in free territory, space and time change. The space is infinite timber whose dimensions distortionnent seasonally and modes of transportation. Thirty kilometers of river in summer, is a close, two miles to portage through the woods, it is an ordeal.
Time is also relative, changing, almost moving. Time for a trip is a matter of water flow, quality of snow, wind chill.
Engaging in free territory, is experience the space and time to those who move through the forest. Last week was an opportunity to experiment, even in the forest, the mode of movement of former nomadic, moving with snowshoes.
Like them, we moved most often at times when snow was still crusty. Like them, we do not we serve, or hardly any, of the compass. We wandered in Territories Business to me is both familiar and foreign.
Familiar because it was my territory then sled dogs and we happened to pass by lakes or souampes I already knew. Abroad, because the movement disorder sled perception of distances and directions. The musher has eyes for his dogs, he sometimes forgets the path.
It is said that former Tshashinnut traveled by day and night, with the help of the wind to follow a direction. That idea always seemed to me doubtful. The wind turns the wind stops. How to travel while listening to the wind?
To understand this mode of travel, we must get rid of the Western vision of space. The map, aerial representation of space, seeking the center. So the first issue of Western human lost
forest is where am I? wanderer lost in the forest, Descartes advised to choose a direction and stick with it until it meets an obvious sign him to find his way. Such advice apply to death sentences in the boreal forest, first because the right path does not exist, because then the distances will exhaust before the traveler that it does have traveled.
representation is made that the boreal Tsheshinnut space should be different. I do not imagine drawing a map on snow or sand from the river to explain how the traveler find his way.
In short this week on our end of
Nitassinan , I discovered that the North and South had only can value. One account downstream and upstream. The downstream and mouthpieces for summer camps, the upstream areas for winter.
Lakes, souampes, rivers and streams form the best passages, open spaces. We guess their presence through the treetops, when the pines are becoming increasingly rare, when the sky is clearer in the distance. And if that is not enough, there is the animal feeling. While I was looking at Johnny Lake, I have been guided by a trail of otter and I found it!
Because wetlands provide good passages and draw in their wake, feed, they are natural landmarks to those of wood.
There were caribou in the high souampe west. As they fled, we followed the tracks that ran along the stream that does not freeze in winter. Beavers had built a dam last year, there is a lake that winter there. It was here that the traces of caribou are scattered. While some have gone toward the setting sun, others took the opposite direction, toward the big lake where we hunted geese last year. This simple tale of missed hunting could be heard quite differently by hunters yesterday. He had a good knowledge of wood could just as well to hear this:
the west, there is great souampe connected to a few streams. Whoever does not freeze in winter, the one you frequent when you trap the otter and goes north, this leads to a small lake formed by beavers. As this lake is recent, you will recognize from other conifers because he drowned are not quite dead. In the direction of sunset, I know nothing, taking care not to cross the creek if you're not sure of yourself. In the following, you will recover the River. To the east, however, there is a large lake that you know and from where you will find the path you know well. 
Passages connections, networks, interconnection.
Territory to both foreign and familiar. Especially an area that does not require localization. In this context, and only in this context, the use of wind as the benchmark becomes irrelevant. A fulcrum, a river does not pass through a rough itinerary, a chain of wetlands, and the sun and wind as a compass.
For who knows how to feed from wood, time is no longer an enemy. Or wandering. The rough topography extends the range of possibilities then. New opportunities for hunting, an opportunity to feed his new geography of hunting stories or encounters with other hunters.
