Asin spends as much time as possible in Tommy Thompson Park. The park is located on the Leslie Street Spit, a white man–made peninsula, and it is the only white man–made structure in the city that Asin enjoys. This doesn’t mean it was or is a good idea to go there. Using the park is a compromise. No, that’s not right. It is a place where birds congregate because there is no other place left. There are more than three hundred species there and so it is well known by ornithologists and birdwatchers, and in the fall and spring the migrating songbirds and shore birds stop on their way to something better. In this way, it reminds Asin of a campground along the Trans-Canada Highway in the prairies. Only for birds.
In the winter, Asin watches the boreal owl hunt for voles at dusk, and then Asin rides back to their apartment. The boreal owl is anti-social and nocturnal, like Asin. They are a sit-and-wait predator the size of a robin. They sit fifteen to twenty feet above the ground in trees, close to the trunk. The summer is their breeding season. While there are considerably fewer species of birds than there used to be, birds are still engaged in the building blocks of their nation, and they work to reproduce not just their bodies, but all the structures, behaviours and beliefs that enable large-scale survival. There are large-ish colonies of double-crested cormorants and black-crowned night-herons.
Asin does not have a life list of birds they have seen, because unlike most other birders, that’s not why Asin is here.
Akiwenzii
Not everything is in fine working order on Akiwenzii’s body anymore. They are returning to the earth in a slow, letting-go process. They are being pulled out of body and are sinking further into the universe.
I don’t like it.
Akiwenzii finds it humiliating at the best of times.
It is an ugly process and there is no use romanticizing about it.
Akiwenzii used to run the sweats and that’s the way Lucy liked it. All they had to do was show up and firekeep. This was the routine for several years, until Asin started showing up and firekeeping too and soon there were too many firekeepers and not enough bodies on the inside of the lodge. Akiwenzii took care of that. They told Lucy to come in and sit in the northern doorway.
Lucy didn’t realize it at the time, which seems to be a key strategy with the Nishnaabeg, but any good firekeeper needs to know the intricacies of not just fire, but also water. If one doesn’t know how those two work together, in sadness, in joy, in uncertainty and in hurt, then one can’t sit where Akiwenzii sits. If one doesn’t know how to work with heat and wet in the dry of winter or the humid of summer, the whole thing falls apart rather dramatically.
Akiwenzii comes in the lodge with one Ancestor, smokes their pipe and then leaves before the heat. They are sad when they leave, but they also don’t want to have a heart attack in the lodge.
Mindimooyenh
Mindimooyenh says: “Ceremony is not an Instagram photo.”
Mindimooyenh
Mindimooyenh says: “If it is a performance, the spirits refuse to show up. You guys are so full of shit you don’t even notice.”
Mindimooyenh
Mindimooyenh says: “We spend most of our time taking down our own.”
Mindimooyenh
Mindimooyenh says: “Pay attention to the moon.”
Akiwenzii
Akiwenzii is looking for a partner. A life partner, even though they don’t have much life left. They tell me this is an impossible task, because things don’t look good or work good and everyone is already dead.
I ask them what they want a partner for anyway.
They shake their head.
Akiwenzii
Akiwenzii is tired. Tired of acting like they are too old to be scared. Tired of acting like they are too old to care what they look like. Tired of acting like life experience has made them wise. Tired of being positive and having faith in the young people. Tired of the way what is most dear to them gets deployed and misused and performed. Tired of putting a happy goddamn spin on the end of the world.
Akiwenzii
I tell Akiwenzii that all the stories have been told. That there are no new ideas. You can try and make something up but chances are, it’s already happened or it just doesn’t matter. That we are stuck and anything that gets us unstuck seems trite.
“So?” they say.
“All the stories have always already been told. You just tell the same ones over and over and over and over and eventually, if you are patient, something you forgot breaks through. You aren’t patient.”
Akiwenzii
Akiwenzii keeps their special things in the glove compartment of their truck:
claw of an eagle wrapped in red cloth
flint and steel
hunting knife
Akiwenzii
Akiwenzii and Mindimooyenh grew up together. Mindimooyenh is a little younger, but that doesn’t stop them from telling Akiwenzii exactly what they think and it never has. They don’t spend much deliberate time together now but proximity keeps them in contact on a weekly basis. This week, for instance, Mindimooyenh was tarp shopping at Canadian Tire and Akiwenzii was there in the lawn mower section looking at weed whackers because they were on sale. Mindimooyenh walked by pushing their cart full of Certified Value Tarps 15 × 20 in royal blue and said, “Birdseed is on sale, chum.” Part of Akiwenzii felt irritated and part of Akiwenzii felt grateful for the reminder, because that was the item they’d come to Canadian Tire for in the first place.
