The White in the Woods

It was Charlie May who first noticed it. He would, because the man has a spectacular row of them in front of his house. And then, over the next three days, Billy Wild, Annette LaBelle and Creek Johnson all woke up one morning to see the evidence. It was happening all across the village and nobody knew why. It was our turn next. Right beside my mother’s house stands a low fence comprised of rocks thrown there over the decades by people occasionally trying to farm, or sometimes just to clear the land. Growing amidst that row of stones were two birch trees that decorated that section of our lawn with dappled sunlight.

Both trees were about a foot in diameter, though on the particular morning we woke up, they were a little thinner around the mid-section. Somebody, during the night, for whatever reason, had harvested the bark from the two trees. We were the latest victims in an on-going rash of bark thefts that had left the village trees with their white, mottled, papery strips carefully peeled away from the trunks.

In the olden days, birch bark had a multitude of uses in Native villages, ranging from the obvious and famous canoes, to baskets, to moose callers, to an original art form called birch bark biting where an artist would fold the bark and bite into it at strategic places to reveal in the unfolded bark, something as intricate as a flower, or some other beautiful pattern carefully outlined in the light brown inner bark. But that was a long time ago. Today, very few people use much birch bark, let alone the incalculable amount missing.

If somebody needed bark, it was customary to ask permission if the tree happened to be on someone’s private land. But there was enough of it in the woods, especially out towards the swamp, that this kind of theft seemed unnecessary. So much bark taken so secretly. Nobody knew what was going on. And it bothered them. The people of Otter Lake may love gossip but they hate mysteries.

Typically our reserve police, who often go weeks between anything exciting happening, like being the security guards at a wedding dance, latched on to the sudden bark disappearances. Before long I found myself being interviewed by Officer Magneen.

“When did you notice the bark was missing?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Did you see anything unusual?”

“The bark was missing?”

“Other than that?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“No.”

“Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Do you have anything else to tell us that might help us locate the person who did this?”

“Not really.”

“Thanks Andrew, see you on Saturday at the ball game.” I was shortstop, he was third base.

During the next few days more birch trees showed up in the same stage of undress as the two beside my mother’s house, all over the village. About three or four feet above the ground, an incision would be made vertically for about a foot and a half, then the outer bark would be peeled off, leaving the underbark intact. If the harvesting is done during the late spring, as it was now, then the tree has enough time to heal itself before the onset of winter. Evidently whoever was doing this knew what he was doing. The few birch bark peelers still left in our community (who, by the way, had been thoroughly investigated and their property searched for the hoarded birch bark) said the trees had been properly harvested and had not been permanently damaged.

All in all, about thirty-six harvested trees had been counted, not including whatever ones might exist deep in the woods or in the less travelled areas of the village.

A week passed, then two, and the reports of missing birch bark began to trail off. Two possibilities came to my mind. The mysterious bark fetishist had accumulated enough bark for his purposes or, possibly, the Phantom of the Forest had exhausted the in-town supply and had moved on to harvesting trees in other parts of the sparsely populated reserve.

Talk and conversation about the subject ebbed and flowed over the next few weeks, until it had exhausted itself like a grass fire. The summer wore on, and more interesting topics quickly took over, like the Otter Lake Fishing Derby—an annual event that tested the local fishermen’s manhood (which was rapidly becoming an irrelevant concern since about a quarter of the participants were now women). But the motto of the Derby remained: “It’s not how big your rod is, but how you cast it. And what kind of line you use.”

Somewhere in the midst of the three dozen high-tech boats and equipment was my ten-horsepower outboard—suffering from terminal tuberculosis, judging by its cough— attached to a standard aluminum boat. I felt somewhat inadequate about my skill, but my mother loved fish and I wanted the prize money. Two thousand dollars and a new outboard—I was willing to kill fish for that.

Most of my friends were also out on the lake that hot August day; William, Paul, Jimmy and a host of others. We had all been out fishing together numerous times, but today we were solitary warriors, sitting in our metal mounts, ready to wage war with fishing tackle.

