic than out in the bush? We turn our backs to the town and to the global crisis. We head across the river and down the coast.

A fellow walker warms his hands by the fire and states, “Walking, what a foolish thing to do.”

It does seem rather foolish, and with each step forward my hips scream in agreement. My companion turns to me: “I feel rather smug for being able to do this in my 70’s.” I tell her she has every right to be smug. Then I continue walking, scolding my aching body for its betrayal. I am only in my early thirties after all. I’ve run half marathons. So why do I yearn for a break now, after only ten kilometers? I look behind me, straining my eyes, searching for the walkers behind me. I look ahead, searching for my resolve. It comes to me in drips. It’s enough to keep me going for another kilometer. Then one more.

Fortunately, we are not pulling sleds behind us. Pulling a sled is the proper way, one Cree hunter reminds us. It’s what the ancestors did when they walked to the coast from inland dwellings. The trek was done mid-winter or early spring every year to restock supplies. They had to pull heavy sleds, packed tight with supplies, and since the whole point of this expedition, also performed every spring, is to honour this past, our lack of burden means that we are not doing it right--his words, not mine. We walk lugging nothing except the uncertainty of the coming weeks, but that’s heavy enough for me.

Later, our guide is throwing branches into the fire as the flames dance and lick the tips of a black spruce nearby. After we eat, he lingers there. He is the only one who walks the entire 18 kilometers that day. The rest of us pile into the sled of a skidoo to travel the remaining few kilometers to camp. Unable to preserve his dog’s loyalty against the irresistible mission of racing behind the skidoo, the guide is left on his own. I contemplate what motivates him to walk so far, so often. This is not his first trip to the bush on foot this winter, nor is it likely his last. An hour after the skidoo drops me off at camp, he comes through the door and says little as he sheds his layers, damp with sweat and snow, to hang above the fire.

The cabin houses five beds and one pull out couch, which is where I sleep. The large room does not overflow with conversation. What is spoken is uttered mostly in Cree, a language I do not understand. Actually, it is mostly “Crenglish”, a hybrid of Cree and English becoming increasingly common as the English language slowly devours theirs. So I do pick up bits, and still more is offered to me through translation. They take turns translating, while some words they keep to themselves. The dialogue rallies around the importance of walking as a means of recognizing the footsteps of their ancestors. The recognition goes beyond remembering: in order to know how to proceed into the future, it is necessary to retrace the footsteps of the past. I note a concern about the loss of ancestral knowledge; a lingering worry for the preservation of culture hovers like a ghost. Meanwhile, I recognize my privilege in being able to partake in such a ritual of collecting and celebrating, and sometimes mourning, pieces from the past, a past that does not belong to me. I am a visitor here, in Eeyou Istchee territory, and I am abundantly grateful. The conversation is stalled by the creeping of dusk into the cabin.

The next day we are to cross the bay. We start out in the early morning, emerging from the bulky treeline that borders the shore. The bay is bathed in powdery fog, and we cannot distinguish the snow blanketing the bay from the frost in the air for what seems like forever. It is actually twelve kilometers. The breadth of it releases a rush of excitement, shooting out from my stomach, traveling to my fingers and toes. Then it dissolves, leaving my skin cool and tingly. I breathe deeply, allowing a smile to transform my face. I turn to the person beside me, commenting on our luck--there is no wind today. She says she has crossed this bay on foot in years past and the wind was not so kind then. Yes, she concludes, we are lucky there is no wind today. There are many hours in the day yet for that to change.

For now, the winter sun glazes the bay with crisp white light as it hovers above the rocky island to our left. It is called Monkey Island, and the story goes that there are little hairy people that live in its rocky face. If you dare to set your net there, the little hairy people will take the fish from your net. Since it is bad luck to point to an island in the James Bay--it summons the wind, --she motions to the island with her chin as she tells the legend. I have so many questions about these hairy little people, but for some reason I don’t voice them as I follow the faint imprint of the others’ snowshoes towards the middle of the bay.

If you don’t think about it, and I certainly try not to, you can easily forget that you are walking over a twelve-kilometer sheet of ice. No one else appears worried, but perhaps they are better at hiding fears behind hard set faces. Or perhaps they are not afraid because, intimately in tune with the winter landscape, they know that more than four feet of solid ice lies under their feet, because they walk with the boldness and the blessing of all their ancestors who walked before them. I wonder what that is like.