Mindimooyenh
Mindimooyenh is always waiting for the tarps to go on sale at Canadian Tire. They like the Certified Value Tarp 15 × 20 in royal blue, which is regularly $24.99, but currently the Certified Value Tarp 9 × 12 in green is on sale for $5.79 from $7.98. The last few years the polyethylene tarpaulin market has gone insane with sizing, colour and weave. Mindimooyenh will not be fooled by such trickery. They put twenty 15 × 20 blue tarps in their cart and pay with old-school Canadian Tire Money with a tax rebate for their Status card. Mindimooyenh gives the lineup they created the finger on the way out because they will be making things count right up until the very end.
Tarp as tent. Tarp as sleeping bag. Tarp as blanket.
Mindimooyenh
Nothing drives Mindimooyenh more crazy than “self-care.”
“We are self-caring our way to fascism,” they yell.
I try and explain.
“That’s not a thing,” they reply. “It is just care.”
Mindimooyenh
Mindimooyenh says:
“Write a book! Win a prize!”
“Make a record! Win a prize!”
“Lake still smells like piss.”
Akiwenzii
Akiwenzii says: “Trees are good because they are simultaneously networked into the sky, the dirt and the breath. They feel everything and they record it in their tree bones.”
Ninaatig
It has been a long time now since Ninaatig participated in the sugar-making ceremony by getting pierced. The piercings usually take place in the very first part of spring, when things are starting to melt and even the bush is sloppy. The ceremony lasts a full month at least, although now it is sometimes even longer with all the stopping and starting of climate change.
It was a useful ceremony for Ninaatig when they were young. It required focus and commitment. It required a luxurious reliance on Ninaatig’s friends and neighbours, who were not pierced but were supporters. They made sure Ninaatig stayed hydrated by taking less water out of the soil. They caressed Ninaatig’s skin during the drilling. They whispered beautiful things when the sun made the sap flow hard.
By midsummer, the wounds were mostly healed, and Ninaatig would be fully leafed and enjoying the humidity with their comrades. To be honest, Ninaatig missed the ceremony and the flow of the year, but no one tapped in the Mark S. Burnham Park because of the tree cops — though Ninaatig always knew it was on Lucy’s m
ind. And by most accounts, Ninaatig’s responsibilities in the world had shifted. The piercing had prepared them for their work now. The long hours, the travel, the pushing of the shopping cart until their branches ached.
THREE
OPACITY
Ninaatig
Ninaatig keeps their belongings in a shopping cart when they travel. Sabe repeatedly suggests that they use a suitcase with wheels, the kind that fits into an overhead bin on an airplane, and they even bring one from the dump beside Akiwenzii’s for Ninaatig to try, but Ninaatig likes the shopping cart and it’s never going into an overhead bin anyway.
Some like to pull. Others like to push.
One of Ninaatig’s belongings is a copy of The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries from a Secret World. They like to read broadly and particularly to have a measure of where human thinking is on them, so they know what is coming next.
Akiwenzii finds the book hilarious and offensive and they read it aloud and substitute the word “Indians” for trees: The Hidden Life of Indians: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries from a Secret World. They both laugh, although it hits a little too close to home.
Ninaatig also keeps a mason jar of soil in their shopping cart, for the times when they are surrounded by concrete and they can’t find any. It is not enough to provide nutrients, but it is enough to provide emotional comfort, which is a fact too complex for The Hidden Life of Trees.
Perhaps the strangest thing Ninaatig has in their shopping cart is a leaf press. Ninaatig has had it for over fifty years. Someone left it in the bush at Ninaatig’s base and when the person didn’t come back for it, Ninaatig eventually emptied it out and put it in their shopping cart. Each year since, in the fall, Ninaatig picks one of their leaves like a poem and presses it. Their leaves are arranged in chronological order, one per year. At first, Ninaatig tried to remember the year, but after a decade or so time started to shift and meld together; some took on more prominence than others and some simply melted away altogether.
As the leaves dried, they lost their vitality and brightness, something Ninaatig regrets. The other trees didn’t fully understand the leaf press, because they already recorded events in their bones, and these records didn’t shift or meld. They didn’t say anything.
Ninaatig
Ninaatig keeps their special things under their Certified Value blue tarp gifted from Mindimooyenh, and in their shopping cart:
The Hidden Life of Trees
leaf press
jar of soil
Ninaatig
Whenever Ninaatig returns to the Mark S. Burnham forest, it is a joyous occasion. Ninaatig’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren feel Ninaatig’s absence, although they have come to live with it as a necessary, if unpleasant, part of life. Ninaatig too feels a sort of unrestricted joy being back amongst their closest people. Ninaatigoog always save Ninaatig’s spot. Ninaatig can feel them moving their roots out of the ways as they stretch into the soil so that Ninaatig is grounded and hydrated. Ninaatig longs for the gentle sway of everyone’s branches in unison when noodin shows up. They long for the nests and the visits from the birds, sometimes short, sometimes long. They maybe even long for baapaase. Maybe. They are in love with the harmony of the root nation. They are in love with Ninaatigoog.