The Otter Lake Reserve is bordered on two sides by a large lake system, logically called Otter Lake. Sprinkled with innumerable islands and bays dotting the landscape, every family, every individual, has a favourite fishing spot where the biggest and tastiest bass or pickerel could be found. Or, if lucky, a monster of a muskie to test your resolve. So, like ripples leaving a dropped pebble, the three dozen boats scattered across the lake in search of game.

I hung near the shore, heading east towards a bay my father used to take me fishing in, when he was healthy. It was about twenty minutes by boat—thirty the way the dinosaur I was riding in cut through the water. I had neither the natural aptitude, nor the inherent knowledge of how fish think, to guide me. Instead, I had only my father’s assurance that this particular bay would get the family a new outboard.

I could see Paul heading across the lake to Snowstorm Island, his usual fishing haunt. Jimmy hung out near the weed patch across from his grandfather’s place. William had long disappeared to his “secret” destination. Most of us figured it was a fish market.

Up ahead lay Mukwa Bay, the much promoted location of massive and prize-winning fish. Along the shores, trees reached out over the lake, shading the shallow water. This place had always been a favourite spot of mine, one I was kicking myself for not spending more time at. It was remote, the trees were beautiful and lush, the water calm and not chopped up by tourists in speed boats or waterjets. I sat there for a few moments, drinking in the serenity and calmness this place seemed to share. I would enjoy the next couple of hours here. This was a good idea.

I cast my first lure of this perfect day into the water, several dozen feet off shore. It bobbed on the surface, then sank as I reeled it in, hoping it would provide an irresistible attraction for a monster fish. It didn’t take me long to get into a Zen state of mind. Cast. Reel. Enjoy sun. Enjoy breeze. Enjoy day. Cast again. Repeat as necessary. All those hours and money white people spend in therapy had nothing on this. I felt there were no problems in the world.

Somewhere not too distant, I could here a woodpecker doing its thing. It sounded close, and as an idle game, I tried to find it between casts, scanning the woods along the shoreline. I tried to remember what kind of wood they preferred to look for their tasty insects in. I remembered once discovering a nest of woodpeckers in a hollowed-out cedar tree but that didn’t count. That was a nest, and cedar is a soft wood. It’s easier to build a nest in soft wood than in maple or oak. Woodpeckers are not stupid animals.

Due to the soft summer breeze, my boat eventually drifted closer to shore and to the busy woodpecker. It was hard to see the actual trees because the sun was shining so brightly that they were hiding in their own shade. But something in the dimly lit line of trees caught my attention. Evidently our bark-napping friend had been here. Knowing what I was looking for, I tried to see deeper into the woods, even scanning the hill-shaped drumlin that created the shore of the bay. There were more birch trees—almost all of them had been harvested.

I thought about the mystery a bit, but the breeze and the sun pulled it away from me. If it puzzled me enough, I could think about it tomorrow. I had a fishing derby to win, and obsessing over birch bark wouldn’t help me do that. I forced my mind back to more productive thoughts. Deciding to move further into the bay, I used one of the paddles to move the boat, figuring the engine would only have ruined the placidness of the place.

I found a place near dead centre of Mukwa Bay and remembered spending hours in this exact spot with my father years ago, fishing and talking. Sometimes not talking. Just being. I would sit at the front of the boat, and he would sit at the back. We would face each other, cast to opposite sides, and share our lives. Feeling nostalgic, I crawled to the front of the boat, assumed my childhood position, cast my lure and watched it arc far overhead, the sun reflecting off it, silhouetted against the lush green background of the woods surrounding me.

Except is wasn’t all green. My eye had caught something buried in the wall of foliage. Barely hearing the plop of the lure hitting the water, I tried to refocus my eyes on whatever had grabbed my attention. It took a second or two to locate it again but there it was, halfway up the drumlin, almost totally hidden by the trees. It was a patch of white. A large patch, but I couldn’t tell how large. I didn’t remember it being there as a child, and something about it looked unnatural. It was too big to be a birch tree, and this was the wrong geography for any type of white rock of that size, especially halfway up a drumlin, a leftover from the glacial age.

