BOOK I

AWAKING




I


I remember poising naked upon a rock, ready to dive into Lake George.
This memory stands at the end of a diminishing vista; the extreme point
of coherent recollection. My body and muscular limbs reflected in the
water filled me with savage pride.

I knew, as the beast knows its herd, that my mother Marianne was hanging
the pot over the fire pit in the center of our lodge; the children were
playing with other papooses; and my father was hunting down the lake.
The hunting and fishing were good, and we had plenty of meat. Skenedonk,
whom I considered a person belonging to myself, was stripping more
slowly on the rock behind me. We were heated with wood ranging.
Aboriginal life, primeval and vigor-giving, lay behind me when I plunged
expecting to strike out under the delicious forest shadow.

When I came up the sun had vanished, the woods and their shadow were
gone. So were the Indian children playing on the shore, and the shore
with them. My mother Marianne might still be hanging her pot in the
lodge. But all the hunting lodges of our people were as completely lost
as if I had entered another world.