LITMIR.BIZ

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season would help to establish the base needed for the February timeframe of the ski marathon, it put an end to any further trail work that could be done by my depleted crew and the four other volunteer crews.

      Eric would need to pay out big money, money he didn’t have, to bring in the professionals with their high-powered snowmobiles and log clearing equipment. Since the whole point of the venture was to make money for the Migiskan Band, he’d wanted to avoid this big cost by using band members and other volunteers, like my work crew. Now, with this unplanned expense added to the already incurred cost overrun for marketing, he would have difficulties breaking even. This would not only play havoc with band finances, but would also leave me with little to show other than a sore back and a depleted bank account.

      At least he wasn’t quite ready to kiss all our money goodbye. After several brief phone calls over the past couple of days, during which neither of us referred to his surprise visitor nor discussed getting together, we agreed to survey the entire 65K course via snowmobile to determine the amount of remaining work. With the blizzard now finally over, we planned to set out at the crack of dawn the next morning. In the meantime, the other crew leaders and I would meet with him this afternoon at the Fishing Camp to review all possible options for completing the marathon course.

      As I sipped my morning coffee at the kitchen table, I watched a small black-headed chickadee flit onto a perch of the bird feeder hanging from the roof of the back porch. He grabbed a seed from the plastic column filled with black sunflower seeds and flitted out again to be replaced by another. Three others waited their turn on the porch railing.

      Suddenly they dispersed as a fury of blue and white feathers and loud squawks zoomed down onto the feeder, immediately joined by two other large blue jays. I watched with alarm as one terrified chickadee flew into the kitchen window with a dull thud and fell to the wooden floor. I rushed outside, fearful it had broken its neck. But the small grey ball of feathers roosted securely on it feet, its head moving slightly from side to side, blinking. It was alive.

      Feeling it was best to let nature take its course, I left it alone and retreated inside, where I watched over its recovery. After about twenty minutes of almost no movement, it suddenly stretched its head, fluffed its feathers, and without so much as a cheep, lifted its wings and was gone. The only residue of this near tragedy was a tiny feather stuck to the window where the bird had struck.

      I supposed if Eric had been watching by my side, he’d say that the Creator, kije manidu, had sent us a message. But not having the wisdom of Eric’s Anishinabeg ancestors to call upon, the only message that sprang to my mind was that the weak and the small would prevail despite what the large and the mighty dished out to them.

      My thoughts turned to Yvette. Fragile she might look, but in the four days since her accident, she seemed to be showing a lot of resilience. When I’d visited her the day before, she’d appeared to be making a quick recovery. Despite her father’s restraining presence, she’d ventured downstairs to see me, served tea and cookies and chatted away for an hour or more with an unusual liveliness. Either her accident had loosened her up, or her expression of friendship had given her a confidence not previously felt in my presence. Maybe she would now be more open, more willing to share what lay behind her usual silence.

      Another chickadee zipped onto the feeder, grabbed a seed and safely retreated before the blue jay sitting on the porch railing realized his territory had been invaded. Beyond, the expanse of snow gleamed invitingly under the noon day sun. Perhaps I shouldn’t view winter’s early arrival in a completely bad light. Better to enjoy its newness by skiing to the Fishing Camp for the marathon meeting than continuing to sit here for another hour-and-a-half stewing over Eric and my lost money.

      Although Echo Lake offered the fastest ski route, with a straight run down Forgotten Bay to the camp at its far end, this early in the season most of the bay remained open water. With two hours to spare before the meeting, I set out along the longer, but more enjoyable route that would take me through Aunt Aggies’ old sugar bush to the neighbouring territory of the Migiskan Reserve. This circuitous route up the inclines and down the plunges of the hilly terrain would also enable me to celebrate the season’s first ski with some long, lingering downhill runs.

      I hoped the thrill of the ski would keep me from worrying about seeing Eric. Although he had sounded his usual friendly self on the phone, I’d detected a certain distance, and I knew that I too would be maintaining my distance. I didn’t have the strength to pretend all was well. I knew as sure as my skis were sliding through the snow that my reaction would be to stand back and wait for him to say something. And if he said nothing, the memory of that woman’s gorgeous face and his happy greeting would grow like a cancer between us.

      Soon I was pushing through the deep powder with Sergei bounding behind me. Last time I’d been this way, the woods had rustled with autumn leaves. Now the snow muffled all sound but the gliding hiss of my skis. I panted up the first steep hill with a near perfect herringbone, glad I’d finally bought wood touring skis. My old plastic skis would’ve had me cursing at the constant backsliding that invariably happened in such deep snow.

      At the top, I stopped to enjoy the transformed hardwood forest, really more an excuse to allow me to catch my breath. Despite best intentions of getting myself into proper shape before the ski season began, I hadn’t. Now I would have to creak and groan through a month or more of rigorous skiing before my body even approached the finely-tuned firmness the sport demanded. Unfortunately, this state was invariably reached only at the end of the winter, when spring thaw gave me an excuse to put away my skis and return to less physically challenging summer activities like hiking or, more aptly, slow meandering rambles through the bush.

      While I stood puffing, Sergei, not bothered in the least by the climb, chased a red squirrel up a lone pine, where it chattered its outrage to the rest of world. The only other occupant of this snow-shrouded forest was a woodpecker swooping from bare tree top to bare tree top. Although the snow had long since stopped falling, an occasional branch would shake its wintry load free and release a cloud of sparkling white. Some fell on my head and trickled icily down my neck, cold enough to spur me on.

      I followed the broad track along the ridge that skirts the back end of my property, up and over small knolls, down into a steep ravine, across a burbling stream and back up the other side. I skied past abandoned rubber tubing used by my greataunt to collect the spring sap for her once-flourishing maple syrup operation. A few of the ancient maples were still marked by numbered pieces of tin used to identify good producers.

      When I’d first moved to Three Deer Point, I’d thought of resurrecting the sugar bush operation, but quickly dismissed it as a venture requiring a lot of hard work with minimal return other than the satisfaction of having produced a quintessentially Canadian product. However, given the present future of my twenty thousand dollars, maple syrup would have been a better investment.

      Finally, I reached the beginning of the long run which would take me into Migiskan territory. Unfortunately, in order to remain within the Three Deer Point property line, Aunt Aggie’s old track veered a sharp left at the bottom of the steep hill. Sometimes I made the turn; sometimes I didn’t and found myself entangled in brambles. This time I needed to go through this thorny snarl in order to get to the Fishing Camp.

      Slowed by the deep snow, I glided, almost floated down the long incline, enjoying the thrill that made the long climb to the top worth the effort. Between my knees, I felt the soft furry snout of Sergei, who insisted on racing directly behind me in the narrow gap between the skis. Occasionally he’d miss his step and land on a ski, and the two of us would go tumbling into the snow’s iciness, but this time he showed his true athletic prowess.

      As I descended, I looked for a path through the summer’s crop of tangled underbrush, one made either by animals or by band members trespassing on my land in search of game, an ongoing complaint I had with Eric. Unfortunately, I reached the bottom of the hill with no such sighting.

      Unwilling to crash through the head-high blackberry canes and their inch-long thorns, I continued skiing along the trail for as long as it headed in the direction of the Fishing Camp, but I reached where it jogged back deeper into my land without encountering an easy passage through the brambles. I had little choice

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