I moved the boat around trying for a better view but I only succeeded in losing the mysterious image entirely. I returned to the center of the bay and there it was again, high up the hill, almost a beacon. Nobody could see it except me, in this specific spot. This time I could discern another odd disturbance in the seeming stillness of the bay. Dogs barking. A lot of them. And it was coming from the direction of the white patch.

When you spend your entire life growing up in a rural area, you tend to know where everybody lives and the places where everybody doesn’t live. This was one of those latter places. Behind the drumlin was an old dirt road, once used by loggers, that connected to the larger road near Japland, another sparsely settled part of the community. Other than that, the place was deserted, used only occasionally for camping or fishing. Dogs and large white patches should not be littering the drumlin.

There was a silent thirty-second debate raging in my head between greed and curiosity. Two thousand potential dollars versus an explanation of a large white spot and the dogs. It seemed an odd toss-up until I realized the two were not mutually exclusive. Mukwa Bay and the fish would still be there after I took care of my curiosity. I estimated a good thirty-minute hike up the side of the drumlin to the location of the white patch, and probably about twenty minutes to get back to the shore. Or possibly three minutes, providing I didn’t watch my step on the way down. That would leave a good half day to reel in Moby Dick.

I tied the boat to a large weeping willow overhanging the water. Making my way through the trees, I found what looked like an easy route up the side of the tear-shaped drumlin. I was still a fair distance from my destination when I noticed a third disturbance in how things should be in Mukwa Bay. The first had been visual, the second auditory, the third was odorous. There was a vicious, horrible stench coming off the side of this hill—the closer I got, the worse it got.

It wasn’t from the dogs I had heard—I knew that smell well enough. It reeked of what I had always thought biblical brimstone would smell like. I was beginning to have second doubts about the need to satisfy my curiosity. Perhaps whatever is up at the top of this hill had a reason for being out here in the middle of nowhere, smelling the way it did, surrounded by the sound of a dozen dogs or so.

Unfortunately I had waited too long in my indecision. Judging from the growl behind me, one of the dogs I had been hearing for the last half hour had, in fact, found me before I could find it. It was a small mongrel of no definable heritage, the breed common on many reserves. But what it lacked in size, it seemed to make up for in temperament. And teeth. It growled, barked gnashed its fangs at me. Making a strategic withdrawal, I backed up the drumlin, keeping my front to the dog as much as possible, because basic military strategy dictates it’s better to have the higher ground, and make the enemy advance up the hill towards you.

This, however, meant I found myself backing onto a small plateau or shelf in the drumlin, and directly into the heart of the mystery. And more dogs. Lots more.

I lost track after at least fifteen mutts of all shapes and sizes swarmed me, running, jumping and barking all around. I felt like a covered wagon surrounded by Indians in one of those old-time Westerns. One black and white dog lunged in and nipped at my pant leg. This was rapidly turning out to have been a bad idea. What was more frustrating was that I had passed up a perfectly quiet day on the water for this scene from Hell, brimstone included.

“G’jih!”

Either God had spoken, in Ojibway, or there was somebody else on this drumlin with me. Over my left shoulder a chunk of wood came flying into the pack of dogs. It hit a grey one making him dart off into the bush with a yelp that made the other dogs scatter. Apparently God had a great overhand throw.

I turned to see the source of this divine intervention. Instead, blotting everything else out, I confronted a wall of white birch bark—more than a wall, almost a mountain face. It was huge, about thirty feet long, and twenty feet high, tied to a framework that looked surprisingly familiar in structure, almost like the keel of a boat. It was all neatly patchworked together, the squares from various sized trees, with different shades and varying textures, all sewn together to be … whatever it was. And off to the side was a mound of unused birch bark, again almost twenty feet high. So this was the home of the Phantom of the Forest.

Standing not fifteen feet away from me, wearing dirty overalls, no t-shirt, work boots and a rash of mosquito bites was the Phantom himself. Not quite as daunting as you would expect. He smiled, showing an equally splendid patchwork of teeth.

“Pretty, isn’t it?”

