This piece written by Honor Schauland is a beautiful reflection on a subsistence activity endemic in this region we call home, and it touches on the spiritual depth of life close to the land and close community. It is a lovely description of a particular human ecology that shares ideas generalizable to other regions in which people live in intentional ways in rural settings and offers a tangible example of a life lived in the context of tribal relationships and interdependence with the wilds and the people we depend upon, whether we are honest about that dependence or not. We’re happy to have Honor share this piece here. -LG

The alarm goes off at 5:30 am. I stumble in the dark getting on long underwear, contact lenses, thick socks, pocket knife, pants, gloves, headlamp, sweatshirt, boots, hat, overcoat, tea, snack for later: no particular order, just need all of it. Don’t forget to bring the chest waders and a fishpick. My netting partner pulls in my driveway in a similar state of unrest and I lumber out like a bear to climb aboard. Then the drive, in which we slowly begin to communicate, in grunts and monosyllables at first and then increasing clarity as we get closer to our goal. Sometimes there is a necessary stop for gas or supplies at the Finland Co-op, which has just opened for the day, and where we probably look just as wild and rough and unawake as everyone else for that time of morning, though most of them get up this early on a full-time basis. Then off through the dark up the road we go, drinking caffeine and discussing such important topics as world politics, local politics, the weather, the road we’re on, the family histories of our friends and acquaintances and perhaps whether we expect to have any fish in our net.

By the time we turn off the paved road, it’s beginning to get light out, just enough that we can see the yellow, falling tamarack needles and the ice on the creeks and ponds we pass. There’s frost or a dusting of snow on the road, and as the light grows we catch glimpses of giant glacial boulders peeping out between jackpine and red pine and tamarack. We pass whole worlds of creeks and glacial valleys filling in with swamp. Muskeg, bogs and lakes. Holes carved out by ice and rushing water, slowly filling in with piney sediment, surrounded by steep banks of bedrock. The snow on the road shows us tracks of squirrels, deer, wolf, coyote, fox and tiny mice. If we are very lucky, we see a moose or a pine marten. We pass old logging roads, new logging roads, old rail lines grown over, old landings, old towns that were hauled away long ago, railroad grades now used as roads, old tree plantations where the trees are grown big now, clear cuts, select cuts. Sometimes we have close calls with logging trucks. Sometimes we see loggers on their way to their job for the day. Usually no one else is out this early.

The rocks get bigger and bigger the further north we get. We repeat old stories so we won’t forget them. One rock in particular I call Punkin’s Rock, because a native guy I knew years ago named Punkin swore he could see his ancestors standing on the top of that rock. It wasn’t my ancestors there, but it is truly an impressive rock and I know some of what he means. The further north we go, and the more rocks there are around us, the more we can feel the presence of something bigger than ourselves. Something…numinous.

We approach the edges of a landscape seared stark and bare by fire. The trees that remain are tall skeletons: fire hardened silver jackpines, blunt and blackened birch trees, and occasional surviving red pines with scorched bottoms – only in places where rock deprived the fire of fuel so it couldn’t burn hot enough to kill. Baby jackpines, from cones burned open by the fire, are sprouting everywhere. Baby birches grow up around the base of their blackened parent trees.

This place was powerful before the fire happened, but now it is stupefying. Some of it is the scale of the devastation. As we come to the bridge over the river where the view opens up, there are hills as far as we can see and nothing is unburnt. Picturing it completely aflame defies comprehension. We are tiny specks in this massive blackened landscape.

And yet, there are echoes of other things…standing on the river bank we can also see into the past beyond the fire. Only 60 years ago, there was a town nearby, and people came here to fish. There is wild rice in the river. Other humans have stood on this shore for thousands of years and looked up the river, and travelled on it. Further in, there’s not much left of the townsite, or the railyard, but the fire has burned back the vegetation enough to reveal more than was previously visible. It’s easier now to pick out where houses once stood, where rail lines went.

