Our cottage was part way up a steep incline and my mother was determined to move that mountain and create a flatness that grew like a blight on the hill. She insisted I help cut into the hill with her, shovelling wheelbarrow loads of black fly infested dirt from the ground and dumping it down the hill to create a level area. When we could get away, Peter and I would escape my mother’s nagging demands and head up the hill through the woods, disappearing into the bush where she couldn’t see us and where I could pretend I didn’t hear her if she called for me. Peter was our little beagle, a happy dog who at times would do her own disappearing act and go from cottage to cottage begging for food. She was short and round and snuffled along with her nose to the ground as we pushed our way through the underbrush. Sometimes we would come to a large outcropping of granite and use deadwood to make a fort of sorts. But mostly, we just walked and watched and listened in the musky scent of the wildness around us. I always felt safe and I never felt alone in the woods.
I had a hunting knife in a sheath I could attach to my belt. It wasn’t much of a knife and probably wouldn’t have cut butter, but it felt reassuring resting on my hip. I had won the knife from one of those claw machines where you put in a quarter and try to move the claw to pick up a toy or other prize. I can’t remember what toy I was hoping to capture with the claw, but I missed. As the empty claw made its way back to its starting position it brushed against the knife which was near the lip at the front of the bin of prizes, knocking it over and into the chute. It definitely wasn’t the prize I had been chasing, but what great luck to have at least won something. The sheath was made of leather and held the knife securely. The knife itself had a blade about five inches long and was made of some thin metal which eventually developed rusty blemishes. The handle of the knife wasn’t fancy, but it felt solid in my hand. With the knife leading my imagination, I could pretend I was living in an age when times were simpler, where the world was waiting to be discovered and explored. A time when people lived in harmony with the woods and were content. The knife was sturdy enough that I could use it to scrape bark from long thin branches and make a bow and arrows for myself. I was not adept enough to make a bow that would actually work, or to make straight arrows, but the sticks felt comforting in my hand and my mind would wander to how life might have been for peoples of the woods of long ago.
My mother would berate me soundly once Peter and I reluctantly returned to the cottage and tell me I would be shot by hunters if I continued to tramp through the woods alone. She had a way of tying me up in invisible bonds that would keep me where she wanted me, but I never saw a hunter and I didn’t stop wandering through the woods. I had my knife.