I recognized him then, underneath the dirt and the sweat. He was from Otter Lake, and was distantly related to some distant relatives of mine. Duanne … Something. Duanne North. That was it. I’d seen him, even talked with him a few times while I was growing up. He had helped teach Sunday School the few times I went. During the long winter months in Otter Lake, your options of things to occupy your time were rather limited. Both his parents were well known for their religious fervour. In fact, Duanne’s father had been the lay minister for the village a number of years ago. Everybody had always expected Duanne to follow in his father’s footsteps.

But Duanne had problems of his own. A minister is supposed to minister to his flock, but I remember somebody once telling me that Duanne didn’t like being surrounded by people. It made him claustrophobic. As more and more people in Otter Lake had more and more children, resulting in more and more houses being built, he felt increasingly uncomfortable. Add to that the sudden influx of Bill C-31 people, Duanne felt compelled to move farther and farther out into the bush. And at one point, I’d heard he’d disappeared somewhere out west in the wide open spaces. Evidently he was back, ministering to his congregation of dogs. And stealing birch bark.

“Andrew’s your name, ain’t it?” I nodded, but my attention was still on what literally was a vast wall of birch bark. It was mind-boggling, not just the fact that nobody in the world had ever seen anything remotely like this to the best of my knowledge, but the obvious amount of work that had gone into it, for whatever mysterious reason. “Sorry about the dogs, we don’t get many visitors up here. They won’t bother you no more.”

He chuckled to himself before following my gaze to what I assumed was his handiwork. “I was hoping to keep it a secret until it was finished but I guess with something this big, this glorious, somebody was bound to find out. What do ya think?”

I could see the stitching that connected every single section of bark with every other section, and in some places, a form of tar or paste that had been used to seal the stitching, making it watertight. It was looking more and more like a huge birch-bark canoe. But it couldn’t be.

“What is it?”

Smiling proudly, almost glowing with pride, Duanne formed the words slowly. At first I wasn’t sure I’d heard properly. “It’s a what?”

“An ark.”

An immense, enormous, incredibly big, birch-bark ark, out in the middle of the woods. I asked the only logical question. “Like the one in the Bible? That ark?”

He wiped his hands on his stained overalls, the way a workman does when surveying his accomplishments. “Yep. My ark. Still got a ways to go yet, be another year or two, but every flood starts with a raindrop.”

“You built an ark?!”

“It’s hardly an ark yet. Wouldn’t float worth a damn right now, but give me enough time and she’ll ride out any flood. Took me a while to figure out how to make it strong and hold up. It’s all in the bracing, eh?”

“You built an ark?!”

“That’s what I said. My ark.”

I couldn’t say anything more. What more was there to say, standing there in front of a birch-bark ark. Nice ark?

“Want some tea?”

“Um, sure.”

He went over to the an old wood-burning stove he’d evidently carried up and left outside for just such an emergency. He put the kettle on the top and checked to make sure there was enough wood still burning. I just stood there, looking at the birch bark ark.

Duanne cleared some bark shavings off two stumps near the stove. “Hey Andrew, come over and sit a spell. How’s your mother and father?”

“Fine.” One syllable words seemed so innocuous in front of that wide expanse of white.

“You still go to church?”

“No. Not much.”

He smiled and gazed at the world around him. “Me neither but I figure you don’t need a building of brick and wood to worship God. He’s everywhere. He can hear me atop this small mountain as well as in any church, huh?”

I swallowed, not really knowing how to reply. “I guess.”

There was silence. I could hear the dogs wandering back into the camp. But this time they seemed a little more respectful of me and kept their distance.

“Not much of a talker, are you boy?”

“You’re building an ark?!”

“And when you do talk, you repeat yourself. I admit it’s not something you see every day, but that’s no reason to be anti-social. Sit and talk a while. You’re the first one up here to see my little project. How’d you find me?”

Finally I managed to take my eyes off the thing and focus on Duanne North. “From the bay. You could see something big and white in the woods. I got curious.”

He looked out towards the bay but all you could see was intermittent spots of blue though the leaves. “Figures—the trees are a might thin in that direction. I picked this spot because I thought it would give me a bit of privacy to finish my little project, but no place is perfect. I’m surprised I got away with it this long. God knows it’s hard to keep a secret in this village. Milk and sugar?”

