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TWELVE

BLOODVEIN

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reasons for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

— Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

The bison image remains a mystery, like the paint itself, used to immortalize ancient thought and the transcripts of a healer-shaman. So, what was the bonding agent? Fish oil? Egg albumen from gull eggs, or some sort of Neolithic acrylic? Or, was it perhaps the blood essence of the stone people — the memegwishiwok — proffered to the artist for some sublime ceremony, emblazoned on the rock face of granite by sheer magic? And, how is it that two almost identical bison images, painted long before Euro-travel connected the two continents, show up on rock walls thousands of kilometres apart? Coincidence? Or perhaps some metaphysical soul transfer — a telepathic information exchange between shamans that could transcend any boundary, any distance, any dimension?

I’m referring, of course, to the internationally renowned pictographs (rock paintings) found along the Bloodvein River. This heritage waterway wends its way through the woodland caribou country of northwest Ontario and east-central Manitoba. There are at least twelve known pictograph sites, each one imparting a lesson, possibly a warning, to those who venture close enough, to gaze into their own soul and immortality. These rock scriptures go far beyond the whimsy of present-day, rock-cut graffiti; alive with spiritual energy, they may well be the conduit, or portal, to the spirit world itself.

Once an agnostic about such things, my rather limited view of the spirit realm blossomed after my initial ghost experience some years ago, which took place while renovating an old farmhouse in the Laurentians. My wife and I were treated to an unexpected social call by the long-departed first lady of the century-old dwelling. It was an eerie and frightening experience, at first, but the everlasting and profound effect the visitation had on the way I now view life — and beyond — was remarkably liberating. I no longer felt encumbered by doubt. My own existence and station on Mother Earth took on a new pithiness. Patrick Giesler, anthropologist and parapsychologist professor for the University of Chicago — a good friend of mine — has studied the paranormal, cult worship, zombiism, and shamanic practices worldwide. “Of any psychic or paranormal experience, one should not fight it, but relax into it,” he remarks. “This is the door opening for soul travel … you just have to learn how to walk through it.”

I began studying shamanic practice and North American Native theology, almost to the point of obsession. I was particularly fascinated by rock art, something that white anthropologists with strong Christian persuasions seemed to dismiss as pagan renderings of little religious importance. Archaeologists interpreted the images as art, wholly from a white perspective, assuming they knew what they meant. Only the shaman healer and his students held the secret to the paintings. And there is an omnipresent spiritual force at these sites, where the shaman-teacher-healer practised his or her trade, where the physical world as we know it melds easily with the spirit world.

Could there be an evil power at play here? Malevolence spawned from the depths of some primal religion? A vengeance? Visitations to such sacrosanct places were not allowed, at one time, unless in the accompaniment of a healer-shaman. Any visit would require the offering of tobacco. Today, little or no respect or reverence is paid to these sites other than mild curiosity, as paddlers snap pictures, fondle the rock and even scratch their own names among the rock effigies. The practice of leaving a tobacco offering, at least, if not taking a moment for a prayer, or asking permission to pass by in safety, is not common enough.

Further to the north, along Manitoba’s Grass River, there is a wall of impressive rock paintings on Tramping Lake. Two local mine workers from the nearby community took a motorboat out to see the ancient drawings on rock and left their own signatures painted over the pictographs. Within the month, both men were dead — one in a violent car crash, the other in a mining accident. On the Missinaibi River in Ontario, where more than thirty-four people died over a period of fourteen years, half the deaths occurred at spiritual sites. Coincidence?

Miskowiskibi — the Bloodvein — best represents the drama of place, both geographically and spiritually. Flowing from Knox Lake in Ontario, just northwest of the town of Red Lake, the river tumbles recklessly over abrupt granite ledges on its three-hundred-kilometre journey to Lake Winnipeg, west toward the setting sun, west toward the sea of prairie grass, spilling into the geographic umbilicus of North America. Gentle current drifts between tumultuous chutes and rapids, actually making upstream travel possible — one of the prime factors that popularized the Bloodvein as a Native travel route, dating back as far as nine thousand years ago when Paleo cultures followed the retreating glaciers as the boreal-upland forests flourished. Archaeological exploits along the river have literally unearthed a plethora of burial mounds, middens, entire village sites, skeletal remains, chipped stone, pottery, worked copper and, most important, the richest conglomeration of rock-art sites found in the country.

After being detained in Red Lake for three days because of interior wildfires burning in the vicinity of the Bloodvein, I was able to work my way slowly toward the headwater, trying not to think of the fires as some kind of prophetic caution. Since its inception as a Canadian Heritage River, and because it bisected both Ontario’s Woodland Caribou and Manitoba’s Atikaki (A-tick-a-key) parks, the Bloodvein corridor had been documented by the bureaucrats for everything except recreational travel. Government foresters prescribed boundaries (some arbitrarily configured) so that the hungry needs of the logging companies could be assuaged before anything else.

The trip on the Bloodvein was part of my Manitoba wilderness guidebook project, and much of the study material I used was not readily available to the public; and with good reason. More and more graffiti had been showing up on top of easily accessed pictographs, but since my research was purely investigative, I was privy to all archaeological findings. I agreed not to give exact locations in my Manitoba guidebook of any pictographs not already publicly identified in printed material.

Gaining access to the Bloodvein demands a somewhat dogged persistence. Dealing with bugs and recent burn-overs where blowdowns littered the lengthy portage trails leaves you feeling a bit daunted. But as with any wilderness river, the necessary grunt work generally means that few people have trekked the upper reaches. In fact, with the Bloodvein, most paddlers opt to fly in to Artery Lake on the Ontario–Manitoba border, where it’s a much easier two-week paddle to Lake Winnipeg, thereby eliminating the more than eight kilometres of ankle-wrenching portaging they would have endured had they started their trip at Red Lake. The downside of this option, assuming that Native cultural stuff is important, is that paddlers miss half of the twelve pictograph sites.

