The Animal Wife by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Author:Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

18

MUCH SNOW had fallen. The cold had been so great that it wouldn't pack. Nothing larger than a hare could walk on it. Instead the snow stayed fine and soft, making animals and people force their way through it. Not even the strongest of us could walk far in the thigh-deep drifts without getting very tired, since we had to lift each foot high with every step. Even then we couldn't lift our feet above the snow, but had to drag them through it.

This kind of snow was both bad and good for hunting—bad because travel was hard for us, good because travel was also hard for the deer. Our plan was to make a big half-circle north of the river, looking for the fresh trails of animals. Because the Lodge Moon had come, with long dawns and long evenings and the sun over the horizon for just a short time each day, we planned to hunt until we killed something, no matter how long that would take.

We headed for a swamp north of the lodge, on a stream like our stream that fed the Hair River. Reindeer and moose stayed near the swamp, taking shelter in the growth of low spruce that ringed its edges and eating the tips of swamp willows that stood above the snow. Maral kept a hunting camp there, a high hollow cone of overlapping hemlock branches which made a space big enough for four men to sleep in, if they lay side by side. Covered with snow and with men inside, this shelter could be almost too warm. In it Maral kept firesticks, a hafted ax, some spearpoints, and a store of firewood.

By dusk, when we saw the tip of the shelter against the red evening sky, we had found only the tracks of a pack of wolves who were also going to the swamp, one behind the other, taking turns breaking trail just as people do. We couldn't help but feel disappointed, to find no tracks but wolves' tracks. But thanks to the trail the wolves had broken, we reached Maral's shelter before night.

The night was long and moonlit—the round Lodge Moon was balancing the sun. For our meal we had only the scraps of dried meat we had brought with us and some frozen strips of inner bark peeled off a young larch tree. The bark is said to take away hunger. Perhaps it does for some; it didn't for me.

In the morning we sang, praying to the Bear to give us food. Then, with Maral leading us, we circled the swamp. Here the snow was very light but almost waist deep, so that Maral was sweating after a very short time of pushing through it. Soon Andriki took Maral's place in the lead and Maral took my place at the end of the line. In this way we took turns breaking trail and walking last in the path made by the others. We stopped to rest many times, being hungry and not at full strength.

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