It’s been a little while since the last update. With the start of Ricing Moon, our clan of four grew much larger.
The clan is gathered for dinner at Mashkodens
Harvesting wild rice
For the first quarter Moon we stayed at Mashkodens for everyone to settle in and get comfortable with the daily routines. Meanwhile a few of us also scouted out different wild rice locations. During this initial period much of our energy went into providing the basic necessities of the camp. Two of the families left before we embarked on the trip, and then a flotilla of canoes went off on the two-day paddle to rice camp.
Prior scouting had shown that the rice beds were poor on that particular lake, but the campsite was ideal for families, so we sent off a small group of people to set up another camp for harvesting rice on a nearby lake. In order to harvest the rice, we usually sent out teams of two in one canoe: the person in the back navigates through the rice beds with a long wooden pole (the water is usually very shallow and using poles rather than paddles is less disturbing to the rice plants) whereas the person in the front – facing backwards – uses a wooden stick to bend the wild rice into the boat and a second stick to beat the kernels into the canoe.
Fruits of the harvest: unprocessed wild rice
After several days of harvesting on a small lake, the ricing team went back to the main camp in order to travel together to another location which promised to yield a lot of rice. By that time our group size had shrunk more so we were a smaller circle again. There was sadness about people deciding to leave, and at the same time it provided an opportunity for the remaining clan to get to know each other much more. The new ricing location was promising indeed, though we weren’t the only ones to harvest that abundance. The weather conditions were just right for a population explosion of rice worms, and by the time we harvested most of the rice was already eaten. The cycles of feast and famine can be so close together…Yet we were thankful for the rice we got to harvest and started turning our attention more towards harvesting marshgrass, which we use as thatching material in our summer wigwams.
Gathering marshgrass by the river
Knives and improvised wooden saws were our cutting tools, and after tying the grass in bundles we canoed it to a pickup spot so it could be dried for later use. By now we were approaching the end of the Moon, so it was time to travel back to Mashkodens, which turned into quite the adventure as we had to cross a lake with a strong cold wind against us as darkness was approaching, and the last part on the journey meant paddling a creek in the darkness.
Back at camp, the changes in the season were evident: maple and birch trees turning color, the carpet of bracken ferns in the meadow drying up. As was evident from the tracks, some Wawashkeshi were taking advantage of the lush new growth in the area where two of our summer lodges burned earlier in the Green Season. We spent our last suns cleaning up camp, reflecting and connecting about the experience and what lessons we learned…and then we went our different ways.
Our Green Season immersion of Chris, Alex, Coyote and myself ended here, and yet it is part of a larger continuum: Chris and I (and potentially Alex) see our hearth, our home at Mashkodens for the coming seasons, and from there we venture and go to different seasonal camps or travels to other places. Over the next Moon(s), I’ll periodically spend time at Mashkodens to maintain the camp structures and finish up the last winter preparations: fixing the clay hearth of the winter lodge and plugging up the rodent holes in the peat insulation, amongst other things. And I may stay there on a more regular basis during the White Season. We’re excited to see how this camp will develop further as other people join our hearth.
To be continued…