The House

By Dawn Natelle

OK, it finally happened. I need a break. There will be no chapter this weekend. Perhaps one on Monday if the muse strikes on the weekend: Dawn.

Chapter 12

In March, the week after Daria had her calves, Grey found himself back near the river. Dan was having a long-weekend campout for his Ojibwe Junior Warriors youth group and Grey had donated the Grove and his services for a three-day weekend. The boys (and a few girls) who had gotten permission slips signed, got out of school at lunch on Friday, and would be out until lunch on Monday.

Tents were erected through the grove on Friday afternoon for the boys and the leaders. The girls would sleep in the two smaller wigwams, which just needed to be cleaned out. The boys had to clear a spot and then erect their tents. Grey helped the leaders put up the tent they would sleep in, and went around to make sure the boys weren’t trying to put up a tent in a bad spot. Sloping land and worse, low spots that would flood if it rained, were the key problems to watch for.

Once tents were up, Grey took a walk through the grove with the students, explaining what the kinds of trees were. He showed how the leaves, cones (for conifers), bark and even the shape of acorns could help identify the species of a tree. At the end, groups of four were sent on a scavenger hunt to find certain tree types.

The winning teams were lined up and taken into the maple tree part of the grove. Earlier Grey had found that the maple sap had just started to flow steadily, and he brought out a collection of buckets and spigots that had been in the basement of the house. He showed the first four boys how to pound in the spigots and to attach the buckets. Since the grove had so many mature trees most had three buckets, and one huge old Maple took four. There were four less mature trees in the grove that only got a single bucket.

There were 42 junior warriors, and 50 trees, so everyone got one, with those with the smaller trees getting two. Grey just looked around and realized that the kids were saving him a lot of time in tapping the trees. And they would empty the buckets for three days as well.

In the evening a dinner of Sloppy Joes was served, to the delight of the kids, and after another hike through the woods, a campfire was set up with fallen branches that had been found on the hike. Grey was impressed at how many of the warriors tried to identify the wood they found. They were only right half the time, but even in their wrong guesses they were learning.

When the wood was stacked in the clearing near the spring, Dan chopped some of the longer branches to size as Grey showed the children how to make a fire using birch bark paper and a flint piece. Soon he had a fire of kindling burning, and larger and larger pieces of wood were added until there was a blazing fire.

Camp songs were sung, and Grey taught a simple Ojibwa tune to the kids, translating as he sang the words. Soon most of the kids were singing it as Grey beat on a drum he had constructed (with Flint’s help) last year. Some of the words were being mispronounced, but every child thought he or she was really speaking Ojibwe.

Eventually tired eyes led Grey to call it a night, and the kids were sent off to their camps. The parents were beat too, and went into their tents. Grey and Rabbit went into Grey’s old pup tent: Dan had warned that some of the fathers snored pretty badly, and Grey wanted to stay alert.

After about an hour there was silence from the tents of the children, and a gentle roar of snores from the Dads. Rabbit sat up, perking his ears, and then slipped out of the tent.

Grey was too tired to get up and investigate. However a few minutes later he heard snarling and barking from the area of the wigwams. It turned out that several of the boys tents thought it would be great fun to go to the wigwams and try to convince the girls that they were wild bears. They hoped to get the girls to run out screaming.

However it was the four boys who ran back screaming: Rabbit had growled from beside a wigwam, and the boys thought he was a wolf in the moonlight. The boys came to the parental tent, and leaped inside, waking the surprised Dads. It took nearly an hour to settle everything down. Grey eventually got up, and promised the boys that their little prank would earn them a treat the next day.

Grey went to bed alone: Rabbit had been invited into the wigwams and slept with the girls. Grey woke up before sunup, a little upset at the short sleep, and when the sun was just peeping up he went around and woke the boys, asking who wanted to see some wildlife.

Only about 15 boys and 2 girls climbed out of bed, rushing to the three latrines as Grey stoked the fires for breakfast. Then Grey led the early risers to the river, impressed at how well Dan had taught them to move silently through the woods.