It is not yet noon, but the sun that greeted us at the shoreline hours earlier is long gone. It’s now a white smudge, receding further behind clouds, clouds that send down small flakes of snow, erasing all landmarks from the horizon. Wind sweeps in from the big bay to our right.

Somehow he has fallen back. The last two days our guide led the way, always at least a kilometer ahead of us, but now he trails behind and emerges from the wall of snow. I look back, as I often do, and watch him move through it, unbothered. The wind pulls at the loose strands of hair that escape from his hat and small flakes of snow hit his face like flies, stinging and wet, yet he does nothing to shield himself. There is reverence in his expression--for his past, for the people of his past that brought him here. It collides with dread--for a culture lost to the enchantment of the internet and for a land flooded by the English language.

We are side by side now, me and the guide. I find comfort in syncing my steps with the one who has marked the trail. I discover he likes to tell stories. Perhaps walking through the bush dislodges memories from a man’s mind. He mumbles, though, and rarely makes eye contact, and I am left wondering if he is talking to me or if he is telling himself these stories.

“Look, see here, this is moose hair. Ya, and moose blood. Just yesterday, a moose killed.” He points with his walking stick to the droplets of red and the coarse tufts of hair that dot the trail. I assume he means killed by a human hunter. But then he starts talking about the wolves that use this trail too, and now I am not so sure. I look up and can’t see more than ten feet ahead. I try to calculate the hours we’ve been walking to gauge how close we are to camp. This is hard, though--I don’t wear a watch and my phone is long dead from the cold.

“And polar bears,” he thrusts his arm out in the direction of the bay, “they run fast, 40 kilometers an hour.” He makes a whistling sound and draws the path that the enormous bear might take. I wonder if I heard him right above the hissing of the wind--he talks so low, and his tongue seems to stumble over the English words, more comfortable with the feel of Cree. “Usually I bring my gun, but I didn’t want to carry it this time. That’s why I brought my dog, to distract.” To distract what exactly? The bear? To distract us while we are mauled by the bear? Really, you didn’t feel like carrying the gun? I can’t imagine one medium sized mutt providing much of a barrier between a hungry 600 pound bear. Still, I look around, hoping to spot the dog nearby, but it is nowhere to be seen. With such hideous possibilities now firmly planted in my imagination, the guide accelerates his pace and leaves me to bring up the rear.

I am so tired now. I begin to distinguish a line of trees through the barricade of blowing snow. The lure of a warm cabin and hot tea simmering on a woodfire stove begins to coax me out of my hostile imagination and I press forward. I must reach the shore and remember what it feels like to take every step confidently, knowing that four-legged monsters are not lurking behind a wall of snow, to know that icy currents are not waiting to yank me below.

After the last walker arrives at camp and everyone has had the chance to reclaim some warmth with a cup of tea, we set out once more, this time on skidoos. Our guide wants to check his beaver traps and fishing nets. The wind retreats while the hunter untangles the fish from the icy net he pulls up from dark waters. But as we return to camp, winter hurls a second assault on us, and I’m sure the wind is going to rip us off our skidoos. I don’t know how the drivers endure the biting wind. I’m not facing the wind and I can hardly bear the penetrating cold. I bounce around the back of the sled, pulled by the youngest participant, who is attempting to follow the skidoo before us.

The young man says next year he would like to walk, but this year he drives the skidoo with all our supplies. He drives with the urgency of a 17 year old on the verge of discarding youth to don adulthood. From the shallow walls of the sled where I huddle, I am beckoned by the sight of a skidoo racing by with two men and one woman. They all straddle the small cushion on the front, and a large golden mutt is squeezed between the driver and the handlebars. I turn my head to take in the whole picture--the dog is trying to turn around to escape the biting wind, the large man is trying to steer the machine through fur and the most furious winds winter has ever shown me. I can’t help but release a loud burst of laughter through my frozen face. The storm swallows the sound and I turn my head back to see if the skidoo behind me has sailed away yet.

Everyone manages to escape winter’s outburst that afternoon. But the message does not escape me: always approach nature with humility. We are all visitors here, on this planet. Back at camp, the young man gives it a passing mention: “Well, that was rough”. Indeed, that was rough.