LAKE LAVASSEUR is gray and quiet in the distance, the robin’s egg blue sky stark against the surrounding evergreens. My snowshoes discharge the smell of pine into the air as they crunch along the icy fisherman’s trail, faintly visible in the almost-spring forest. My concentration is fixed on finding fresh tracks from the coyote I’ve been scouting every day. And so I’m startled when I hear the dinosaur bark of a crane in the distance, sending a pair of mallard ducks quacking into the air.
I stop and look up, wait a couple of beats holding my breath. Silence. I readjust my snowpants. I have them mostly zipped, but not snapped, as my pregnant belly no longer allows for that. I breathe in the mild winter air and consider leaving my snowshoes behind. My dog runs ahead, past the frozen marsh and up the hill, darting through the jack pine forest.
He waits for me to catch up and then, nose to the ground, starts to suss out the coyote’s path this morning. We’ve spent the whole winter following and being followed by this fellow. It’s become a game to see who is keeping tabs on whom.
At the crest of the hill leading down to the boat launch we pause, observing the shimmering steel lake frozen in the calm of the morning sky. A thin ice layer remains, wreathlike along its edges. We descend to the parking lot, angling across and over to the bridge. Lake LaVasseur is a managed marsh complex, created in 1953 with placement of a dam on LeVasseur Creek. Right now the flow is robust, cascading over the dam and then downstream to Kawbawgam Lake.
We listen to the sound of rushing water, tracking the tannin flow beneath our feet. Pendant icicles cling to a branch stuck in the dam’s jaws. Calling to my dog, we clunk noisily across the metal bridge.
“Enough dawdling, let’s go!”
Getting down to business, we move into exercise mode. I put my head down and methodically bound up the next hill, getting the most out of each stride. I think of the baby in my belly, excited to one day show her this playground. We crest the bluff and step forward to the trail when I smell it: someone’s smoking a cigarette.
I freeze.
We’ve seen no one. The skin on my neck is crawling as I pause and quietly lift my gaze. I’m eyelevel with the lake when I see him. He’s frozen too, staring at me.
I don’t move.
He doesn’t either.
We stand like that for a few moments, gazing at each other, sharing space in the expanse before us. I sense he’s allowing this, checking for my understanding of that fact, before he turns and ambles away. I watch until he disappears into the frozen marsh.
I suck in my breath, my startled heart fluttering. Slowly, a smile inches along my face as I realize I’ve finally met the creature we’ve been tracking. My arms rise on their own volition as I turn to celebrate with my dog who I find has missed the whole adventure, his attention where his nose is, buried in the ground down the hill away from the lake.
“Hey!” I call, wanting to share my experience. He looks up. “Can you believe this?” I ask him, as he returns, tail wagging, having sensed the fracture in our progress and the excitement in my voice. I bend to pet him and kiss his soft, sweet nose.
My mind grapples with the facts as I straighten, sight fixed on the area where the coyote was. I try to puzzle out where the cigarette smoke smell came from. There isn’t a soul around except myself, my dog, and the coyote. I keep looking, convinced someone is lurking nearby.
It takes a while for it to become real in my mind. Finally, I acknowledge there is no one else in the woods. I begin to consider that the smell of cigarette smoke was issued from the coyote – a magical spritz, a sportsman’s invitation to meet.
Years ago, a friend of mine from the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians told me to remember my thoughts at the exact moment something extraordinary happens – like a bald eagle flying by, or a bear appearing in my path. She didn’t mention what to make of a cigarette-smoking coyote, but I know this is one of those opportunities.
I muse that at the moment of our intersection my thoughts were with my unborn baby, and thus the experience begins to feel like an anointing.
In literature, the coyote often symbolizes the trickster or joker. However, its anthropomorphised personality is also associated with the deep magic of life and creation.
I consider other mammals, birds, trees, and ecosystems that have resonated with me – provoking a feeling of being bonded, of sharing existence, as I contemplate their archetypical integration in my life. I understand the Jungian psychology of co-opting the virtues and strengths of those archetypes for inspiration and guidance, the importance of striving to incorporate the lessons they offer into my being.
It’s why my soul flies every time I see a bald eagle. It’s how trees teach me to stay in my lane and to do the work of being me. It’s the flow of life wind and water remind me of as I witness their existence.
Which makes me wonder, “Why a coyote? Why the smell of smoke?”
I shake my head and laugh out loud, call to my dog and hug him, then myself and baby with joy.
That numinous feeling stayed with me long after we finished the trail that day, up to and including this day, 27 years later. My dream of sharing the LaVasseur landscape with my child has been made manifest many times over. Now an adult, she regularly seeks the loveliness of that space on her own. On any given adventure, she’ll bring her fiance, our dog, her siblings, friends, me, or just herself there to play.
The implications of that experience on my daughter’s life will be hers to figure out. She’ll be the one to decide if and when to draw courage, comfort, or inspiration from it, to determine if she’s called to seek guidance from the coyote.
All I know is, there are lessons there for the taking.
Last Letters /No Regrets is a multi-faceted business devoted to words, their purpose, and application. Heather Mlsna is a professional writer and can be reached at lastlettersmqt@gmail.com or (906) 250-5769. She offers Personal Legacy writing workshops at Peter White Library on the second Monday of every month, from 6-8 pm. More at www.lastlettersnoregrets.com.