At the river edge, they sat on various logs and watched the morning procession of animals coming for a morning drink. Daria was still in the area, and she brought her two bull calves to the water on the other side, with their new, gangly legs all akimbo as they tried to drink. On the nearer side they saw otter, deer with fawns, and to Grey’s surprise, several beaver. He hadn’t seen beaver in the area before.

They sat for over an hour until there stopped being so many other animals coming. The reason soon manifested itself. The wolf pack, now up to 12, came to drink. No other animals appeared while they were there. And then there was a black bear mother, with two cubs: this finally drew ‘aahs’ from the girls, and some boys, and that noise scared away the other animals.

“Come along now,” Grey said softly. “I am proud of you. You kept stone quiet for nearly an hour and you got to see some real nature. We will leave now so other animals can come to drink.”

They got back to camp a few minutes later, just as Dan was leading another dozen back who had woken up too late to join Grey. They had gone to the river on the west, rather than to the north where Grey was, and had seen a smaller collection of animals. No moose or bear, but otters, beaver, and deer. They were pleased.

The sleepy-heads in the camp were not so happy at having missed the show. “S’not fair,” insisted on of the girls. “You should have taken all of us.”

“I asked in every tent, and both wigwams,” Grey said. “I believe it was you who said ‘Go way. It’s too early’. Nature does not work to the schedule of man. You can’t see nature like a videocassette you can pop in at your pleasure. Nature has its own schedule, and you have to adapt to it.”

Most of the kids understand, but Grey heard ‘s’not fair’ repeated a few more times.

The fathers had gotten up and cooked a huge helping of scrambled eggs in one pan, bacon in another, and sausages in a third over the fire Grey had built up. Everyone ate well especially Rabbit, who darted back and forth from one hand to another, getting nibbles of bacon and sausage.

“All right,” Grey said when the ravenous pack of eaters started to slow down. “There was an incident last night where four boys decided to have some fun and scare the girls. The tables were turned, and I think I mostly heard boy screams. Let’s have the four boys stand up.”

The ashamed and somewhat frightened boys stood in front of Grey, who they considered more of a real Ojibwe then even Dan. Would they be sent home? Kicked out of the Warriors? Or even suffer physical punishment?

“In return for keeping us up all night, you four will miss today’s activities. Instead you will man the maple sap pots, one of which Dan is just now placing on the coals. You need to keep the fire burning, but not so much that you can’t stir the sap.”

“Now, everyone, including you four, needs to go out to the maple grove to collect the first batch of sap. Dan and I will go down between row 1 and 2 and 4 and 5 of the trees with big buckets, and you kids will go to the tree you tapped yesterday and take off the tins and drain them into the buckets. Try to be quick, we don’t want to miss any drips from the spigots if we can help it. We will do this again at noon and after supper.”

“What time is it, Grey?” a boy asked.

Grey looked at the sun, just over the horizon. “For this time in the spring, I would say it is about 8 to 8:15,” he said.

“It is 8:13,” one of the parents said, and the kids all gasped at how close Grey was, without a watch.

Once the syrup was in the pot, the children, other than the four on pot duty, followed Grey into the Oak part of the grove.

“You will notice that there are a lot of saplings growing here, but not in Black Walnut or Maple groves. That is because I have been tending those groves, clearing away the saplings and underbrush. I leave a few saplings in case a tree dies and needs to be taken down. You know that big Sugar Maple that has four buckets? It has a rot in the heartwood, and I will probably harvest it this fall, and plant a sapling in its place. It will be many years before the new tree is large enough to be tapped again.”

“We saw some stumps in the black walnut grove,” said one of the boys who had gone with Dan to the river. “Dan said you planted saplings to replace them.”

“Yes, the new saplings are right near the stumps, so as they grow the old tree will nourish the new one. It is how nature works in a cycle. Some of us saw wolves this morning. They will eat the otters and deer if they get a chance. It is all a part of how nature works.”

“They should kill all the wolves,” a girl said. “The deer are pretty.”