“Please.” Sitting on the stump by the stove gave me a different view of Duanne North’s ark. It was hollow, just some rudimentary framing on one side of the interior, but the whole other side was set to be fitted with the remaining birch bark. The scale of what this man had done, and planned to do, was astounding. I couldn’t get over it. The Phantom of the Forest was an aboriginal Noah.

“How big is it?!”

“Oh, the usual. Three hundred by fifty by thirty cubits. Supposed to be made of gopher wood but I don’t reckon there’s much of that around here. So I improvised. Decided to do it the way our grandfathers would have done it. Our people travelled far and wide with birch bark. It seemed only natural for me to use that instead. Doing pretty good so far.” He beamed proudly, almost glowing in his accomplishment. Like he said before, it’s hard to keep a secret in Otter Lake, especially when you’re the one keeping it. There seemed to be an eagerness, almost an anxiousness to share in him, a desire to bask in his achievements.

“What the hell is a cubit? Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to swear.”

The kettle went off and Duanne proceeded to make our tea while lecturing me in the fine art of ark building. “I was curious about that myself. I’d never heard of a cubit before, except in church. But in Genesis, it tells you a cubit is the length from the tip of your finger to your elbow. So doing a little calculation, I sort of figured out what it would roughly come to. So the ark’s about four hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide and forty-five feet high. That sounds about right, don’t it?”

“Sounds good to me.” That thing was almost five hundred feet long and three stories tall. That was a lot of birch bark. I drank my tea trying to process and understand all that was happening in this little place near the shores of Mukwa Bay. “Why?”

“Why what?

“Why build an ark?”

“I felt like it,” he said uncomfortably. That was it. He smiled weakly, absently reaching down and scratching one of the dogs that had come to investigate our tea drinking.

“People do not feel like suddenly building an ark. At least I don’t think so. Not in my experience anyways. Now correct me if I’m wrong but hasn’t it only happened once before? And if I remember correctly, Noah had the voice of God telling him to do it.” I felt a wet nose and slightly chewed ear rubbing against my left hand. Another of Duanne’s congregation. “This … thing of yours must have started somewhere.”

Without a sound, he undid the straps to his overalls, letting the front drop open. On his chest, above each nipple were two horizontal scars, each about two inches in length. Duanne looked embarrassed, there was almost a hint of disgrace in the way he refused to look at the scars.

They looked familiar, like I should know what they were. Then I remembered. He’d gone out west. “Those aren’t what I think they are, are they?” He nodded forlornly. They were Sundance scars. A highly religious prairie ritual that involves having wooden pegs pierce the flesh of your chest. These pegs are attached to a central pole and the object is to pray and dance continuously around the pole until they rip out. It’s not for the faint of heart. In fact, Duanne was the first person I’d ever seen with the scars. But what was a good Christian boy doing with Sundance scars?

“I strayed.” Turning away from me, he did up his overalls again. I could tell those scars were not the badges of honour they were intended to be.

“How … ?”

“Because I’m weak. You must have heard I went out west to do some missionary work. While I was there I ran into some people.” I didn’t like the way he said “some people.” “They … I believed them.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“No, I hurt myself. I did this. Of my own free will. That makes it all the more … wrong. This was not God’s work. I should have known better. I should have guarded myself against the words of false idols. For a while, I believed there was another way, a different, better way. But like the Bible says, God is the only way.”

“Duanne, I think you’re over … ”

“I had to do penance. Make my peace with God for wandering from the path.”

“I don’t think participating in a Sundance ceremony is a bad thing. Most people would consider it an act of courage, even piety.”

“I allowed myself to believe that. But I have put all that behind me. I am reborn, for there is no other way but the Lord and the Bible. I am forever scarred by my actions, but I might be able to save my soul. By building an ark!”

I was beginning to feel exceedingly uncomfortable. It’s one thing to believe in the Bible, my parents do, and to a lesser extent, so do I. But it’s another thing to build an ark. And to have tea with the builder. This was not covered in any Sunday School class I ever attended. I am of that generation that was drifting from the beliefs the white institutions had forced upon us, and was now considering what had been believed before the dark times had come. I was hardly fundamentalist in any sense of the word and I was respectful of both belief systems.

