Wabi

A NICE COATING OF SNOW had fallen over the land. I liked this season of snow. To me it was another sign of how much the Great Darkness cared for owls. The nights were wonderfully long in this season. And the fact that the nights were long for only this one part of the great circle of seasons made it all the better. If they were always long we might not appreciate them as much. It would be like eating nothing but one kind of mouse all the time.

Although meadow mice certainly were tasty. Urp. I took a breath and then coughed up a nice firm ball of little crunched bones and hair. What a pleasant reminder of a good meal an owl pellet is! I spat it out and heard it fall into the soft snow that had drifted around the roots of the cedar.

“The Great Darkness meant for us to always be thankful. The little scampering ones keep us alive by making themselves easy for us to eat. Those little balls of fur and bones that we spit out onto the ground will make more of those little scampering ones for us to eat in the seasons to come. We do not eat their spirits, only their little bodies. We eat them, then we give back their bones. If we did not give thanks, their spirits would go far away where we could not find them. And then we would have no more food. Always remember to give thanks, great-grandson.”

It made good sense, and I had noticed that even the human beings expressed their thanks for the food they were given. I’d watched a human hunter do so just the other day after he killed a moose.

But it was so hard for humans to get their food. They didn’t just gulp it down whole the way we owls usually did with most of our food. Humans had to spend much effort taking off the skins—not even with their own mouths, but with cutting tools that they struggled to make. Then they had to cut out the meat and gather wood for making fires to burn that good food because their weak little mouths and delicate stomachs could not accept it unless it was cooked. How sad!

The night was almost over. Perhaps there was just time for one more brief hunt. But for some reason I didn’t feel like hunting. Instead I wanted to visit the village where my humans were.

They were no longer in the village below the falls. When the season changed, they had moved to another place. They did this every year, moving their little village to be near their food. When they lived below the falls, much of what they ate was fish. But in the season of snow they moved upland to hunt the big animals. Without wings they couldn’t go from one place to another as quickly as an owl can. So they moved everything and everyone, leaving the frames of their old nests behind and making new ones in their new village. It was so much harder to be a human than an owl.

By the time I reached Snow Season Village, the light of the Day Fire had returned. I hid myself in a snowy pine to watch. The humans were already awake and their little ones were playing a game I had not seen before. As I had hoped, Dojihla, the little girl I had protected from the gagwanisagwa, was among them.

I liked watching her. Even though she was far from the largest child, she seemed to be their leader. They were sliding down the smooth snow on the hill behind their village. They slid on their bellies like otters. I could hear their shrieks as they did so. I used to think those were sounds of distress, but I had learned that it was their way of laughing. Not as expressive a sound as the little chuckle we owls make, but I liked it.

The more I watched, the more enjoyable their game appeared. Dojihla seemed to delight in both tripping the larger boys and carefully helping the smallest children through the deep snow. I was glad to see that she seemed to be much more watchful than any of the others. One who is always looking and listening is more likely to survive. She even cast her eyes my way, peering suspiciously into the place where I was concealed in the pine. But I was deep in the branches and my white feathers blended in so well that I am sure she could not see me.

Before long some of the bigger humans came out and joined the little ones. Dojihla’s big brother was among them, carrying a large, flat piece of bark. By sitting on the bark he could go down the slope almost as fast as if he had wings. Just before he went down the second time, though, Dojihla sneaked up behind him with an armful of snow that she dropped on his head. He laughed and threw snow back at her. The other humans joined in, laughing loudly. The oldest of the humans, those who walked not with two legs but with three, using a stick as another leg, came out of their nests. They were laughing too.

As I watched them, I felt a warmth in my heart that I had not felt before. We owls seldom gather together in a group, and no owl had ever played a game like that. I wished that I could join in. Strangely, instead of being happy, I now felt sad. I could watch no longer.

I took flight from the pine tree, my wings spreading a cloud of snow as I did so. I know that Dojihla heard me. From high above I saw her staring at the cloud of snow still falling from the branch where I had been. But none of the other happy humans noticed. They were playing and laughing and shouting so loudly that they would not even have noticed some great monster coming out of the dark forest to destroy them. Just in case, I made a big circle around the village, but I saw nothing more dangerous than a few panicky white rabbits.

I flew until I came to another hill of snow like the one they had been sliding upon. I landed at the top of the hill and looked around. There was no person or bird or animal anywhere in sight.

How was it that they did it? I leaned forward until my chest was almost touching the snow. Then I leaned farther forward and kicked with my feet. But instead of sliding, I buried myself in the snow. I stood up, shaking the snow out of my beak and eyes.

But as I flew back to my roosting place to sleep through the day, I kept thinking of that whole village of humans laughing and playing together. Were we owls really the most favored of all the creatures made by the Great Darkness? Perhaps being a human was almost as good as being an owl.