A cool breeze blew through the top of the pine trees. The chill had settled in even if the ground was still free from snow. A little further in the woods there was the railway line, a line that crossed the virgin forest of northern Ontario, binding the town of Cochrane to that improvised village called Moosonee. A village made up of eighty percent natives. A place with a long, long history, where the first settlers had been hunters, centuries ago. A center of the fur trade, it had once been a place of great economic influence along with the Hudson Bay Company.
From his very first years he had been fascinated by books. His grandfather had once given him a book on his birthday and that had been the start of his admiration for literature. He loved to spend time in libraries, reading on and on. Of course there had been times when he hated school and when he blamed his masters for their cruelty, but this seemed quite natural. He would soon learn the importance of schools in a society, the importance that knowledge be communicated to the younger generation.
As he grew up, he enjoyed his studies more than he had before. With the preparation of coursework, assignments and research that university imposed, he was led into those places where intelligence is accumulated and knowledge is bred. He walked into libraries feeling that chance could bind two human beings together. And from the very first he knew that this was the way. He would visit libraries over and over again. He would go there to work, to read, to do some research. He would discover new libraries, meditate amongst the intelligence and the books.
All through those years of study, his mind had become that of an analyst, and it remained that way for a number of years. He loved the sound of words, the sound conveyed by a sentence or a verse. But he was also attracted to the technical approach to language, to translation, the right word at the right time and place, the grammatical reasoning and linguistic changes. His mind was clearly inclined more to analysis than creation.
This was not to hide the least judgment or criticism. His studies had not been in vain for they broadened his fields of knowledge and understanding of his mother tongue. But when it came to reality, his efforts appeared to be worthless. Great knowledge doesn’t necessarily make a country’s economy grow. It was necessary, but in those days it there was too much demand. And as he refused to go into teaching because of uncertain results as well as his advanced age, he decided to become a journalist.
He passed the exams at the school of journalism brilliantly and was sent away to foreign countries to report on politics, social events, disasters, wars. Always concrete and active facts, facts that would make the headlines – contemporary history, really. Experience had taught him many things. If you were to write for somebody else, like a reporter for a newspaper, you had to follow every rule your superior imposed. Sometimes it went as far as having to re-write a whole series of columns to fit the respective tendencies of the journal. He saw it as a means of income. But with the passing of time he moved to independent journalism. He began writing his own articles as he pleased and sold them to several newspapers. To improve sales he had to adapt his style of writing – left or right wing, depending on the tendencies of the newspapers, depending on the thoughts and opinions of their directors. But as he improved, he seemed to have found how to do business with the modern economy. He had found a better way to make money, since one of the main expectations at the turn of the century was whether to have money or not to have money. It was a standard that was pretty hard to achieve – unless you were born with it – and hard to maintain. You had to fight for it, to devote yourself entirely to your job.
As his experience had brought him more ideas and knowledge for his work, and as his job brought him the financial resources, he could occasionally go on vacation. He had known what it was like to wake up one morning without a penny in his pocket. Ever since, he had preferred to travel while under contract to a newspaper, although this meant, of course, he could never have real vacations.
They climbed off the great train and the screeching of the wheels announced its renewed departure. The last wagons disappeared into the woods. The railway line made a great arc through the trees and they could now only hear the whistle and the puffs of steam of the locomotive working hard. Gradually the sound ebbed away and it seemed as though they were being reborn amidst nature. The artificial noise of the train was replaced by the soft moan of the wind in the leaves. It made a comforting impression on the journalist. After a few moments, once the train had gotten beyond the sound barrier, he realized that this was a truly virgin forest. No other sound but the wind and the rushing of water from a small brook. No sign of modernity, no trace of any human presence.
And yet, according to his guide, there were many people wandering through the woods at this time of year. The Indian Summer was not yet over and natives were out hunting. The school timetable had been specially adapted for their kids, and even their professional lives were set in a way that allowed them to go hunting once a year, in early autumn. It was important to be able to take their kids along: a way of keeping their culture alive.
“That is the least White Man could do for us. He has taken our land, but we have to keep respecting it. At least he bends to our customs,” the guide spoke as they went along, not even turning his head towards his companion.
Those were instructive vacations. He listened to the guide – the old man resembled a wizard – and only asked one or two questions to extend the talk further. Never would he interrupt. He was introduced to a new culture and it fascinated him. The guide was a true witness of past times. When he spoke it sounded like he was reading from a book of history, but he knew how to keep his talk entertaining, how to keep the listener awake. It was during the evenings spent outside the tent, beside the brightly burning fire, that the journalist found the true significance of life as he lay down listening to the man’s stories. It was then he realized what writing was, how much simpler it appeared when seen through such a wonderful landscape: the wild forest.
These trees, this wilderness – that was where it all came from. They possessed the knowledge of so many years. Ages ago they were here, or if not them, there were plenty before. This made him realize the cruelty inherent to mankind. But that’s how it goes, he thought. Or at least that is how it went, and it was too late to change it. “But you can respect nature,” he said to himself, “You can be more attentive to it, you can treat it better.” Ages ago there were woods all around and the men who lived here treated nature right. The same went for animals, the natives hunted and still hunt deer and bears, but they respected and esteemed their game, never would they waste the least part. After the hunting, they repented, meditated and prayed so that the game would be renewed the next season. It was a morally sane society, with honorable and respectful values. Men who handed down their beliefs and convictions to future generations.
This idea of transmission of beliefs and convictions made the journalist reflect. He thought it over night after night. Natives had done it mainly through oral tradition, even if their scriptures and paintings were abundant and of the utmost interest. He had known about the Indians, about the hostility between Reds and Whites, their eternal fight. But now he had met one of them, a real one. And he had heard him talk, the voice of a patriarch and ancestor, like the pride a warrior feels for his own tribe. That was when he realized that literature was not just the analysis of words and sentences. It was not the structure of a sentence that mattered but the meaning the sentence conveyed. The reflection of a culture. Yes, he had seen the beauty and vastness of nature and ever since he could feel the beauty and the wideness of imagination. All those years ago he had needed that pawn to discover imagination, creative inspiration, the thing you can’t learn from anyone else but yourself. These vacations in the northern woods of Ontario had created a transition to a new life for him: the life of a writer.
The knowledge the native guide had brought him was to be included in each of his future novels and stories. It was somehow a privilege to hand down the knowledge an ancestor had once confided to him.
© 2016 Matt Oehler
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