It was my turn to sip my tea nonchalantly. “Have you, like, heard God telling you to do this? I mean, have you actually heard a voice or something?”

His attitude changed and he laughed out loud, scaring the dog away. “You mean burning bushes type thing? No, nothing like that. I’m just a simple man. But I hear my duty inside me. “You should build an ark,” it said. I was meant to create this ark, I know this, and if I keep up the pace I’ve set, I should have it finished a couple months before the millennium.”

“The millennium? What does the millennium have to do with anything?” This was beginning to get way over my head.

“Don’t you pay attention to anything! The millennium! It’s all part of the whole big picture. Great and wonderful things are expected to happen. Serious and fantastic things happen every thousand years. Somebody once estimated that Creation happened in 4004 BC. Practically a millennium, if they had them back then. The Great Flood happened five thousand years ago. More recently, Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born two thousand years ago, and a thousand years later the Mayan civilization died out. I think we’re due for another flood, especially with this El Niño thing I keep hearing about. And Andrew, I think Native people are the chosen people!”

“Otter Lake people?”

He nodded confidently. “Yes. And what better way to redeem yourself then by saving Otter Lake! The rains should start on January first and everybody here can sail away in my ark. Now there’s a hell of a way to get out of Hell, wouldn’t you say?” He paused for a moment, a look of thought crossing his face. “Though January’s a hell of a time to be out on the water.”

Duanne finished his tea before getting up. “Sorry, got to stir my tar. Excuse me.” I couldn’t help wondering if Noah had been this polite. He half waddled, half scurried over to another large circular fireplace a dozen or so feet from the ark. Over it was a large pot, almost a cauldron, boiling away. He picked up a large paddle-like object and began stirring it. “If you’re not careful, the whole thing will boil away and harden. I’ve had that happen a few times already, I get so caught up in my work. Can you pass me that bucket over there, please?”

The bucket was near the pile of unused birch bark, down wind of the fire. I fetched it for him and immediately my eyes stung and watered so badly I almost dropped the bucket. Whatever I had smelled earlier down the drumlin was emanating from the cauldron. And however noxious it was a quarter of a mile away, it was beyond belief a dozen feet away. I coughed and ran around the fire as fast as I could trying not to spill the contents of the bucket. “You get used to it after a while, but it sure clears out your sinuses, don’t it?”

I didn’t trust myself to answer without rapidly emptying my stomach. Instead I handed him the bucket and watched him through tear-stained eyes pour some of it into the larger pot. “The dogs love it though. That’s how they all ended up here. They can smell this concoction miles away. I know I’m supposed to have two of everything but what the hell, I like dogs.” The viscous goo pouring out of the bucket smelled familiar, like concentrated pine. “Pine gum,” he said. “Some pine gum, bear fat and some wood ash and a few other odds and ends will seal this thing tighter than a duck’s ass. Old family recipe. You think finding enough birch bark was hard, try finding enough bear fat. It don’t grow on trees, you know.”

“You’re doing this all by yourself? At least Noah had a family to help.”

“Most of my family don’t talk to me much. I like to think these dogs are my family but they sure don’t help me much either. Just bark and run around a lot. Actually, they are a lot like my real family.” With that, he let out a hearty laugh. Taking a large spoon, he reached into the cauldron and scooped up a large piece of bear fat that hadn’t been rendered yet, and threw it at the dogs. Four of them scrambled to swallow it in a frenzy of barking. “Got to be careful to pick a piece that the pine gum hasn’t touched. They hate boiled pine gum. Come to think of it, I’m not to particularly fond of it myself.” He laughed again.

While still stirring, he shared his most serious expression of the afternoon. “I suppose you think I’m crazy? Building an ark like this?”

“No. No, not at all. It pays to be prepared I guess.”

“Wanna help?”

With those words, I could see a look of hope, or friendship, being expressed, an olive branch being extended. It was a big job, huge in fact. He definitely needed help. But I couldn’t help looking at the reality of the situation. He was building an ark for an up-coming flood, here in the woods of Mukwa Bay. I believe in religious tolerance, even in preparing for the future, even in Murphy’s Law, but this went beyond everything one could fit into any logical equation. Andrew’s Law dictates, “whatever can go wrong, you stay away from.”

