Guardian Yearlong blog post originally posted 2/21/14
Snowflake by snowflake, the white blanket covering our world is getting thicker and thicker. Not much else is to be seen but whiteness and trees covered in snow. And as we listen, there is a grand silence buried under all the snow.
We’ve left our river camp to hit the deep snow, being more nomadic looking for wolf tracks. We minimized our gear even further, as every gadget is extra weight on our backs. We each had our own tomahawks, bowls, crooked knives, notebooks and some unnecessary clothing that we have now sent back to the school. We took a day of preparation to sew up holes on our clothes. Roasted fat makes for easy traveling food so we cooked down the small pieces of bear fat in our carved bowls before sending them to be stored till the end of this experience. We butchered a deer that we had gotten a few suns earlier…and we were ready for take-off!
“But how do we carry all this?” asks Little Big, and by everyone’s body language I can tell they share the same question and the concern of how our backs will respond to the challenge…
Do we leave some here and pick it up sometime later, or do we carry it all in one go, just maxing it to the max? Or do we come and go several times…As we’re talking, Early is experimenting with making a sled out of his huge sleeping hide and tying a bundle of gear onto it…“Let’s not leave anything here” says Blondie “ we need to figure out a way to carry all this either now or later”. So that’s what we do, Early takes a back leg of the deer and some starch, Little Big packs up the leeks, Blondie takes the bear fat and I get out easy not carrying any of the communal stuff or food because of my back troubles.
Off we go! Tromble tromble, stomple stomple, gust and pust, pust and gust as we move through the snow. Wah! This is heavy! It is hard going even if you are walking in the back. What we do when we travel through these deep snows is that one person goes ahead and breaks trail, then we each step in the same footsteps as the person in front, which makes it a lot less exhausting to be in the back. Just like wolf do in the snow, and geese in the sky.
“We’ve been walking for the time it takes to eat a big meal, and we’re just on the other side of the bog! In the green season we would have been here in the time it takes to crack a few nuts!”
Our plan was to go to the next creek, where we could sleep for the night and hydrate; but as the sun is going lower and lower we realize we won’t even get close. So we decide to set up camp and chuck down some snowballs. It goes smoothly; we don’t need to talk much – Early scouts out a sleeping spot. Blondie gathers boughs, Little Big scuffs away snow from one sleeping spot and I start making a fire…A little longer and the sun is down. Little Big is laying down the last boughs for the bedding, and the rest of us are breaking up a little more wood for our dinner fire.
Again we are gathered around the fire. We are all settled in, and it feels like home.
We have now been walking for a few suns, setting up new camps each night, and we feel the journey in our bodies. We must build a toboggan or sled or something! Not long after having that wish, we we’re gifted one! Now we’re all excited to see how our traveling will go with our new sled!
Off we go to Pine River north or to follow the wolf trail! No matter what, one thing is for sure, the tromble and stomple over the white blanket covering the earth will continue! Like a pen writes her story over a sheet of paper, we will write ours with feet gliding over the snow cover.