again. Now, with some mental distance, maybe I can handle it. The temperature was a fair -17°, about zero F and better yet, the wind was down. For once, Freya didn’t pester her. The dog was so overjoyed to be home that she parked herself contentedly in her easy chair, oblivious for once to the snowmobile preparations. Trips to the vet seemed to traumatize shepherds, such territorial homebodies. “Who hurt you? If only you could talk, old girl,” she said, rubbing the characteristic nose bump that made the breed look extra fierce when their lips curled in a snarl. A mumble, then a grumble came from the chair, and the dog tucked her nose under her tail, closing her eyes. Belle laughed. “Sure, talk a language I can understand. I could use a clue, you know.”
Several groups of machines streamed by as she stepped onto the cedar deck, bearing a cup of seed for the bird feeder. The familiar four-part whistle piercing the woods signalled that the sparrows had returned, but the robber baron squirrels loved to lift the roof on the little cedar house and spoon into dinner. Belle scanned the ice. Fewer huts each week; the season would soon end with the thaw awaited by fish-bellywhite Sudburians dusting off their BBQs and dieting to squeeze into their shorts. The beginning of April was about the limit for ice fishing, even on the large lake.
Ben’s quarter section topo map pinpointed the cabin’s location near Larder Lake, about ten miles from the Burian Lodge. As she passed the remains of the first village, Belle swore softly at the garbage, pink fibreglass insulation, wood scraps, metal pieces and the occasional broken window. Why couldn’t the huts be licensed and monitored as on Lakes Nipissing and Simcoe? People made a bathroom and a dump out of her drinking water. The DesRosiers were back out in lawn chairs to catch the last weeks of fishing. “How’s it going?” Belle asked, pulling up. As tanned as if she had spent a month on the sands of Montego Bay, Hélène passed her a hunk of herb bread mounded with cream cheese.
“Some good. I had three fine trout this morning,” the woman answered with a sly grin, opening a cardboard box to show her prize. Ed kept quiet until his wife gave him an elbow. “Old man too lazy to jig the bait. He just leaves it in and loafs.”
Belle licked the crumbs from her fingers and made a remark about male and female attitudes toward a more intimate activity before driving off in good humour. It might take a good hour to reach Larder Lake. How rich in land Canadians were, she thought as she covered the miles without seeing another person. Crown property held many small cabins like Jim’s scattered over unlimited territory. For a small lease and minimal taxes, anybody could have a place to hang a toque if he didn’t mind the inaccessibility and lack of hydro. She cleared Wapiti, slipped up the Dunes to the trails, eying Schilling’s island on the way. Now it seemed so familiar. Smoke rose cheerfully from the stone fireplace as it likely had for nearly two hundred years. Was Marta popping another tempting strudel into the oven?
The route led past an old friend, Spirit Rock, a personal shrine for Belle. This huge chunk of glacial erratic had been her private place for meditation. Seemingly fallen from the sky, it dominated the landscape. She stepped off the snowmobile and strapped on the snowshoes lashed to the rear carrier. One day she was going to retire her clumsy wooden relics with their bindings so tempting to hungry little rodents. Trailhead Equipment in Toronto advertised high-tech beauties in its catalogue, space age metal alloys so light that she would be gliding over the snow like Fred and Ginger in Top Hat. Even at a pricey $300.00, if they lasted forever, or longer than she would, the bite might be worthwhile. It took several sweaty minutes to reach the rock due to the clumsy snowmobile boots, meant for warmth, not walking. Breaking trail without a crust was no picnic either; the snowshoes could sink up to a foot and turn into scoops. And people bought treadmills when they could do this?