“I don’t think so. Sorry Duanne. I’ve got other obligations”

Disappointment spread across his face. Apparently he had held serious hope I would join him in his venture. More hope than a knowledge of reality. “I guess it is a lot to ask. Thanks anyway, Andrew. I guess I’m supposed to finish this myself. But you will keep it a secret, huh? Please? I mean, I’ll tell everybody when the time comes, that’s why I’m building it. Just not right now. And I will need a lot of help later on, to go off to the zoo to get all the other animals we’ll need. You know everybody who owns a pickup truck, don’t you Andrew?”

Offering as much assistance as I could without promising anything concrete, I left Duanne North, high on the drumlin with his ark. A couple of dogs followed me down to my boat before becoming bored or convinced I had no food. I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in our family boat, pretending to fish. I would cast, then fifteen minutes later remember to reel the lure in. I had a few nibbles but nothing struck with any real interest. All the time, I could see the white surface shining out from beneath the green foliage.

I went home without two thousand dollars or a new motor. As I motored my way along the shoreline home, it surprised me how many white or light coloured houses lined the green shores of Otter Lake. I had promised Duanne I would keep his secret. And I would. Part of me did it out of respect for Duanne’s dream, the other, more evil part was curious to see what would happen on January 1, 2000, when Duanne unveiled his birch-bark ark to Otter Lake.

During the next few weeks, whenever I found myself near Mukwa Bay or Japland, I vainly tried to see if I could detect any evidence of something white proudly announcing its presence in the forest. But the ark was too well camouflaged, hidden too far back in the woods to be seen from civilization. Its secret held. In my mind’s eye I could see it growing, getting bigger, taking form. I estimated Duanne might have two thirds of one side done by now. Still a long way from completing it, but probably becoming more than just a dream—each day coming closer to being a reality.

Then came late September. I was taking the shortcut through Japland to a nearby small town to pick up some groceries for my mother. All along the sides of the road the birch bark trees had been harvested, the bands of black indicating where Duanne North had tapped the resources of Mother Nature to do the bidding of God. Hopefully Duanne had gotten himself enough to continue his work over the winter. Come the spring, I had a feeling Duanne would be finding himself wandering farther afield in search of more raw materials.

At one point, the road climbs halfway up another drumlin, cutting though the crest, revealing to the driver a wonderful, if momentary, vista of the surrounding area. One of the prettiest spots in the village, I often stopped there to enjoy the view. But this time it was marred by a large black cloud rolling out of the forest, about three miles west of the road. There had been no thunderstorms with lightning to start fires, and nobody I knew lived out that way. Towards Mukwa Bay. Except Duanne.

Fearing the worst, I jumped back in my car and headed toward Joplin’s Turn, the nearest spot a car could get to Duanne’s camp. Still, the Turn was over two and a half miles away from the drumlin and it took almost an hour before I reached the ark. Or what was left of it.

The wood bracing still stood, charred and burned, totally useless, but the bark itself had burned away. The air hung heavy with the aroma of burned wood and bear fat/pine gum/wood ash tar. The ground was littered with little fires, errant pieces of birch bark that had flown off the main conflagration, trying to eat up the damp pine needles that carpeted the camp. All the trees, both in the camp and surrounding it, especially down-wind, showed evidence of being scorched. Luckily it had been a wet summer or the fire would have been more biblical in proportions.

The camp seemed deserted. “Duanne! Duanne!” There was no answer. Not even from the dogs. I ran through the camp, checking his cabin, and forced myself to quickly check the ashes of the ark. Nothing, thank God. There was no sign of Duanne.

He had said earlier that no burning bush had talked to him. I wondered what a burning ark, a crushed dream would say to a man in the throws of fulfilling a destiny set out for him by God. And what that man might do when the dream was destroyed. Conceivably by God. Luckily, the options that went through my mind were considered a sin, therefore out of the question for Duanne.

