The Pilgrimage

In the summer of 1999, I drove a thousand miles to the birthplace of my Cree grandmother. She was born amidst the open stretching plains of Spirit River, Alberta, under all that sky. Though she had passed away long ago when I was just a girl, I had recently heard her singing to me in dreams in a language that I did not understand. In these dreams, I would follow her voice through a heavy mist, always becoming lost before waking. I was increasingly unsettled by these dreams, seemingly related to a critical juncture in my life at that time. She was calling to me and I needed to find her. So one day I just packed my truck and drove.

    I drove through alpine meadows in the rain, surrounded by the towering Rocky Mountains. I ventured along winding, deeply forested, single-lane highways on clear sunny days. I stopped to explore waterfalls and scenic trails, and made chilli on my truck tailgate while parked in an old forest grove. I photographed vast fields stained yellow with canola flowers. And finally, I arrived in a dusty old town called Spirit River. Land stretched flat and limitless in every direction. Clouds perched in the blue sky like thousands of cotton balls laid out in infinite rows on a glass ceiling. I emerged from my truck as an unsteady stranger on a sea of land, with the line of the horizon as my only reference point for dividing earth from sky.

    I stopped at a small, ramshackle gas station to pick up some basic supplies: a can of beans, a loaf of bread and some water. I leafed through dusty tourist brochures about the town of Spirit River. The town apparently got its name from the Cree who called it Chepi Sepe, which means Ghost River. According to an old legend, the Cree believed that a deceased woman’s spirit would rustle through a grove of trees where she was buried when she became restless.

    I asked the gum-chewing middle-aged cashier where I could find a place to stay. "Motels and campgrounds are all full now". She blew a gum bubble. Pop. "Though there’s a bed and breakfast down the road that might have room. People there are real friendly". She smiled, cracking dry rawhide lips. I asked for directions there and was told to take a right on the first road, drive to an intersection, take another right and then a left. Or something like that. I thanked her and hopped back into the truck, whispering her directions to myself in hopes of remembering.

    Within minutes I became lost. I optimistically followed a long stretch of dusty road for ten more minutes before surrendering. Tired from the heat and grit of the road, the thought of camping in a farmer's field offered reprieve. I eventually backed my truck in next to the only patch of shrubby alders for miles, hoping it would shelter me from passing eyes.

    I slid out of the truck and lumbered over to an edge of grass that sharply gave way to freshly tilled soil. The vastness of sky threatened to swallow me whole. Upon sitting, I grabbed onto the grass like a lifeline with one hand to keep from floating away like a stray balloon. With the other hand, I dug my fingers into the loamy earth and watched as the sun began to sink into the land. A kaleidoscope of colours seared across the heavens. The occasional sparrow cut through the air while robins scuttled cautiously over naked earth. A dragonfly alighted on a green stalk beside me, rainbow wings flashing momentarily before its departure.

    A stark sense of aloneness hung heavy in the silence as I clutched the cool grass. A familiar unease writhing in the hollows, like the growl of a hungry, empty stomach. My trek through the Himalayas in my early 20’s exposed me to many Buddhist teachings, and the concept of “hungry ghosts”: beings who are tormented by desire that can never be sated. Symbolic of a state of mind, they are often depicted with tiny mouths and swollen, starving bellies that can never consume enough to satisfy their hunger. I had a hungry ghost inside of me. It began to speak, in the language of memories.

    I was 17 years old, looking into the eyes of my father. Twelve years had passed since I saw him last; an abyss of time that was not preceded by explanation or announcement. His soft brown eyes looked exactly like mine. So familiar after a lifetime of looking into the blue eyes of my mother’s tribe. He offered me a bouquet of red roses upon arrival with his wife at the small rancher duplex where I lived with my single mother. Everyone flashed nervous smiles over coffee in the living room as my father tried to explain himself through light conversation. As it turned out, he simply could not find me all those years, like a lost wallet that slipped through the cracks of the couch cushions (your mother moved, I looked everywhere). Later he whisked me off for a drive with his smiling wife in a shiny white Lincoln that smelled like vanilla on the inside. Pictures of his other kids were shared with me over lunch. Two brothers and a sister, all several years younger than me. In all the photos, my father looks proud of his happy, giggling brood. I momentarily wondered what it would have been like to be part of this happy little family. “They are so excited to meet you,” he said.

