Tag: Indigenizing Pilgrimage

Categories
Uncategorized

markers on the way

NWMP patrol trail marker. Val Marie, Saskatchewan. 49°14'48
NWMP patrol trail marker. Val Marie, Saskatchewan. 49°14’48” N 107°41’57” W

There were times, walking, where I forgot about our guides on the trail – the North West Mounted Police  markers that Everett Baker put up in 1960 and 61. After all, that was over 50 years ago. Even eight foot concrete posts don’t always last that long, when neglected. We couldn’t always find them. Sometimes they’d been knocked down by cattle or vandalized. And sometimes, to avoid walking on crop, or because they haven’t been seen for decades, we just couldn’t find them. But Hugh, who is responsible for the posts on behalf of the SK History and Folklore Society, always had them in mind. In our three weeks of walking we found about 25 that were not on their maps or databases. Every time Hugh would kneel by the post and get the GPS coordinates for their survey. More than once he looked like an old-time pilgrim, kneeling at a roadside shrine. Which, in a sense, those posts are.

The magnificent post photos were taken by Branimir Gjetvaj, whose photography website is http://www.branimirphoto.ca. The photo of Hugh kneeling is mine.

Hugh kneeling before marker

NWMP patrol trail marker. Val Marie, Saskatchewan. 49°15'43
NWMP patrol trail marker. Val Marie, Saskatchewan. 49°15’43” N 107°46’39” W
Categories
Uncategorized

12 minute documentary on our walk by local news service

My thanks to George Tsougrianis, who did a great job on this documentary, putting it together in two days! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLUdJZC72GU&feature=youtu.be&t=2m45s

Categories
Uncategorized

Norwegian Prairie Reunion

IMG_2633

One of the pleasures of this North West Mounted Police Patrol trail walk was that I had the chance to do the last section of it in the company of some of the same folks who walked the St Olaf trail in Norway with me in 2013. Pictured are Allen Jorgenson, Kathryn Scott, and Gwenanne Jorgenson. The Jorgensons and I caught up (Gwenanne was a little less camera shy) and Kathryn and I got to sing and walk to our heart’s content. And Allen and I shared poetry. Mostly, the walking and lack of paper led to Haiku. Here’s one:

Listen! the trail says,         While you pilgrims toss and dream     Night’s creatures walk on.

fencepost on the Frenchman

Categories
Uncategorized

Some Kind of Weather Coming

Some kind of weather coming

That’s a prairie way of saying it. The expression can mean anything from hot temperatures to a tornado, and is usually delivered with the same inflection no matter which.

I found myself saying it on the second last day of the NWMP trail pilgrimage. We were walking atop a tableland of prairie grass. We’d slowed to look at tepee rings – about a dozen of them, stretching across several high hills. Just then there’d been a magical moment, as a small herd of unbroken horses wheeled counterclockwise around us at full gallop, circling to come up right behind Madonna, who was behind us and so intently peering at some of the rocks that she didn’t notice the animals, clustered and shivering, in turn peering at her. Then suddenly the horses were gone again, and we found ourselves looking up at an increasingly black, roiling cloud that stretched from one horizon to the other. A group of cattle nearby starting lowing – a plaintive, anxious sound. A muscular north wind came up, and with it the first drops of rain, pelting hard and from an angle. Some kind of weather coming.

We were too far from any coulees to take shelter, and there were no trees (not that trees would have been a good idea anyway). Gwenanne had found a small cut in the prairie, a few meters deep, and the group of us huddled in there. I still had some hot tea, but when the skies started growling thunder, some of us went to our elbows. The cattle were making very unhappy, frightened sounds. Rain beat down and lightning cracked. “It’s the bear principle,” I joked, “you don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other person.” “Good, well one time to be happy I’m the shortest,” announced Madonna.