“Sun and I killed many wolves last winter. They were attacking a pregnant moose we had made friends with. But we did not kill all of them. We left enough that the pack could grow again, and we saw this morning that they have many pups with them now. But it is important that we have wolves, and that they kill the deer. If no deer were killed then eventually the deer over-population would eat all the young trees. Then there would be no food for the deer, and they would all die. Then the wolves would die with no deer or other animals to eat. And when the mature trees die, there would be no young trees to take their place. This beautiful land would be a desert. There needs to be a balance in nature. The Ojibwe understand this. I hope you can understand this, and let nature take its true course.”

Grey looked over his audience and saw that his little speech had made a connection with the kids. They realized that nature was not like a park or a zoo. Animals died so that other animals could live.

“My uncle hunts deer,” a boy said. “There is even a deer’s head in his basement rec room. It is pretty, but I sometimes wish it could be wild. Do you believe in hunting Grey?”

“Yes I do. Sun and I lived by hunting for over a year before we moved into the big house. I still take a deer or bear when we need more meat. But I hunt with a bow. Sunflower is actually a better hunter than I am. I don’t believe in hunting with guns. There is no talent in killing a deer a half-mile away. I have to get to about here to that big tree, from a deer to kill it cleanly. Sun can shoot a bit further. And I absolutely hate people who hunt, and do not eat the meat. That is not hunting, it is an evil sport.”

“You must use a gun to hunt bear,” another boy said. “I saw a big bear skin in the store that was huge. You couldn’t kill that with a bow.”

“Actually Sun shot that bear with a bow and arrow. They only thing is, with a bear you don’t miss. If you do, you better have a knife handy, and expect to be bloodied when it is over. Or dead.”

“But we are wasting the sun talking,” Grey moved to a lighter topic. “Today we are going to cut staves. I want everyone to go stand next to a sapling. It should be no more than 2-inches at the base, and at least an inch-and-a-half as high as you can reach. Make sure it is straight. It can have branches, but the fewer the better. I’ll go around and check.”

Grey was carrying a deerskin bag with five hatchets in it. When he found a Warrior with a suitable sapling, he gave the child a hatchet and asked that it be cut within six inches of the ground. When done with the hatchet, it was passed to another child. After they all had a sapling cut, they each took off the branches, ideally with only two cuts per branch. A cut on the underside first meant that the cut on the top would not tear down the bark. Finally, they all cut the sapling at the top, which took fewer chops than at the bottom, leaving a six-foot stave.

"This afternoon we will all take turns using knives to cut the bark from the saplings, and then you will need to let them dry for six weeks or so. Then you will be able to finish them up. We will debark them after lunch."

With five hatchets and nearly 50 children, you might think that there would be boredom starting, but Grey told stories of the past, and how the Ojibwe lived at different times as they worked. There were huge groans when he explained how children of the people lived when there were no televisions, telephones, or Internet. But they seemed to appreciate how the simpler way of life could be better, with people helping each other as a clan, and not just a family.

When everyone walked back to camp with proto-staves the boys who had been working the sap pot looked envious. Grey announced that their punishment would end after lunch, which was pot of hotdogs, with enough for two per boy or girl. However first everyone had to go make another collection of sap, adding it to the first pot.

Grey then took the four truants to the Oak grove and had them cut down staves. With four boys and five hatchets, it went quicker, and they were back in time to get the 10 hotdogs that had been saved for them. Rabbit again was getting his fill. Most of the girls were satisfied with only a hotdog and a half, and donated the other half to the hero who had saved them the night before.

In the afternoon on Saturday the children used knives to strip the bark from the staves. Grey was ready when the first boy nicked himself with his knife, and produced a handmade salve that he had prepared which treated the wound immediately. The salve would allow the skin to rejoin, and then by Monday afternoon only a slight scar would be left. Later another boy cut himself, but deeper, and normally a trip to the hospital would be required for a few stitches. But Grey merely pulled the pieces of skin together, holding it with a strip of deer gut, and then applied the salve as before, and covered the wound. The salve on the first boy dried over the day, and Grey was able to wash it away in the spring. But the second boy, although the wound was healing, had to have another dose of the salve, with the process repeated in the morning, and again at noon the next day.

After the staves were cleaned, Grey explained their use, showing one he had made the year before.

