Heading for Home

By Zahava Hanan

Zahava Hanan’s struggle to save her ranch in Alberta from the threat of industrial pollution makes Heading for Home a modern tale on an epic scale. For twenty years she fought for her rights in Western Canada. Heading for Home gives a very warm account of her companions throughout those years from cowhands to lovable animals; from concerned neighbours to the formality of the company man, some of whom too, eventually became firm friends. Aided at times in her struggle by her friend the author and tracker Andy Russell, Heading for Home tells the tale of how one woman’s strength and willpower contributed to our heightened sense of mutual awareness.

In the course of her long struggle to save everything she held most dear, Zahava Hanan stood squarely up to a "David and Goliath" confrontation with the corporations. During that time, however, she came to understand that by daring to care for our environment we inherit a common ground, goal and home. This book is also the story of that spiritual quest and challenge. And it is in this sense that Zahava Hanan has been "heading for home," and helping others get there, ever since.

This is a masterpiece of its kind, and truly original, since nobody of her sensibility has written on the subject at all. There are countless travel books about wild places and countless cozy books about life in the town. This happens to be unique both in the handling of her environment and in her ability to feel and write about it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Sep 30, 2001
• ISBN: 9781459714281

Book preview

cattle.

GRANDFATHER NAHUM

The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

PROOHET NAHUM

This story should begin with my grandfather Nahum.

If one were to ask an old cattleman which was the best winter he had ever experienced in Alberta, he would scratch his head and ponder irresolutely, because he would think of so many good ones; but if he were asked which were the worst, he would remember keenly and say 1886-7 and 1906-7.¹ The winter of ’86 was a terrible one, with snow piling all over the country in deep, crusted drifts, blizzards screaming across the open, cattle humping up and perishing from the bitter cold. It was without doubt the worst winter ever seen in the Alberta ranch business, for, although the loss was heavier in 1906-7, there were circumstances leading up to the earlier winter that accentuated the inclemency of weather. Everything seemed to conspire to place range stock at a disadvantage, and the results were tremendous losses.

Fall started poorly, with late rains, frozen, uncured grasses, and early cold. Prairie fires and crowded ranges took the grass off and left little for winter rustling – in fact, in some districts the range was so depleted that the cattle went into winter in very poor condition, even hay being insufficient to strengthen them against the cold. Mange made some stock even more susceptible, for, with impoverished bodies, the animals could not resist the inroads of parasites, and by New Year numbers of cattle were hairless. So it was that lack of food, poor condition, exceptional storms, and snow and cold took a fearful toll of the range stock.

As I go to my secret spot today, January 12th 1993, it is still deep winter, and my journey there is quite daunting. There have been several weeks of 35° – 40° below, and the ice crystals in the creek resemble coral reef. It is like skiing cross-country over a field of crystals. Bncky stops every once in a while to suck the lumps of ice out of his paws. They tinkle just like glass, those little lumps of frozen snow, one against the other.

Even though I skied along the frozen creek, and Bucky followed coyote tracks that criss-crossed it, when it was time logo home he felt he hadn’t had enough fun out of doors, so I thought, Whatever the obstacles, to the secret spot we must go. But we have lo plough through clouds of snow so full that sometimes you can drown in them. Lots of beautiful tracks, although they are more ephemeral today. I find it hard to distinguish between Bncky tracks and coyote tracks, because the wind has blown over them and shifted them.

There are no words to describe the feast for the eyes. But the creek is precarious because some parts are frozen solid and some frill flow, and if my foot went in it would be like an instant deep freeze. Moosehide moccasins are perfect for dry snow in these temperatures, but terrible if they get wet in 30° below.

It took that depth of chill to freeze the creek and its surrounds into such beauty, and that depth of frost forced me, in the end, to turn back before reaching my secret spot. It was too dangerous to continue. On the way home Bncky was busy digging into a coyote cave with all four paws. Even though the earth is frozen he has made a dent. But they’re not there right now – they’ve moved house, I guess...

One day in January 1887 the citizens of Macleod saw what appeared to be a low, black cloud above the snow to the north. The cloud drew slowly, draggingly nearer, until it was seen that a herd of thousands of range cattle were coming from the north, staggering blindly along the sixty-foot confines of the road in search of open places where they could feed. A steady, piteous moaning filled the air as the creatures drew close, feeble, starving, skinned from the knees down by sharp snowcrusts and from stumbling and struggling to rise, hair frozen off in patches -naked, mangy steers, tottering yearlings, and dying cows. Straight into town they crawled, travelling six and eight abreast, bellowing and lowing appeals which no one was able to satisfy. Their numbers were so great that it took over half-an-hour for them to pass a given point. Right through the town they dragged themselves, into the blackness of the prairie beyond, where they were swallowed up and never heard of again, every head being doubtless dead before the week had passed.

Pitiful stories came from everywhere. Starving stock brought in from the range took no interest in the hay before their very noses, standing till they fell over and died; on the range they perished singly, in scores, in hundreds. Not a mile of Canadian Pacific Railway fencing but showed in spring the bodies lying where the fence had barred the drifting, and caused the dazed animals to stand helplessly until the end came. Ranchers who had not been upset to see dead buffalo everywhere were sickened by what the winter of ’86 did to their cattle. Some gave up ranching entirely; some could never own a cow again... The winter of ’86 was the end of all but a few of the giant investor-owned ranches.²

January is not always thus. A year later a chinook arch was in the sky and warmth was in the air. You need that depth of cold to have the beauty that comes with the crystallisation of water into snow and ice; and then with such a weather change you can enjoy the beauty without the threat of the windchill. I love the cold that fences you in, that doesn’t allow you to go out for fear of death; and then, when a temporary thaw comes, the total immersion of your being in the pure present has afresh delight.

So on this day, and with this feeling, I decided to lie in the snow; I felt I was lying on a cloud – it was billowing, it moved, it had waves in it, the white clouds in the heaven above were under me.

What I knew then was that I had arrived at a still-point; life became an understanding of rhythm – of the world’s rhythm and my own rhythm – and an awareness of the importance behind all this of the still-point, where you can never stay but only visit for a moment.

So I rose and went back to work truly revitalised, and took a handful of snow to my lips.

On the railway tracks the crews, reluctant to crash among them, from pity, and also from fear of damage to the train, decided to chase the animals away. So a brakeman with a lighted lantern was sent to do the chasing, and on one occasion a wild steer proceeded to liven things up by going after the man with so much vigour that a sweep of his horns caught the wire handle of the lantern, tore it from the hand of the fast-departing brakie, and fired the animal’s heart with a frenzy of fear. No shaking, bucking or plunging would free the terrible glaring object from where it hung, and the steer broke away on a long gallop, flitting like a gigantic firefly across the expanse of snow. Cowboys saw the strange spectacle, headed it off and drove it into a corral, where they removed the lantern. The lucky steer stayed around the stables and picked up a living through the winter. The lantern is still an object of interest at the Grassy Lake Ranch.

In the Calgary district the loss was estimated at sixty per cent, and in some districts the owners lost practically every head that was at large on the range. For the buffaloes, which are much more forgiving, it was different: where they roamed they fed into the storm or rooted down pretty deep. So they