One of the delightful surprises of my just concluded trip to Winnipeg to spend time with Steve and give him a box of ‘Anung’s Journey’ was to learn that while I have stories I like to tell about Steve, he has stories he likes to tell about me.
At our talk at the University of Manitoba, after we shared our stories about meeting for the first time, Steve then went on to describe how after supper the first day I went to my cabin and returned with a football.
Here is a close take on his riff, for I heard him tell this story twice:
“After supper the first day he was in camp I saw Carl was tossing a football into the air and catching it. Then he came up to me and asked if I wanted to play catch. I said, ‘What’s catch?’. He said, ‘Let’s just toss this football back and forth.’ I had seen a football game on a television once, but I had never seen a football, so I didn’t know how to catch one. All we played in them days was hockey. So Carl threw me the ball and it hit my chest and ooh gee I had a bruise there for a week.
“Then two of my friends, Simon and Louie, they joined us, and it became a regular thing, that first summer at Delaney Lake, to try to play football after supper. There was a clearing between some of the cabins that was just big enough for a game. Sometimes some of the guests would join us and I remember one game there were enough players that we played Indians against the Whites and once again the Indians got beat by the Whites pretty bad, even thought Carl played with us.”
I had forgotten all about the fun playing football. I was on the high school team–and played one year of college ball–and as soon as Steve began telling the story the memories came flooding back.
The trip was filled with wonderful unexpected moments. One of the most dramatic was on the last full day. I drove Steve and his grandson Dorian to Kenora, for our radio interview, and to rendezvous with Steve’s son who was going to drive them back to Grassy Narrows. I was driving back to Winnipeg, on Highway 1, the Trans-Canada Highway, still in the boreal wilderness of Ontario. I looked up and to my utter disbelief I saw a wolf.
In all my years in the North wilderness I heard plenty of wolves howling at night, but I never saw one. And this one, he was magnificent. He was jet black, raven black, so black that for just a moment I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that he was a frigging wolf. I watched him walk along a bit of exposed rock ledge, near the side of the road, about twenty yards away, for a good ten seconds.
A magical moment to end a magical trip.
Carl Nordgren 