An Offering
Our people were canoe people. Until they made us walk. Until our
lakeshore lodges were signed away for shanties and dust. Our
people were a circle, until we were dispersed. Our people shared a
language with which to thank the day, until they made us forget.
But we didn’t forget. Not quite.
Most summer mornings of childhood I woke to the sound of the
outhouse door—the squeak of the hinge followed by the hollow
thunk as it shut. I rose to consciousness through the hazy songs of
vireos and thrushes, the lapping of the lake, and finally the sound of
my father pumping the tank on the Coleman stove. By the time my
brother and sisters and I emerged from our sleeping bags the sun
would just be topping the eastern shore, pulling mist off the lake in
long white coils. The small four-cup coffeepot of battered aluminum,
blackened with the smoke of many fires, would already be
thumping. Our family spent summers canoe camping in the
Adirondacks and every day began this way.