The Trip North

My mother got a call from her sister. "Please come, I need you" she said. My aunt's two young sons had been in a fatal accident. She wanted to see my Mom. They had not seen each other for twelve years.

Mother decided to go to her sister, and she asked me to go with her. We were to catch a plane from Fort McMurray to Fort Chipewyan. We would meet my uncle Tom and go with him to Fort Fitzgerald by boat.

We got to Fort Chip and we met my uncle. The plan was to stop at my grandmother's trap line overnight, and then continue on the next morning. We left Fort Chip about one p.m. My mother was in a very reflective mood, pointing out land marks, telling stories. Although this trip was not a happy trip, she seemed excited and anxious.

The September afternoon was warm, a good day for a boat ride. The boat was fully loaded. Mom sat up in the bow with me. We were, for a change, the lightest people in the boat. My aunt, who weighed three hundred pounds, was laying in the middle of the boat, so we were perched up front. This was perfect for Mom as she pointed out spots she remembered as a child, the creek she and her brothers swam in, and the spot where her father shot a mink.

"But mom, how could he have hit a mink at that distance?" I asked her. "He was a sniper in the war, Alberta," she answered.

She turned and gazed toward the river bank, and I watched the years roll away in her dark brown eyes.

- Alberta M.