the resident spirit entity. I had been forewarned about this particular pictograph as one of particular omnipotence. A commanding southwest wind, without warning, slammed into our little flotilla of boats, crashing gunwales together in a moment of angry mayhem. It was time to leave. The reproach came in the guise of a rogue windstorm that precipitated a hasty retreat. A quick offering of tobacco seemed to be a senseless gesture, like closing the gate after the lion had escaped.
The wind persisted. Ominous clouds rolled in like massive bulwarks, and we made a quick camp at the edge of a small rapid. Within fifteen minutes of setting up our tents, a difficult enough process in such heavy wind, a summer storm hit us with such vehemence it seemed the forces of Nature had quite outdone themselves. Trees toppled around us while gale-force winds pummeled the boreal landscape like a heavy fist upon its back; lightning seared around the makeshift camp, stabbing randomly at the bent forest while rain whipped at us in horizontal sheets. We had no protection — it was too dangerous to stay in the tents because trees were coming down all around us, and the rain fly had ripped away from its moorings. The sound was deafening. We chose to stand as a group at the edge of a copse of young spruce trees which afforded a modicum of cover and the least likelihood of getting struck by lightning.
And as quickly as it had come, it was gone. And the evening sun probed the remnant clouds for openings through which to cast a surreal patchwork glow over the drenched landscape — an ocherous brilliance. The only sound was the spent rain drops filtering through the leaves of the forest.
Nearby was another pictograph site; in fact, it was the most celebrated rock-art site along the Bloodvein, and the prime time to view it was under the patina of evening light just before the sun set. Everyone in the group, including the skeptical, literally jumped into their canoes after I had suggested we make some kind of amends with the river. And as a devout Christian might enter a place of worship, we approached the pictographs slowly and quietly, each canoe party ready to divulge some sort of personal offering. Tobacco pouches were passed around.
This was the famous bison site, and as famed archaeologist Selwyn Dewdney remarks, “The site is perhaps a hundred miles north of the parklands where the bison herds once roamed; but the artist shows familiarity with the animal that supports either frequent hunting excursions southward, or his own southern origin.”
Halfway across the world there is a similar bison image, depicted with circled hooves, and as much an anomaly there as the painting at Artery Lake, Manitoba. Coincidence seems unlikely. Shamanism and the art of healing souls are the fundamentals of an ancient religion and practice that predates Christianity by twenty thousand years. Not a black art, as branded by modern religious scholars, shamanic faith bonds itself to the rhythm of the Earth and is the basis of North American Native beliefs and healing practices. The possibility of early healers having the ability to transcend known planes of existence, to vault their spiritual selves through some kind of time-place portal, to be able to exchange wisdom with other shamans linked like some kind of spiritual Internet, is not fantasy or mythology or simple campfire story … at least to this writer.
The granite wall absorbed the incident evening light, turning from pale to reddish yellow. The dark waters of the Bloodvein and the thick moss and boreal crown above the face of the rock framed and highlighted the magical, mysterious paintings, like a Precambrian holograph display. There was not a word spoken amongst us lest the charm of the spell be broken. Our canoes drifted as if suspended between two dimensions, drifting like the ephemeral light, hovering momentarily, bathing the moment in illusory calm.
The sun dropped below the fringe of trees on the opposite shore, leaving the teaching site in evening sameness and shadow. The magic was gone, the latch on the door once again bolted. None of us made a move to paddle the three kilometres back to the campsite. Our earlier transgressions against the spirit world had been purged. It was an experience we would all remember — an event in our lives, however enigmatic, that in some way brings us closer to the answer.
The Bloodvein River conveys a message understood by very few, even to the remnant Saulteaux Ojibwa who have been assimilated into the world of consumerism and may have forgotten the old ways and who now grasp at the tattered edges of their own culture. Few resident Anishnabe venture this far upriver — a two-week trek by canoe. I resign myself to that place of bewilderment, like most others who travel its waters, play in the rapids and walk the nastawgan trails, getting caught up in the waterplay and the landscape and the camaraderie, and such vain pleasures that appease the physical senses. But I hope, as I continue to visit these places and revel in the sanctity of ancient wisdom, that I may someday understand more about what went on here, in the mind of the teacher who left us such cryptic lessons on stone.
The payhunsuk — the playful trickster.
THIRTEEN
THUNDERHOUSE
The Devil has made off with one of the packs!
— Native companion of explorer Phillipe Turner at Thunderhouse Falls portage, 1781
Canadians, generally speaking, are known for their rational, even-keel approach to the supernatural. Even some of our great writers have denied that Canada is home to ghosts, pixies, and monsters of world-class stature. Certainly, Indian mythology and legend have become the stuff of children’s bedtime stories, but underlying the surface fluff is a Pandora’s Box of hardcore demonkind.
Their existence has long been repudiated, dismissed, and sublimated by science, logic, Christianity, and cultural disconnection from the natural world. Our fears, however, remain. Demons thrive yet in the deep recesses of the forest and our minds. Mythology played an important role in the everyday life of the woodland Aboriginal people who believed that everything living or inanimate had a soul, a purpose, and a voice.
After thirty-five years of extensive research, personal observations, and experiences along the trail, I can report that I have witnessed many strange events — some of which have been precursors to mysterious deaths and disappearances. Oddly enough, an increasing number of canoe deaths within the Canadian wilds have occurred at places of “harmonic convergence” — specific sites where the corporeal world (the world as we know it in material means or “the land of upright life” to the Anishnabeg) melds easily with the incorporeal, or spirit world. Most often located at places of peculiar geophysical nature (pinnacles, waterfalls, cliff faces), they are strikingly beautiful, pristine, and isolated (getting less so as industry encroaches and destroys wilderness). Medicine men and women of the Medewewin Society (shamans dedicated to healing and soul therapy) used these sacred sites for ceremonies over the centuries. Drums, chants, and even hallucinogens (frequently peyote and magic mushrooms) helped to induce the shamanic trance and soul travel. No one was allowed to pass these places without leaving a gift for the resident spirit, generally tobacco or a medicine bundle. In return, the spirit would allow safe passage to either a physical or metaphysical destination. Thunderhouse Falls is one of those places.
Thunderhouse Gorge is probably the most acclaimed attraction of the Missinaibi River for its remarkable beauty, if for no other reason. But there is much more to it than simple visual appeal. Geologically, it represents the bold interface between the rocky Precambrian Shield and the James Bay Lowlands, exposing one of the thickest, continuous stratigraphic displays of early Precambrian gneisses and migmatites (striated and folded rock probing almost half a kilometre below the steep canyon walls). Mother Earth herself, exposed and vulnerable.
Thunderhouse also marks the rapid transition between Shield boreal forest and the vast, impenetrable slough of muskeg and spruce that runs to the sea. During the fur trade era it represented a monumental
