After a deep rain, the shallow stream runs brown and noisy over the pebbles. A thicket of scrub trees and thorn bushes, along with tree stumps and glacial rocks pulled from the ancient till by my hearty ancestors, embrace the ditch's journey until it splashes the farm waters into Lake Gitchigumi. The waters journey through the Great Lakes' basin, over the Falls of Niagara, then into the St Lawrence river. Each drop reaching the ocean after a thousand year journey. Then, against all probabilities, a drop returns to renourish the same land. It is here, by the stream that drains our ancestral land, that I would contemplate such deep matters as we crawled on our hands and knees as children, like grazing cattle, eating the wild strawberries as the scent of the freshly cut sweet grass swirled into our nostrils. It is here, we would build a fire and create magical stories about where our fire shadows went after they became lost into the night as the phases of the moon brushed amber into the water that ran dark. As the spruce trees shadowed blackly against the sky, we listened for the call of the barn owl and we howled at the full moon then quietly listened for the plaintive response of the shy timber wolf. And it is here, that me and my brother entered into our long silence.
The middle of the story, which is unwritten, has me and my brother fight to near death
we go years without speaking then he dies in an accident
Time changes our memories. Perhaps our subconsciousness deceives us for our own mental health. Perhaps we just become wiser. For whatever reason, I now think of him differently. As someone who could only be what he was. He was someone who instinctively understood social pressures to be tough, to be a leader, in order to get respect from his peers. We were similar in a way we could not understand. I could not stop enjoying the sounds of nature, the sweetness of the strawberries, the eternal mystery of the night sky and how it made me feel small yet a part of some eternal design. My brother had to be who he was. He was the howl of the timber wolf that I harkened to from a distance far, far away.
The middle of the story, which is unwritten, has me and my brother fight to near death
we go years without speaking then he dies in an accident
Time changes our memories. Perhaps our subconsciousness deceives us for our own mental health. Perhaps we just become wiser. For whatever reason, I now think of him differently. As someone who could only be what he was. He was someone who instinctively understood social pressures to be tough, to be a leader, in order to get respect from his peers. We were similar in a way we could not understand. I could not stop enjoying the sounds of nature, the sweetness of the strawberries, the eternal mystery of the night sky and how it made me feel small yet a part of some eternal design. My brother had to be who he was. He was the howl of the timber wolf that I harkened to from a distance far, far away.