We park and get out and pee. We pull on waders and gloves and tromp through all this devastation down to the lakeshore. The water is high and we have to wade without tripping all the way out to the point where our nets are set. Once we are there, we take off overcoats and hang them on shore bushes, then head out to pick the net.
Picking the net is like fish yoga. It requires a certain practice and delicacy. There should be no sudden movements. We are in nearly freezing water up almost to our armpits, holding the net up out of the water to look for fish, then crab walking sideways down the net. Rough water makes all of this more difficult. Hands always get wet. Sometimes more than that gets wet. When fish are found, an extraction process occurs that is more or less elaborate depending on the identity of the fish. Whitefish are easy. They slide out into our landing net with minimal coaxing. Suckers are a bit more difficult. Northern Pike are a thrashing mess. The Northerns are always big, usually female, and when they get caught they thrash and roll, often tearing holes in the net and frightening away the whitefish. The net gets caught on their jaw, their fins and, worst of all, their teeth. They bite down when they are angry, and we have both been bit or snagged by northern teeth.
When we get a northern out of the net, we have to throw it back, even if it’s dead. If it’s dead, it’s food for the eagle that comes to visit us sometimes. If it’s alive, keeping it from swimming right back into the net can be a challenge. We’ve tried throwing them as far away from the net as possible, but if you’ve ever tried throwing a huge fish while standing over your waist in water, you would know that it’s impossible to throw them very far. It’s best to hug them, and walk them a short distance away from the net, and release them facing toward the net, because they always spin around and zigzag. You also have to stand there and kind of chase them away from the net sometimes. Pike herding.

On bigger, colder lakes, you can catch 20 whitefish in a day, sometimes more. If you camp and just net for a weekend, you can get a lot real fast. We have jobs and lives that don’t really allow for camping this time of year. So we do it this way. Our goal is to get around 5 to 10 whitefish in a day. That’s a manageable amount to can or smoke a bunch for winter. If we get that many a few days in a row, we are set. This year, the most we’ve gotten is 2 at a time. The weather did not cooperate; it got cold early, and then warmed up just when it seemed like the fish were starting to run. Then it was too warm for almost 2 weeks, and now it’s getting cold really fast.

Last night the wind blew hard for awhile, and then it got calm and cold. We know we are going to have to break ice to our nets, so we’ve brought a hatchet, which turns out to be not as helpful as a really big stick. There’s no wading out to start today. We’re walking on piles of slush that have frozen solid. We walk out to the edge of the bay, and then we start falling through, so we break ice in front of us with the big stick, locate each net, break ice to free it, pull up the anchor bags, untie all the knots originally tied to keep it anchored down, and pull each net in and stow it in one of the anchor bags to be hauled back up to the truck. This is the most intense version of fish yoga, the final day that all the others have been training us for.

Standing in water above my waist, untying knots with stiff fingers, struggling not to drop the anchor bag back into the frigid water, looking at the rising sun sparkling off the ice all around me, I am struck by how painful, and beautiful, and hilarious this all is. At one point my gloves freeze to the icebreaking stick and then come apart in chunks when I pull my hand away.

“Whitefishing – for fun and profit!” I say, and my netting partner laughs over it as much as I do.

I may not have caught a lot of fish this year, but I feel fine. I have seen the sunrise every day for the last month. I have stood on ancient rock and felt the presence of that which has been there since the beginning. I have walked in the footsteps of all of my fisher-ancestors and felt the same feelings they must have felt: hope for a good catch, steadfastness in the face of cold and difficulties, fatalism at the prospect of drowning in cold water, all overshadowed by awe at the beauty and strength of nature around me. I have looked into the eyes of northern pike nearly as long as myself and admired the vast and stubborn amount of fight left, even in its dying. I have fed the eagles fish and they have warned me of danger, and the sight of them has calmed me when I am agitated. My hands have been chapped, frozen, cracked and cut, and my blood has mingled with the blood of the fish I have eaten. I have fallen in the cold water and survived to tell the tale. I have seen another season of life springing from the devastation of a forest fire, and watched that same life going dormant for the smaller devastation of winter, waiting until spring to return again renewed. Just as I will return again and again for that same renewal. This place feeds me. It feeds my body sometimes, but it feeds my spirit more.