Final Fire by Michael Mitchell

Author:Michael Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2019-05-13T16:00:00+00:00

2014

My oldest friend Macbeth and I head upstream after four days of work opening the cabin. It’s been a brutal winter so we’re more than a month late — on our usual date this year the ice was still a metre thick. This ice had snapped one of the dock’s heavy steel rings I had drilled a half foot into the hard rock of the Shield.

The sky is largely clear, just a few horse tails, as I swing the skiff on the final turn from the inlet and up into the river’s mouth. The west wind is at our backs but it’s still cold as I accelerate into the current. One can feel the aluminum hull twisting as we cut through eddies and upwellings. A third of the way upriver I spot a large dark shape high in a tree by the south bank. I cut the throttle and we glide up under a large bear some 40 feet up the trunk. He skillfully pulls in small branches and chews on the new buds and young leaves all the while balancing in a tree clearly stressed by so much weight so high up. Large branches snap and fall into the boat. Occasionally he glances down at us without interest and continues lunch.

I had heard that the tough winter had taken out many animals but this first trip in had given us many visitors. A ruby throated hummingbird had buzzed in through an open door, realized its mistake and spiraled up into the cupola in an escape attempt. There it went into auto flight, endlessly repeated the same escape strategy under the tiny roof, round and round, rattling off the little windows above the main roof line. Finally Macbeth brought in a ladder and climbed into the cupola with a landing net. He quickly caught the exhausted bird. Taking the net outside and opening it on the ground exposed its very small occupant who panted in shock.

A few minutes later it was off. Then I spotted a half-grown hare crouched immobile between the back of the cabin and a yard-high white pine. It watched me but failed to bolt. After a few hours I offered it half a carrot — I’ve seen the cartoons — which it took and devoured. It then hopped into its new home under my house. Then I looked up and saw a particularly handsome raccoon working my shoreline, scooping up clams. Two geese came in low overhead like fighter jets. Sandhills called from the back bay and a merlin gave me cheek when I got too close to its private tree on my island. Or so I mistakenly think. I return to the front and a beaver swims by. Everyone’s back at work.

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