We found out later there was an extreme weather warning for wind and thunderstorms for our area at that moment. Just like the prairies, I thought, to give us such an experience on the second last day of trekking. The wind was so strong that the storm blew over, and drying out happened quickly, although the temperature had dropped precipitously. It was a howling, cold, night, and by the time the vehicles were moved and the tents put up we only had time for some soup. Communitas in a crowded van. I crawled in to my tent and listened a while to the gusts buffeting the nylon and straining at the stakes. Then I put in earplugs and borrowed in. Getting used to the prairie isn’t just beautiful sunsets and endless days of watching deer spring out of the valleys. It’s also this. A reminder just before parting. Some kind of weather.

Matthew post storm

Categories
Uncategorized

Eating like a Horse

stag watching us

It’s raining lightly, tonight, at the Brost ranch. While there was still light, we headed past the ranch-house beside us, and down a grassy path to an old monument half-hidden about a half-kilometre away in the trees. It’s a small, mostly-forgotten concrete marker that says “North West Mounted Police post Cottonwood Coulee, 1878-1885”. The rancher told us it was there. Hugh knew there was such a marker, from the Everett Baker slides, taken in the 1950s and 60s. No one knows when the marker dates from. As we stood on the site of the old fort, over the hill, the sun was setting in brilliant golds and reds. Do you see that? asked Madonna, pointing. From the top of the coulee, a stag is watching us, framed against a sky like a painting.

Tonight’s dinner was a good example of communitas. Each of us brought something to the table – the Jorgensons brought pasta and pesto, Rick his hamburgers and onions, Madonna a lentil casserole, and I had my rations. we made a feast of it, laughing and teasing each other. Two days left in the walk, and I am disturbed that my mind is already starting to turn away from blisters and feet and the history of these hills to scheduling back in Montreal. Food tastes so good when you’ve waked so far for it, I think.

Speaking of eating, on our way back from the monument, the yard is full of horses, together with some cattle and a donkey. One of the horses is so interested in my camera that s/he looks like they want to eat it. We get back, only to hear from Gwenanne that one of the horses was nibbling at our tents. The ranchers tell a story of a local hunter who left his new truck in the field only to come back and find it scratched and all the plastic eaten off. Apparently, the horses like to nibble. As I write this, it’s dark, and there are horse sounds all around. I will move the van somewhere closer to the tent, and hope for the best.The group head off to sleep. There’s a neighing sound, somewhere close by. “I’d better check,” Madonna laughs nervously. “They might be eating my tent by now”.

communitas dinner

Categories
Uncategorized

Learning a Language

looking up for the bird

Yesterday, while walking the long, long 16 miles of road between the Lacelle farm and Cypress Lake, my mobile rang and I was asked for an interview. The person on the other end of the phone was from Radio Canada in Regina. He was a very kind, very nice man named William, from Ottawa originally. We spoke English in our initial conversation. When we switched to French I was nervous. I told him that for me, part of the reason for this pilgrimage is to learn the language of the prairie. He seemed intrigued. What do you mean, the language of the prairie? Words that I grew up learning, I said. Or at least, words I grew up hearing, words I used to know, or that I feel I should know as part of my heritage and patrimony, but don’t remember. For instance, words about animals.

We’ve seen so many different kinds of wildlife, I told him.

Oh yes, he asked? Can you tell me some of what you’ve seen?

That’s when my words – and my memory – failed completely. How do you say badger in French? Or antelope? And while I know the word for deer, I completely mispronounced it. I probably said ‘brain’. Thankfully, William didn’t laugh out loud. As for the birds, for all of the times I’ve asked Hugh or Trevor Herriot for names, I could barely remember a single one we’ve seen. The list of what I forgot is long:

On the open prairie:

Sprague’s Pipit – who make a lovely, downward spiral whistle as they drop; Swainson’s hawk – making a high, plaintive screech as we pass by; Bald eagle – the immature birds looking like golden eagles; Chestnut coloured longspur; Sparrows – who always make me feel at home

In farmyards and old abandoned farmyards:

