In all of this, the canoe had been freely drifting. Without thinking, Leif moved to safety, stroking the paddle, carefully balancing the canoe with his knees to keep from capsizing as the whales rolled nearby and the eagles dived so close to him that he had to duck to keep from being hit by a wing.

One eagle actually perched on the bow of the canoe to eat fish guts. But the instant a raven stole the morsel away from him, the eagle turned and, spying the dead salmon in the bottom of the canoe where Leif had put them, jumped down. Sinking its talons into one of the fish, the eagle tried to fly away, but the fish was too heavy to allow it a quick escape and Leif clipped the bird with the flat of the paddle. It dropped the salmon, screeched at Leif, and flew back into the fray.

In a few moments, Leif had worked out to a place slightly further away from the action.

Clear. And he sat there at the side, balancing the still-plunging and rolling canoe and tried to see it all, understand it all, follow all that was happening, but there was too much and it overloaded his vision, his thinking.

Finally he just sat, nearly as stunned as the salmon, reeling with the violence of what he saw.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, it ended. The whales veered off, swam out of the inlet; the eagles and ravens flew off, holding in talons what food they could carry; even the smaller birds vanished back up into the trees.

Except for some stains on the rocks, it was as if it had never happened, as if there had never been what Leif decided was a battle. A battle for food and he realized suddenly that aside from the whales and possibly the ravens – both of which seemed to have other things happening for them, like humour, thoughtfulness, slyness, affection – hunger, pure raw hunger was the driving force of everything in nature. Anger, of course, but anger based on hunger, and in the same thought, looking down at the dead salmon he had speared and would eat, he decided he did not want only that in his life. For his life.

Did not want to be only hungry.

Go north, be north, but see and be more than just what I shove in my stomach.

See past the hunger.

See past.

See . . .

The Cook Camp

Another island – away from the mass of land to the east and across the channel to the dark loom of the big island on the west that was so huge it didn’t really seem like an island – hopefully, probably, safe from the bears.