No matter how well watered the forest was, I still felt it prudent to stamp out the multitude of little blazes that peppered the area. It gave me time to figure out what had happened here, and to Duanne, the ark builder. Maybe he had gone into town to get help. It was a long way to go but it seemed the only logical possibility. I had trampled about eight small fires before I heard the gasping and huffing of a near exhausted man coming up the drumlin.

Emerging from the bush Duanne arrived, carrying two buckets of water from the lake. He stopped when he entered the camp, his heaving breath the only sound. It was too late. A matter of too much fire, too little water—too much time had elapsed. His buckets fell from his hands and overturned, draining into the soft pine carpet.

“It’s gone. All gone.” He fell back on his behind sending up a small shower of burnt birch bark, still staring at the scorched remnants.

“Duanne, what happened?”

“It burned up.”

“I know that. How?”

He picked up a half burned piece of birch bark, held it in his hands, eventually crushing it in frustration. It trickled down his hands, the ashes flowing away gently, caught in the fall breeze.

“Duanne?”

“The dogs. They did this.”

I looked around but there were still no dogs in the area. “The dogs?! Duanne, how could they do this? Talk to me, Duanne.”

Duanne got to his knees, then to his feet. Walking almost blindly, he approached his life’s dream. He seemed to talk without choice or effort. The words came out like on automatic pilot. “The tar. They wanted the bear fat in the tar. They upset the pot. The fat caught fire. And my ark … ” His voice trailed of and he stood directly under the huge remaining timbers that made up the frame of the ark. “My ark … ”

Then suddenly, he grabbed an unused plank from the ground and started pounding the side of the support beam. He hammered and pummelled it, sending off nuggets of burnt wood and sparks flying across the camp. One caught in his hair but he didn’t notice as it sizzled, then went out, all the time yelling out, “Why? Why? Why?” The whole thing was shaking from the force of his pounding. It rocked back and forth, wobbling. I could see chunks of half burnt wood fall to the ground but Duanne was too busy venting his wrath to notice.

But I could also see the all too obvious signs of structural weakness, burnt-through beams and support planks charred to cinders. You’d have to be blind, or crazed with rage, not to. “Duanne, don’t do that! That thing will … ” Several loud cracks drowned out my words as the framework for a four-hundred-and-fifty-foot by seventy-five-foot boat came tumbling down into a mess of partially incinerated wood, on top of Duanne. He disappeared underneath it without uttering a sound.

Some of the wood was still hot and sparks flew everywhere under the collapse. Thinking surprisingly quickly, I used my jean jacket to protect my hands as I threw charred timbers and planks aside in a desperate search for Duanne. It was barely a dozen seconds before I found him, his clothes smoldering on top of some live embers. I did what I could to put them out and pull Duanne from the wreckage. He was still saying, though more softly, “Why? Why? … ”

He was bleeding from his shoulder and a leg, one hand and the side of his face looked burned, and he had a horrible wheezing sound coming from his lungs. His cries for answers were soon replaced by coughing. In between spasms, he grabbed my shirt, asking again, “Why?”

“I don’t know. You can always build another one. I’ll help this time.” He smiled a sad smile, one that again said too little, too late. He laid back in my arms, still smiling.

“It was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

“It was amazing.”

Duanne looked puzzled for a moment, in thought. Then in a sad, regretful tone, he simply said, “Hmmm.”

“What does that mean, Duanne?”

He had another coughing spasm, this one stronger than the last. When it subsided, he looked calmer. “I was just thinking. What if I misunderstood? What if I was supposed to build a park, instead of an ark? Maybe that’s why he destroyed it. What do you think? Or am I still being punished?” He give me one last confused searching look. “This hill would have made a nice park, you know.” Then his eyes closed.

I left him up there with his ark. Though it was probably illegal, and possibly unethical, I buried him on the side of that drumlin, hoping he’d found his redemption. I’m ashamed to admit it, but my Bible studies were a little lax, and I’m not sure if Noah was buried on the side of Mount Ararat, the place where the first Ark originally landed. Duanne’s ark never even saw a drop of water. It’s said that fragments of the original Ark can be found atop that mountain, in far away Turkey. But if you’re not too picky about your arks, you can still find some relics over in Mukwa Bay.