“Mine is a clear stave only for walking, although I did use it once when I got too close to a raccoon’s kits, and she attacked. A whack on the head and she backed off. But I think that Dan is going to have you guys do your staves up in Boy Scout style. That means putting grooves in wood at 12-inch marks for five feet, and inch marks for the other six inches. Can anyone tell me why we don’t do that now?”

There was no reaction from the students until Jace, one of the smallest boys in the group, raised his hand and said: “You said the staves have to dry out. If they dry out, they probably shrink, and any measurements we did now would be wrong.”

“Perfect answer,” Grey said. “Now it is important to know that the wood is not as strong now as it will be when it is dried out, so don’t try any of these things until Dan tells you it is alright. Otherwise your stave will crack, and be useless.”

“Here are some tricks you can do with staves. Imagine you need to climb a tree to check out where you are in a forest. One boy needs to climb. Two others can hold one of two staves and the boy climbing can use this to get a boost to the branches of the tree. Experienced campers, if they are the same height, can even put a second stave on their shoulders to make a second step. With two boys it spreads the weight out, compared to a single boy trying to boost another.”

Another trick is that three staves together can make a tripod,” he borrowed two green staves and used his to make the tripod. You can use this to cook something over a fire. With a tripod at each end, and one running across, you have the start to a lean-to. A group like this would be too big for a six-foot lean-to, but additional tripods and cross pieces could extend it to make a shelter from the wind for everyone.”

“A couple other uses: making a stretcher with a blanket and two staves; testing the depth of a river before you try to ford it; a barrier to keep a crowd back; measuring distances, estimating weights of fish and other items, and estimating the heights of trees and other things. We will be getting into the last few tricks on Monday morning, if we have time. Be warned, they involve Math.” There was a general groan.

“Finally, scouts often wrap things around their staves. Two loops around a two-inch stave will be a foot of material. So you could put a 20-foot cord in 40 loops, and have rope handy for any use, as well as making a softer spot on the stave for your hand. And 100 loops of fishing line will give you 50 feet of line, allowing you to fish with the stave as your pole.”

The kids were all astonished at how useful the staves could be for camping, and what they were learning. There was another walk through the grove while the parents cooked dinner, Sloppy Joes again. The Warriors were much better at identifying the trees, and Grey added material on the uses of the various types of wood. The young people were incredibly exited to learn that the Black Walnut trees were worth $6000 each, and the values of some of the other trees. Suddenly little Jace shouted out: “That means all these trees are worth $800,000.” He had done the calculations in his head.

“And with the surrounding trees, they are worth more than a million dollars,” Grey said. “Nature can be quite valuable.”

After dinner, and another emptying of the Maple Syrup containers, there was another campfire and this time when the kids went to sleep, there were no hi-jinks. Rabbit did spend the night in the girls’ wigwams, spending most of the night in the arms of one girl or the other.

Sunday went much as the prior day did. All but four of the children got up to go to the river at daybreak. Grey took one group a bit northeast to a new spot, Dan went to where Grey had been on Saturday, and a parent led a group west where Dan had been the prior day.

All groups managed to see wildlife, although the parent-led group saw less, due to being noiser. Daria was back, but saw Dan instead of Grey, so was less interested. Grey’s group was lucky, seeing a rare bobcat and her cute kittens.

After breakfast Grey held a session on arrow making. He said the art of making a bow would have to come later.

“Does this mean we get to come back?” several excited boys asked.

“If you are good, and respect nature the way Grey tells you, we might be able to have our first fall campout out here,” Dan said with general cheering following. “We will have one more outing in June, but that will be down at my cottage on the lake. Swimming gear will be required. It will be only one night. My mother can’t put up with so many for longer than that.” More cheering.

“Can Grey come too?” one of the girls asked. “He tells the best stories. You listen and are all into the story and then when it is over you learned something from it.” There were general begging cries through the group.

“I can’t promise,” Grey said. “But I will try to join you.” More cheers.

After the arrows were made, and a few of them looked like they might fly further than they could be thrown, Sunflower appeared at the camp. They boys seemed in awe of her, but the girls were happy to have a member of their gender present, even if she was more than three times their size.