Lifting fifty feet into a cadmium blue sky, Spirit Rock was solid and dependable, pure Cambrian granite. Rocks and water and trees, the triumvirate of Shield country. After living with their power, Belle doubted if she ever would want to abandon them. What honest land refused to show its bones? Eons ago the mighty boulder, dropped in retreat as the glacier smothered the land, would have glowed silvery shell pink as the rock down around Killarney, but a century of acid rain had weathered it gray and tanned its folds like the skin of an aged elephant. Still, where the rock chipped, crystalline rose shimmered. A tiny cedar tree, indefatigable as the stone itself, shot its four feathery inches out of a narrow cleft. What a miracle for this stubborn natural bonsai to find the right niche, the perfect mix of dirt and moss. Near the top of her monument, a triangular dent revealed where a chunk of several tons had fallen. Now the fragment was covered in snow, but in summer, Belle could lift the giant piece in her mind, rotate it to complete the three dimensional jigsaw. How long ago did the huge weight submit to gravity, groan and break free? One hundred, five hundred, a thousand years? Did some passing Ojibwa startle at its earth-shaking fall? Patient nature ground slowly but exceedingly fine, like the mill of God. Not like police departments.
Placing her hands on the cold, familiar face, she said quietly, “Jim loved this land. He tried to preserve its integrity so that your beauty could live forever undiminished by man. Help me to find his killer and understand his death.” Lord knows, Mother, she murmured to herself, you can take the Anglican out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the Anglican. Bless that grand old Cranmer prayerbook.
After another half an hour on the route, Belle passed Larder Lake and turned to follow a deep groove in the snow that indicated an overblown trail. A few minutes later, she reached Jim’s small cabin. Anyone who wondered where moose went in the winter could have found the answer here. At least ten piles of droppings littered the clearing, the striped maples well browsed by this “eater of branches”.
Next to the cabin, no more than four walls and a door, someone had been quartering birch, stacking fresh pieces on the porch for convenience and protection. Sure enough, under the massive splitting log nestled the key, wrapped in a plastic bag. She opened the door with a sense of dread and regret, overwhelmed by the silence, then marvelled at the evidence of Jim’s soul. A closer look showed the care that made the simple hermitage neat and practical. Chinked logs had been carefully whitewashed, and the tin sheet base of the oil barrel woodstove was swept clean of ash. She noted a small desk and a rustic bed, a sleeping bag on a padded wire frame, and a wooden chair with embroidered pillows. The picture of Melanie that Ben had mentioned smiled brightly from the desktop, bringing cotton to Belle’s throat. Framed in art deco pewter, the pretty girl was clowning with Jim’s brother Ted, mugging into the camera. Belle skimmed through the book titles: Trees of Canada, Diseases of Conifers, Common Weeds, Peterson’s Edible Plants, The Woods in Winter: Wild Animal Tracks and Traces. And the usual Audubon guides to mushrooms, butterflies, insects and flowers.
Moving on, she rummaged through the small pantry. Rudimentary cold-safe provisions like Kraft Dinner and other pasta, dried beans and milk, coffee, flour and rice. An instant noodle package was crumpled in the garbage. Lunch perhaps on that last day. The pots were clean, nesting under the dry sink.
A pair of lovingly-varnished snowshoes hung on the wall, along with a tattered rabbit pelt, maybe a childhood trophy. Topo maps were pinned up marked with sites of interest: oak grove, white pine growth, moose pasture, springs and bear dens around the other Burian hunt camps. Of the several record books lining the shelves, one leather log listed hundreds of flowers Jim had noted, starting with spring’s first, the bright yellow marsh marigold (the pickled buds resembled capers, he had told her) and the last to leave, the durable pearly everlasting. From a well-dusted shelf of specimens, Belle picked up a small piece of fungus, chicken of the woods, a savory treat when sautéed with eggs. On their hiking trips Jim had provided a never-ending banquet from the bush for an amazed Belle, who had thought that raspberries and blueberries were the limit. “What do you imagine the natives lived on before the white man traded his flour and sugar?” Jim had asked, with a gentle tease. And over the nights they had camped together on the edge of shimmering Lake Temagami, he had brewed pine tea, plucked pickerelweed from a swamp for a salad, fried up milkweed flowers and shaken off cattail pollen for pancakes.
Small memories of small rituals of the heart. Thank God she had seen
