Memories sail forth with power to save

Page 5

A Native Life

Tansi, ahnee and hello. When I was a boy I played in an old barn behind one of the places I called home. Saturday afternoons found us swinging from ropes strung from beams to land in heaped-up piles of straw. My friends and I spent hours chasing each other along those same beams in devil-may-care games of tag that always ended in flying leaps into those same piles of straw.

That old barn is gone now, fallen into its own foundations long ago, but the memories remain. There was one game in particular I remember all these years. We called it The Maze. The Maze was the most challenging, most frightening and therefore most satisfying game of them all.

We'd take turns going out to the barn after school and building a maze of tunnels through the entire hay mow. The point was to build the most complex maze possible The rules said you could only go down two levels of bales. That was so we could track each other's progress from the surface and so the maze traveller could get out quickly if their nerve failed.

Maze construction was as complex as the minds of boys allowed. We had dead ends, drop-offs, switch-backs, hair-pin turns, squeeze-throughs and a plethora of gooey surprises we'd leave somewhere in the darkness. The Maze was our greatest joy.

I've never figured out whether we got more enjoyment out of our construction jobs or out of making it the length of someone's maze. All I know is the Pepsis we stashed away sure tasted awful good after the heat, dust and sweat of maze travel. We'd sit on the beams for hours after, laughing and joking about someone's success or failure of that day.

Once when it was my turn to crawl around the darkness on my hands and knees or belly, the maze was particularly inventive. It was hot that day. Mid-July in southwestern Ontario is notorious for its sweltering summers and that year was one of the most sweltering.

I sank to my knees at the maze entrance and grinned weakly at my pals. As they placed the top bale in place and the darkness surrounded me it was like being cut off from the world. I still remember the smell of hot hay, dust and fear. Nonetheless I began to crawl forward.

There isn't any light two bale levels down in a hay mow. You're left with your wits as a guide and you feel your way along trying to find the turns and the drop-offs before it's too late. All sound is muffled. Almost like swimming in an ocean of hay.

You had to push against the bale at every dead end you came to. The rules said that the end of the maze had to be a lightly balanced bale that would tumble away at the slightest touch. The only time you knew if was over was when the light and air slammed into your senses as that bale fell away.

So there I was in the sweltering heat of July crawling through this monster maze, full of fear and determination. After about five minutes the sweat began dripping into my eyes and pasting the dust to my skin. After 10 minutes or so I wanted to scream. After 15 minutes I wanted out. But I kept going.

I could hear the sounds of my friends laughing somewhere above me. It was a comforting sound. Time after time I came to dead ends, pushed against the bale expecting a rush of light and air. Time after time I was disappointed. Finally after what seemed like hours the bale fell away and I was drowned in a wave of relief and laughter.

We jabbered away like crazy after that. My friends all agreed I'd navigated the toughest, most gruelling maze ever and I assumed the status of hero for not chickening out. That night I slept the sleep of kids everywhere who've conquered the impossible, dreaming dreams of even bigger victories.

It's strange how your memory somehow chooses to spew out the exact things you need sometimes. I hadn't thought of that barn or The Maze for years until this past couple months. Sometimes navigating my way through life is just like the dust, heat and sweat I endured in The Maze.

Crawling through the darkness of doubt, confusion, and fea is a maze itself. The desire to scream and get out is overwhelming. Only when the light and relief spill in and you're out of it does the magnitude of your effort come home to you. You stand in the sunlight again, laughing, surrounded by friends and secure.

There's salvation in the things we store away. The memories we recall have the power to save us if we stop long enough to listen. You don't have to be Aboriginal to understand that. Just human. Somehow surviving that maze was a lesson I'd need some day, a reminder that sailed out of the darkness on the light of memory, taking me home to dream the dream of kids everywhere who've conquered the impossible.

Until next time, meegwetch.