Great Horned owl – beautiful, and so quiet as they fly; Barn swallows; Nighthawk – thin as a stick, on top of fenceposts; Mourning doves – waking us up in the morning in our tents, just like the city; Magpies – those familiar, raucous scavengers; Ravens; crows

On roadsides, crops and crop borders:

Meadowlark – the beautiful, multifluted song that sounds like the prairie; Horned lark; Blackbirds – with their “chherk, chherk” rough voices; Red-winged blackbird – reminding me of Quebec ditches; Yellow-headed blackbird – a shock when I first saw one; Eastern Kingbird; Western Kingbird; Sharp tailed grouse – thumping away as we walk by; Grey partridge – always a shock to the adrenaline as they wait and then bolt; Lark bunting

On the gravel road:

Kildeer – skinny legs running; Blackbirds – filling their beaks with the black crickets that hop here and there across the dust

So belatedly: there you are, William. Better late than never, I hope. We’ve spent a lot of our time looking up, and looking out, on this pilgrimage. It’s too bad I couldn’t say this for the interview. Like any new language, the language of the prairie takes practice. I can tell I need a lot more practice. I’m glad that there are three more days of land, both crop and pastureland, where I can watch and practice a bit more.  (photos courtesy of James Page)

Swainsons Hawk

Categories
Uncategorized

The Gull Lake Advance on the NWMPT pilgrimage

Gull Lake Advance July 20 2015

old cultivator and hills

Categories
Uncategorized

Rhubarb Wine among the Saints

cactus on the plain

Tonight we;re in a grove between caragana hedges, on the Duke farm near Eastend SK. Now that the dark has descended, it feels like a secret, hidden place, with only the sound of cicadas and crickets to accompany my typing. No coyotes as yet, although the moon is full and just waiting for their chorus. The farm is located along the Frenchman River, with the steep walls of the valley rising miles away at either side of a great, wide, flood plain. We walked that plain all day….tawny hills on the left and the right, white mud cliffs that leave your fingers stained, and a river I wanted several times to jump into for some kind of break from the heat. For the first time this trip, we’ve had to contend with mosquitoes, so setting up tents was a hurried affair.

Fortunately, we have a gazebo, and that’s where I shelter to write this. The others have gone to sleep – funny how a full day of walking makes for fatigue as soon as the sun sets. For a late supper we put together Madonna’s lentil soup, Hugh’s beans, Kathryn’s broccoli salad and some British Army ration soup. We ate the resulting mix, out of the pot, with gusto. But the best part of the meal was rhubarb white wine, from the Cypress Hills winery, donated to us by Curt and Lorie Gronhovd, the incredibly kind hosts with whom we stayed last night.

Over dinner (and the wine) we talked about saints and First Nations, about the connection between the Egyptian desert fathers and the Irish monks, and between those monastics and a pilgrimage here and now in south-west Saskatchewan. I guess it’s no mistake that this is, also, a semi-desert that we walk through. Fifteen miles today in land that, like the Biblical wildernesses, reduces the walker to the essentials. When the land is so sparse and the cactus and short grasses (and some cattle skeletons) are all you see, the wind blows and I think of Ezekial calling the four winds at the Lord’s behest, or Christ in the desert. Or Saint-Anthony, seeking white martyrdom in the wilds of Egypt.

Tomorrow we walk to Chimney Coulee, so named for the chimneys left behind by the Métis hivernants who built a settlement there in the mid 1870s. They say there are ghosts there, of the Assiniboine who died scavenging after Cowlie, the Hudson’s Bay trader, hurriedly left in 1873. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow night. For tonight there’s the moon, the mosquitoes, the dark, and the wind through the caraganas. And thoughts of the saints and their time of testing and of encountering the divine in a wilderness not so different from this one.