I picked up a client group at Barclay Lake, about thirty kilometres east of the Manitoba border. I explained the importance of approaching the pictograph sites with caution, and that I would make a tobacco offering at each one, as I had been accustomed to doing, and that anyone wishing to leave prayers could do so. Not everyone agrees with my sentiment, or cares to share the seriousness of approaching such places with reverence, for whatever personal reason — religious faith being one of them. All usually agree to the practice, if only out of respect for the group dynamic.

On day two, I slipped behind the group while photographing a mink with a dead merganser duck clenched in its jaw. The others were heading down a deep bay, off the main route of the river, at the extreme northeast end of Mary’s Lake, making rather good time to the base of a high cliff where I told them we would find a pictograph. It was dead calm, and I easily caught up to the group who were now collected below the immense rock face, and the painting of red ochre and magic was as visible as the day it had been created. It portrayed a lone shaman, a powerful image — a simple cartoon-like figure. Instead of the usual body outline and projecting arms and legs, the torso had been painted in — an indication that there was strong energy here.

I had the same feeling well over me as I had when I met my first ghost — a sense of dread, prickly skin, slight nausea, or like when I walk into an old dwelling that has a particular resident malevolent energy and I feel an overwhelming need to get out. I had allowed our group to approach the site in such a manner as to evoke the wrath of the resident spirit entity. I had been forewarned about this particular pictograph as one of particular omnipotence. A commanding southwest wind, without warning, slammed into our little flotilla of boats, crashing gunwales together in a moment of angry mayhem. It was time to leave. The reproach came in the guise of a rogue windstorm that precipitated a hasty retreat. A quick offering of tobacco seemed to be a senseless gesture, like closing the gate after the lion had escaped.

The wind persisted. Ominous clouds rolled in like massive bulwarks, and we made a quick camp at the edge of a small rapid. Within fifteen minutes of setting up our tents, a difficult enough process in such heavy wind, a summer storm hit us with such vehemence it seemed the forces of Nature had quite outdone themselves. Trees toppled around us while gale-force winds pummeled the boreal landscape like a heavy fist upon its back; lightning seared around the makeshift camp, stabbing randomly at the bent forest while rain whipped at us in horizontal sheets. We had no protection — it was too dangerous to stay in the tents because trees were coming down all around us, and the rain fly had ripped away from its moorings. The sound was deafening. We chose to stand as a group at the edge of a copse of young spruce trees which afforded a modicum of cover and the least likelihood of getting struck by lightning.

And as quickly as it had come, it was gone. And the evening sun probed the remnant clouds for openings through which to cast a surreal patchwork glow over the drenched landscape — an ocherous brilliance. The only sound was the spent rain drops filtering through the leaves of the forest.

Nearby was another pictograph site; in fact, it was the most celebrated rock-art site along the Bloodvein, and the prime time to view it was under the patina of evening light just before the sun set. Everyone in the group, including the skeptical, literally jumped into their canoes after I had suggested we make some kind of amends with the river. And as a devout Christian might enter a place of worship, we approached the pictographs slowly and quietly, each canoe party ready to divulge some sort of personal offering. Tobacco pouches were passed around.

This was the famous bison site, and as famed archaeologist Selwyn Dewdney remarks, “The site is perhaps a hundred miles north of the parklands where the bison herds once roamed; but the artist shows familiarity with the animal that supports either frequent hunting excursions southward, or his own southern origin.”

Halfway across the world there is a similar bison image, depicted with circled hooves, and as much an anomaly there as the painting at Artery Lake, Manitoba. Coincidence seems unlikely. Shamanism and the art of healing souls are the fundamentals of an ancient religion and practice that predates Christianity by twenty thousand years. Not a black art, as branded by modern religious scholars, shamanic faith bonds itself to the rhythm of the Earth and is the basis of North American Native beliefs and healing practices. The possibility of early healers having the ability to transcend known planes of existence, to vault their spiritual selves through some kind of time-place portal, to be able to exchange wisdom with other shamans linked like some kind of spiritual Internet, is not fantasy or mythology or simple campfire story … at least to this writer.

The granite wall absorbed the incident evening light, turning from pale to reddish yellow. The dark waters of the Bloodvein and the thick moss and boreal crown above the face of the rock framed and highlighted the magical, mysterious paintings, like a Precambrian holograph display. There was not a word spoken amongst us lest the charm of the spell be broken. Our canoes drifted as if suspended between two dimensions, drifting like the ephemeral light, hovering momentarily, bathing the moment in illusory calm.

The sun dropped below the fringe of trees on the opposite shore, leaving the teaching site in evening sameness and shadow. The magic was gone, the latch on the door once again bolted. None of us made a move to paddle the three kilometres back to the campsite. Our earlier transgressions against the spirit world had been purged. It was an experience we would all remember — an event in our lives, however enigmatic, that in some way brings us closer to the answer.

The Bloodvein River conveys a message understood by very few, even to the remnant Saulteaux Ojibwa who have been assimilated into the world of consumerism and may have forgotten the old ways and who now grasp at the tattered edges of their own culture. Few resident Anishnabe venture this far upriver — a two-week trek by canoe. I resign myself to that place of bewilderment, like most others who travel its waters, play in the rapids and walk the nastawgan trails, getting caught up in the waterplay and the landscape and the camaraderie, and such vain pleasures that appease the physical senses. But I hope, as I continue to visit these places and revel in the sanctity of ancient wisdom, that I may someday understand more about what went on here, in the mind of the teacher who left us such cryptic lessons on stone.