In the Beginning, Coyote was swimming. He wasn\u2019t swimming for fun, he was dog-paddling energetically but very unhappily because the world was water. (Coyote is the Trickster, he is Loki and Reynard, Seth, Maui, Brer Rabbit and Saruman – the one who is always up to some mischief, the discordant note in the universe, the one who insists on playing his own tune.\u00a0 He is the transformer; when he dies, he always comes back to life. He is beyond good and evil.)
\nCoyote called out to the ducks,\u00a0 who were paddling about nearby. \u201cDucks, he said, I\u2019m sick of swimming, dive down and bring me up some mud in your beaks.\u201d The first duck dived. It was gone an hour. It couldn\u2019t find the bottom. A second duck dived – it was gone half a day before it finally came back up. Still no bottom.
\nCoyote heard Loon laughing in the fog. Loon looked pretty scary, with his mad bright red eye shining in the mist, but Coyote called out anyway. \u201cLoon, he said, I\u2019m surely drowning, dive down and find bottom and bring me some mud.\u201d
\nLoon dived. He was gone two days.\u00a0 When he resurfaced, he floated up dead, belly up; the bottom had been very deep. Coyote grabbed Loon\u2019s corpse and pried open Loon\u2019s beak, and stuck way in the back of Loon\u2019s throat was a tiny lump of mud. Coyote took it out, rolled it, kneaded it, patted it firm, and made it bigger and bigger until he could climb on top. Enough of it stuck above the surface to make a sand bar. Coyote ran back and forth, shaking water from his fur. My sand bar! he yapped and yelped, snapping at the air. Coyote could hardly contain himself he was so happy. No more swimming! This is mine, mine, mine!
\nThen Old Man appeared, Coyote ran around him, snapped at his legs, yelped and snarled \u201cThis is my sand bar, go away Old Man, I don\u2019t like you here!\u201d
\n\u201cTake it easy, Old Man replied. I need your help. Man and Woman are due to turn up any time.\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s my sand bar, mine! No humans! yapped Coyote, I\u2019m not sharing!\u201d
\n\u201cCalm down, said the Old Man. It\u2019s a big sand bar, there\u2019s room enough, and besides you\u2019ll like them. They\u2019re new to the world and weak, they need your help. The world is filled with monsters, and those monsters they love the taste of human, so you have to help me protect them.\u201d
\nCoyote snarled and whimpered and yowled, but the Old Man said I\u2019ll teach you a trick for those monsters. If you can jump over one, he said, it\u2019ll turn to stone. Of course, this was powerful magic, so Coyote thought he\u2019d give it a try.
\nThe first monster appeared, and Coyote leaped high over him and poof! the monster turned to stone. Now Coyote was happy, his feet had wings, his legs were springs; he was really enjoying this, so he raced off, leaping over monster after monster, all the way up the Fraser River. He was enjoying himself so much he did the Thompson River too, all the way to Kamloops. Dozens of monsters, all turned to stone.<\/p>\n
Now, when Simon Fraser left Fort George on May 28th, 1808, the natives warned him it was tough going farther downstream. (After all, Moon had drowned trying the run in a canoe with Sun and Coyote.) His party left their canoes at Lilooett, heading overland, borrowing canoes farther down, all the way to where Vancouver would be one day. Nowadays, you can drive up the TransCanada from Hope past Hell\u2019s Gate, and admire the pretty cliffs, watch tree trunks getting shredded like cardboard in the rapids, take the cablecar across at Boston Bar. It\u2019s a nice trip. All the tourists see is cliffs, but they\u2019re actually monsters. It just depends what story you\u2019re following.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s another great rock story, but from the Campbell River this time. Grizzly wanted to jump from the mainland to Vancouver Island. Great Spirit said don\u2019t try it, you\u2019ll come to no good, but that big island was just teeming with deer and salmon, so Grizzly dug in his claws and tried to leap the Inside Passage. He nearly made it, but the tide was high, and one heel touched the water. He turned to stone; that stone is the only grizzly on Vancouver Island today.<\/p>\n
When Harold told me these, I replied \u201cSonglines.\u201d He replied \u201cDreamtimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not unlike poor Bruce Chatwin, so intense, and so dour that the Arnangu wouldn\u2019t even talk to him. As for singing for him, no way. He was looking too hard. He was being too serious, too earnest. Perhaps he\u2019d have had better luck amongst the Secwepemc or the Tlingit. The lands of the Peoples Without Writing everywhere are crisscrossed with stories, thicker than any Texaco map. We modern westerners are too clever. We know so much, we\u2019ve been writing it all down for so long now. We know what\u2019s true, we know what\u2019s not. It stops us from seeing far too many things.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know about you, but next time I drive up country from Vancouver, I\u2019m going to pay attention to a different map from the one in the glove compartment. There are monsters to count. The first one is at Yale. I wouldn\u2019t want to miss any. The latest issue of Saisons d\u2019Alsace, in the newstands on May 2nd, is a special issue on Haut-Koeningsbourg. Not only will you get the full history of the castle and the restoration, but there are a couple of articles a Canadian illustrator who seems to have spent an inordinate amount of time hanging around there, as well as a free copy of the DVD \u201cLe Seigneur du Ch\u00e2teau\u201d. <\/p>\n
\nSEASONS<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nHere is the link<\/a> if you wish to order a copy by the post.<\/p>\n
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