rhubarb wine

whitemud

Categories
Uncategorized

Alive and Well

IMG_0215

There’s something exciting and exhilarating about taking shelter in the back of a van, the back gate up providing a temporary roof, watching the driving rain come down so hard you don’t dare step out into it. It feels just a bit precarious when the lightning is so loud and close you take your feet off the ground just in case there’s a nearby strike. Wondering if the tent you’ve set up under the caraganas will hold up and stay dry (especially since your sleeping bag is already in the tent. You can see the fabric of the fly bouncing from the weight of the downpour, the heavy rain spraying from the roof). But it’s also, somehow, comforting. You are – mostly – dry, the threatened wetness in your boots and the moisture seeping down your back balanced by the carrot and coriander soup mixed with long grain rice (British Army rations) that you’ve saved from the fire and are now eating, steaming hot, straight from the pot.

I’m alive and well. Both. I’m learning once again that the two are not always the same thing.

After the rain, a rainbow comes out over the Frenchman River valley, also known as Whitemud. The valley is so wide you can see both sides of the arc touching down. Golden light floods the river plain from the west. There are horses – perhaps a dozen – charging around the field beside us, kicking up their back legs, perhaps in relief at the temporary respite from the storm. It’s one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen, their manes and tails flying against the dark sky.

The clouds close again and the rain settles in – 7/10ths by morning. I’m awakened several times by flashes of light and loud booms, and sometimes by the horses in the Green’s trailer, whose movements also sound like thunder. At 6:45 am Hugh and I meet in our rain ponchos in the drizzle, trying to decide what to do. Bishop Don’s tent has flooded. The horse folks are calling it a day before starting and starting to pack up. It will be impossible to get through the riverbank grass and lower bogs in any case, so we decide to postpone the half-day river section of the walk. We confer with the rancher, Terry Jensen, a cowboy so stoic he looks as though he would be unperturbed if a spaceship landed on his property. He owns as it might be good to wait. We drive up and out of the valley before the road becomes impassable. It’s the first day we’ve had to change plans. Flexibility, I tell myself, is one of the marks of a pilgrim.

IMG_0203

Categories
Uncategorized

Our North-West Company of Pilgrims

middle of the road picnic Pinto Butte

Yesterday two of our group of four pilgrims ended their leg of the walk. Rick Kotowich will be staying for the community event tonight in Val Marie, and then heading home, perhaps to join us again near the end of the pilgrimage. My former teaching assistant, Hayden Thomassin, managed to find a spot on the Greyhound to Regina and is in place for his flight home today.

Already well over 100 km traversed. We’ve met some very nice people – in the photo above, three local ranch families (thanks esp to Keith and Margaret Walker and to Howard and Fern Hanson!) came together to meet us as we passed one of the few roads that day. They brought watermelon, rhubarb cake, and cold water, and lots of smiles. We needed the break and the refreshment. It was perhaps our hardest walking – through mile after mile of natural prairie grassland, over cactus and dry bog and sage and speargrass. By the end of the walk, our laces were furry with the speargrass that worked its way into my shoes and caused a painful blister. Our companions on this portion of the walk were Dave and Esther Green on horseback. We also came across all kinds of wildlife: deer, antelope, coyote, Swainson’s hawks with their scratchy cries overhead, and the tail end of a small horned lizard skittering down a hole. None of the rattlesnakes that live in these hills, unfortunately (or fortunately!).

At the end of the day I stumbled across a huge solitary boulder, rubbed smooth over years by the bison herds now gone. When my companions went to see it, they said: “didn’t you see? It wasn’t a boulder but a sleeping buffalo”. Sure enough, it was in the shape of a sleeping bison. Yet another of the magical places that sit alone on this land.

Hugh and I will miss Hayden and Rick. Rick’s attention to the spirit and the feeling of the land was inspirational, and Hayden brought a wonderful openness and enthusiasm to this first experience. More pilgrims are joining us today, so the company will change. But the journey, and the land, will stay the same.

Matt and Rick by NWMP trail post Pinto Butte July 23

(Photos by Marshall Drummond of Val Marie)

Hayden and Matthew selfie VM bar