I wake up with the pond on my mind.
When I look out the window, I see that the once deep tracks of the deer across the yard have collapsed into shadowed furrows.
Boots on. Coat, gloves, snowshoes taken down from the wall.
Bear paws is what they are called for their shape, an old Abenaki design. And these particular snowshoes are old ones. Sinew stretched over a bent ash frame, not some space-age stuff strung across aluminum. Once my father’s, they’re more than twice my age. Made by one of the Sabattis family, a descendant of Mitchell Sabattis, the famous Adirondack guide who lived at Long Lake, eighty miles to the north of here.
Ogemakw is our name for snowshoes. And ogema the name for the white ash tree from which they’re made. In so many cases, if you know the name for something you also know what gift it may give you. Just as the birch is maskwamozi, the blanket tree.
Live 10,000 years in the same environment and you, too, may find that your