Sun and Grey demonstrated shooting, with Grey able to hit a sapling 100 yards out. Sun shot putting her first arrow almost through Grey’s, then hit another sapling 150 yards out, and finally sending an arrow 200 yards.

“Ha, you missed,” one of the boys jeered.

“Did she?” Grey asked. “Run out there and pull out arrows from the trees, and look around for the arrow from that last tree.”

The boy did, and came back with all four arrows, puffing from the exertion of the run. “She did hit the last tree,” he gasped. “The arrow just nicked the side of the tree. That is frigging amazing shooting.”

“Practice is the key to bowmanship,” Sun said, “or bow-woman-ship. If you want to be good at it you need to work at it. I try to shoot for a half hour each night, although since I moved to the house I have missed too many nights.”

Grey then let the students try to pull Sun’s bows (she had brought two). Grey could pull the string back nearly a foot, but the boys could only pull from three to eight inches. The girls were lucky to pull two inches. They were amazed when Sun pulled the string back a full three feet.

That evening Grey was at the spring when he heard several boys joking.

“This is the best tasting water,” one lad said.

“Like Entwash from the Lord of the Rings,” another said.

“Then Jace should drink a lot, and he might grow bigger,” the first said.

“Yeah, then the bullies in Grade 8 won’t be able to dunk him in the trash bins,” a third boy said. That was when Grey stepped in.

“Are you saying that you watch one of your friends being bullied and you didn’t do anything?” Grey said.

“Well, they are Grade 8s, and one failed so he is like Grade 9. We can’t do anything about it. They only take lunch money from the little kids. Jace is the only one from our group that they pick on.”

Around the campfire Grey had a message for the group.

“I just learned that there is bullying going on at your school,” he said. “That ends now. You are all Ojibwe Junior Warriors, and if you want to come back to the grove, then you will have to act like it.”

“Ojibwe do not let the small and defenseless be pushed around by bullies and thugs. You girls are young, but soon you will be of the age and bullies may try to intimidate you to do things you are not ready for. This will not happen, if I am involved with your group.”

“But they are bigger than us, Grey.”

“One-on-one they might be. But there are nearly 40 of you. Do you think the bullies would fight you all? Bullies don’t like to fight. They like to scare people. If you stand up to them, they will back off. They might even try to fight a few. But if they learn that if they bloody one of you, then they will have to face three, four, or five more, they will run. Bullies are cowards. Stand up to them once, and you will never have to do it again.”

“And I’m not saying it is just Jace you need to protect. He is a member of your tribe, and I am a little ashamed at you that you have let this happen to him. But you also stand up for the smaller kids who are not in your tribe.”

The older boys in the group looked ashamed. They didn’t want Grey looking down on them. One bigger boy stood up and spoke: “Next week at school we will stop them. Who is with me?”

Two more boys stood: “I am.”

Another dozen stood: “Us too!”

Finally every boy in the group, and all of the girls were standing. “Us too!”

“Great,” Grey said. “If you do this, then you are true Ojibwe. I will be proud of you all.”

Monday morning was mostly cleanup, although every child was up to see the animals at the river in the same three groups, but with different leaders. All the kids wanted to go with Grey, or Dan, but the groups were mixed so that any student not with Grey in the past went with him.

Breakfast followed, and then cleanup. The last emptying of the buckets was made, with the sap going into a second kettle. Grey had gotten up during the nights to stoke the fires under the first sap pot and the sap in it was nearly syrup. When parents started to arrive at 11, the camp was clear, except for Grey’s tent. The last activity of the campout was for each child to get a cedar stick, and plunge it into the syrup. After blowing on it to cool it, they got a taste of the Maple Syrup they had made. Many parents, and younger siblings also got a taste. Soon the last car (or occasionally a truck) left with much waving, and Grey and Rabbit were alone in the grove. Grey looked around. The camp was completely clean: he had told the kids that Ojibwe leave a camp looking as if they hadn’t been there. It wasn’t that good, but he was proud of how well they had picked up.

He went down to the maple grove with a bucket, and started to empty the collection pots. His help was gone, and he would have three weeks more of this before the sap stopped running. Rabbit trotted alongside, a little sorry that all his girl friends were gone, but happy to be with Grey.