    In the months that followed, my father attempted to graft me back onto his life with dinners, stories and gifts. The new siblings eyed me with a polite trepidation. I was an interloper in their steady patterns of domesticity. A stranger bearing all the markings of family – I looked exactly like our father – yet with no indication of actual belonging. My father’s wife smiled less often the more I came around. It was not a situation that would last.

    “I have something for you,” my father said one day while we sat alone together on the patio of his large family home. He gently took my right hand and placed an object into it. It was a small, chipped wooden box shaped like a treasure chest, barely much bigger than the round of my palm.

    “It belonged to my mother,” he said. “Open it.”

    I slowly pulled back the lid. The tiny chest contained three small items: a miniature tomahawk made from real wood and metal but half the size of my little finger, a small ceramic squirrel with a ragged faux fur tail, and a small picture of my grandmother. In the picture she is laughing. In all the pictures he showed me of her, she is always laughing.

    Apparently my grandmother was a force of nature, as changeable as the weather. A tiny warrior barely five feet tall, with waist-length black hair and a fiery temperament. Being referred to as a ‘squaw’ by her white husband could incite her to become a thundering tempest of smashed glass and flying kitchenware. She liked her whiskey and could drink anyone under the table. Whiskey was a river of anesthetic that numbed the shame of living in the white man’s world. But there were also times of calm without the whiskey, when the children could return home from foster care. She would teach them how to say prayers with the sacred smoke, and speak some of her language. “Don’t be teaching them none of that, Francis,” my grandfather would say. “They need to fit in with all the white kids.”

    When I was four years old, I met her once in a highway diner while visiting my father just outside of 100 Mile House in rural B.C. My father exchanged cheerful greetings with my grandparents upon our arrival at the diner booth, where they sat waiting for us. I stood silently by his side, tightly clutching his hand while transfixed by the small, formidable queen before me: long black hair bound loosely on her head like a shadow crown, high cheekbones, piercing eyes. I slid cautiously into the booth across from her. We eyed one another curiously over the course of a few minutes, silently taking stock. Time stretched before us like the Prairie sky. She took long hauls off her cigarette; I chewed my straw. She appeared to contemplate something as she looked me over, before seemingly coming to a decision.

    “She’s the cat’s ass, Gary,” she proclaimed to my father.

    Having been familiar with the business end of a few cats in my time, I did not initially recognize this as anything resembling a compliment. But she eyed me with a flinty spark of pride which indicated that the cat’s ass was something special. I wore her approval like a badge of honour and vowed never again to kick the neighbor’s cat.

    I never got the chance to know her. A few years after that encounter, during my father’s long absence from my life, she apparently died from a fall down the stairs. My father pressed for an investigation on suspicions that she had been pushed, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. In the eyes of the world, she was ‘just another drunk Indian’. But to me, she was a warrior whose spirit flashed through my veins like fire, helping me to survive in a difficult world.

    The memories began to fade into dusk. I looked up at the sky, watching brilliant colours blaze their last display: purple, red, orange. I wondered if my grandmother had a hungry ghost inside her, too. So many unanswered questions, but it was time to retire for the evening.

    I rose to my feet and dusted the earth from my jeans. A patch of grass rustled at the edge of the farmer’s field near the alders, bending towards me as if stroked by an invisible hand.  A small animal, perhaps. I stood still and intent as a hawk, waiting. But no animal emerged from the hidden shelter of green; only a breeze that rose to caress my cheek, blowing gentle tangles into my long brown hair. And then I heard her voice. The hollows inside you are where the wind comes through to make music with your bones. I hear your music, child. Hear me singing.

    With a heart as light as feathers, I receded to my truck. I crawled under the metal canopy, pulled up the tailgate to seal myself inside, and climbed into my sleeping bag. I lay bound in my cocoon, listening to the loud crackle and roar of thunder as a storm rolled in out of nowhere like a freight train. The wind rocked my truck back and forth, sheets of rain bulleted the windows, and forks of lightning struck fields near and far. I quickly fell asleep in the arms of the storm. The final lullaby.