Deep NorthBy Wade Davis
It took more than an hour to find the old grave, now hidden beneath a spruce sapling, its wooden headstone no longer legible, its picket fence a mere shadow on the soil. "Love Old Man Antoine Died 1926" was the simple inscription. I knew it from memory, having stumbled upon the site as a young park ranger, part of the first team hired in 1978 to explore and map the newly created Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Park. Often described as the Serengeti of Canada, the Spatsizi is British Columbia's largest roadless preserve, more than 1.6 million acres (650,000 hectares) encompassing the headwaters of the mighty Stikine, the river known to the native Tlingit as simply the Great River. The mist and rain that swirled about Antoine's grave would in time swell the headwater lake of Laslui, giving rise to a wild mountain stream that flows first east and north before turning west and finally south on its 400-mile (650-kilometer) run for the sea.
Along the way the river plunges into the depths of the Grand Canyon of the Stikine, a raging torrent that flows more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) beneath cliffs of basalt and sedimentary rock rising a thousand feet (300 meters) straight up from the water's edge. Below the canyon the river runs wide, cutting through the glaciers and jagged peaks of the coast mountains before finally reaching a pristine estuary where each spring bald eagles gather by the thousands to feast on sparkling runs of smelt. When John Muir traveled the lower third of the Stikine in 1879, he called it a Yosemite a hundred miles (160 kilometers) long, and he counted some 300 glaciers along its tortuous course. It's a land where Canada could hide England, and the English would never find it.
My job description had been vague: wilderness assessment and public relations. In two seasons I saw a handful of visitors. My partner and I explored the park freely, mapping the trails used by outfitters and by caribou and sheep.
In these wanderings we had come upon Antoine's grave, perched on a bench above the willow and birch thickets that hugged the shore of Laslui Lake. Curious about the history of the grave, I had crossed the lake to the mouth of Hotlesklwa Creek, where Ray and Reg Collingwood, outfitters for the Spatsizi, had established a hunting camp. There I found Alex Jack, a legendary native guide, whose birth name means He Who Walks Leaving No Tracks. Alex knew of the grave, and he knew who had laid the body to rest: his own brother-in-law. Old Man Antoine, Alex told me, was a shaman, crippled from birth but filled with the power of clairvoyance.
Intrigued by this link between a living elder like Alex and a shaman born in a previous century, I left my job with the government and went to work for the Collingwoods. As Alex and I cut wood and fixed fence and led the odd hunter after moose or goat, I would ask him to tell me the old stories of the land and his people. He talked of his youth, of hunting trips and winter trading runs by dogsled to the coast. But of the myths of his people he appeared to recall nothing. He spoke often of survival, of winter winds so strong the caribou froze, of times when his people ate nothing but spruce bark. I remember passing an encampment on a sunny afternoon, and Alex acknowledged that his people had settled there for several years, but he didn't describe it as a place they had lived. "Here," he said simply, "is where we survived."
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Along the way the river plunges into the depths of the Grand Canyon of the Stikine, a raging torrent that flows more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) beneath cliffs of basalt and sedimentary rock rising a thousand feet (300 meters) straight up from the water's edge. Below the canyon the river runs wide, cutting through the glaciers and jagged peaks of the coast mountains before finally reaching a pristine estuary where each spring bald eagles gather by the thousands to feast on sparkling runs of smelt. When John Muir traveled the lower third of the Stikine in 1879, he called it a Yosemite a hundred miles (160 kilometers) long, and he counted some 300 glaciers along its tortuous course. It's a land where Canada could hide England, and the English would never find it.
My job description had been vague: wilderness assessment and public relations. In two seasons I saw a handful of visitors. My partner and I explored the park freely, mapping the trails used by outfitters and by caribou and sheep.
In these wanderings we had come upon Antoine's grave, perched on a bench above the willow and birch thickets that hugged the shore of Laslui Lake. Curious about the history of the grave, I had crossed the lake to the mouth of Hotlesklwa Creek, where Ray and Reg Collingwood, outfitters for the Spatsizi, had established a hunting camp. There I found Alex Jack, a legendary native guide, whose birth name means He Who Walks Leaving No Tracks. Alex knew of the grave, and he knew who had laid the body to rest: his own brother-in-law. Old Man Antoine, Alex told me, was a shaman, crippled from birth but filled with the power of clairvoyance.
Intrigued by this link between a living elder like Alex and a shaman born in a previous century, I left my job with the government and went to work for the Collingwoods. As Alex and I cut wood and fixed fence and led the odd hunter after moose or goat, I would ask him to tell me the old stories of the land and his people. He talked of his youth, of hunting trips and winter trading runs by dogsled to the coast. But of the myths of his people he appeared to recall nothing. He spoke often of survival, of winter winds so strong the caribou froze, of times when his people ate nothing but spruce bark. I remember passing an encampment on a sunny afternoon, and Alex acknowledged that his people had settled there for several years, but he didn't describe it as a place they had lived. "Here," he said simply, "is where we survived."
Read More: Here
.
