The road gets better. The vegetation changes. We’re driving on gravel. On both sides there are dense thickets of alders and aspens.

Without raising his voice, Sam speaks, and I get the feeling that I’m the one he’s talking to.

“All the vegetation is the same height. There was a huge forest fire here twenty years ago. We call this place the old burn. All the Algonquin know it. This is where we come every summer to gather blueberries.”

Suddenly he goes quiet. There’s a deep frown on his forehead. His lips are pinched together, the muscles in his neck stick out.

He stops the truck and turns off the engine, even though we have not arrived yet. The air is filled with silence.

We wait. Nobody moves. I follow Sam’s gaze. He’s smiling, expecting something, but I don’t know what.

A large female bear slowly lumbers out of the bush and stops in front of the truck. She looks at us, sniffs and rises up on her hind legs. She’s thin. Her long coat is shaggy, plastered down on her body. From her chest hang huge black and pink teats that gleam in the sun.

We hold our breath. We hear tiny cries coming from the thicket. The mother grunts and two little black balls tumble out of their hiding place and run between her paws. They are hungry. They nuzzle at her breast, looking for milk. The female pushes them away with her nose and they disappear into the woods. We watch until the huge black beast lumbers after them into the brush.

I am always happy when I see an animal in the forest. Pinamen and I exchange smiles.

Sam starts up again. The conversation becomes lively.

“She has just come out of her den,” Sam says. “That’s why she’s so thin and scruffy. At this time of year she’ll do anything to protect her babies. You need to stay far away. Any other time she would have turned on her heels and run away as fast as she could.”

“Seeing a bear is good luck,” Manie says. “That’s a good sign for you, Nipishish!”

“And we saw three of them,” says Pinamen. “That is very, very, very good luck!”

And we all laugh.

The forest road that we follow suddenly stops at the bank of a big lake.

“My children, it’s time to eat!” says Manie happily.

We all burst into action. We’re as hungry as wolves.

The place where we set up has been used often. The earth is beaten down, and Sam makes a fire in a pit of blackened rocks. I draw fresh water from a nearby spring for tea. Pinamen lays down a red-and-white checked cloth, and Manie pulls out plates, cups and utensils, all mismatched and of different colors. Then she gets out bannock, jam, sugar and a goose that she cooked the day before. In no time everything is ready and the tea is brewing in the old dented pot.