And it feels good to not have to push the shopping cart around for a while. It needs better wheels, for one thing.
Ninaatig
Ninaatig spends the winter sleeping in Mark S. Burnham Park. In the summer, Ninaatig travels around, visiting. Mostly goes to the city to see Adik, on the right side of Rosedale Valley Road, or to the reserve to see Akiwenzii, and they mostly run into Sabe on those trails between the city and the bush. There are only forty hectares of trees left in this park, and mostly things have been fine, but more recently the tree cops have taken an interest in “managing” the forest. That means new bathrooms, new signs, charging a ransom to hike the trail, and pruning. Ninaatig mostly ignores all this, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t irritating.
Adik and Ninaatig have been friends for centuries. Adik has changed over the years, though, that’s for sure. They are hardened now, and more withdrawn — more lone wolf, albeit caribou-style.
Ninaatig knows why, but they can’t think of a single thing to make it better.
Sabe
Sabe is riding their bike around looking for Adik and going through people’s recycling to weed out the good stuff. They have a shitty bike. A grey Supercycle from Canadian Tire, with curly handlebars and ten speeds from a time when ten speeds were more than enough speeds to traverse the landscape. The bike has a kickstand and fenders, which are essential accessories as far as Sabe is concerned, the seat cranked up high for Sabe’s long legs and a rat trap perched on top of the back fender. Sabe has also attached an old kid’s trailer that they found at the dump, to put the recycling in.
For a while Sabe collected old toilets and sinks from rich neighbourhoods and they would set them up in random places on the reserve. At the beach. In old Amos’s backyard. In the field. In the sugar bush. It started off as a joke, but then some university students thought they saw deeper meaning to it and wrote about it for the school newspaper and before you knew it hordes of people were visiting to take photos.
Then someone hooked a sink up to one of the springs so water would pour out of it endlessly and people started using the toilets and one night, Sabe collected everything up and took it to the dump, in their bike trailer, one piece at a time.
Now they collect three things — bottles and cans for the refund, small appliances that can be fixed, and 250-ml plastic water bottles. The plastic water bottles are outside of their cabin on the reserve under a 30 × 60 Certified Standard Duty blue tarp in Large, $149.99 if you bought it new from aisle twenty-eight at Canadian Tire. The tarp smells like cat pee and Sabe found it in a blue bin in the Avenues. As if you can recycle polyethylene.
Adik
Adik spends a lot of time with the Nishnaabeg and their friends in the fragment of bush on the right side of Rosedale Valley Road. Unlike Ninaatig, Adik avoids the side with the cemetery. No longer being in physical form has its emotional limitations and graveyards are one of them.
The Nishnaabeg have a few white-people tents and sleeping bags given to them by street outreach workers and if they need zhoon, the bottom of Rosedale Valley Road isn’t the worst spot to ask for it. Mindimooyenh comes by every once in a while and leaves a pile of Certified Value Tarps 15 × 20 in royal blue for whoever needs one. There is also a weird lodge sculpture made out of hundreds of single-serving plastic water bottles. This is Sabe’s crafty work since they have been sober and they are damn proud of it. It is the first of many projects, they think. Sometimes in a pinch, if someone new shows up without shelter, the Nishnaabeg throw one of Mindimooyenh’s tarps over the plastic water bottle sculpture and call it “the Airbnb.”
Mostly the place is quiet during the day, and the Nishnaabeg just show up at night to catch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Adik
Adik hangs out on the right side of Rosedale Valley Road for a different reason than Ninaatig. Adik thinks it’s the only spot where hope lives, and they take out their voice recorder and record the sound of hope. It sounds like green leaves, attached to branches, moving in the wind.
Adik
Sometimes Adik goes down the road into the valley late at night to drink from the Don River. It’s not always worth it because of the anxiety it takes to get there. But on certain nights, the ones you can’t predict, the taste of tires and gas moves to the background and Adik can only taste cool.
Ninaatig
Every single time Ninaatig runs into Sabe it is magnificent. It is almost always on the path between the city and the reserve. It is always unexpected, and the connection is always immediate and like no time has passed. When Ninaatig and Sabe are together, they
are the only world that exists. The light.
It is the same ceremony every time. They build a fire. They weave mats out of cattails to lie on. An effortless conversation is built around them and through them, and it seems like the more they share the more there is to share. At some point, their hearts feel very light, like they are leaving their bodies and dancing around the fire all on their own. They fall asleep holding each other.
Sabe wakes up feeling new, with an energy pulsing through them, and this makes the baamaa apii easier. But not easy.
Ninaatig
Ninaatig watches Sabe walk down the path, north, through the oldest pines, full of sap.
Sabe
Sabe knows that they should be visiting with Lucy because there is only one more night left and if they don’t go tonight they’ll have to wait until next month. They don’t want to run into that damn Mindimooyenh, though. They can feel their anxiety marching through the bush thirty feet ahead of them.
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