MUKLUKS

These mukluks from northern Canada are over four decades old–a Christmas gift from my brother when I was still in my teens. They tromped me through Manitoba snowstorms and kept me warm when snowmobile joyriding over the frozen Red River Floodway. They journeyed along with me to college in Minnesota, and wandered miles of wintry ranchland Sandhills in Saskatchewan, and now take me into my back yard of the wooded Cypress Hills of Alberta to stroll beneath frosty evergreens. They are fulfilling their destiny of journey, I think–uniquely designed, hand stitched, and beaded by some Native on the shores of the Hudson Bay (back in the day before The Shopping Channel found a source for a poor imitation currently sold for hundreds a pair).

I love these mukluks. They’re made of rawhide and lined with what looks like hand-loomed wool, and used to have rustic inner booties made of the same homespun fabric before I lost one. The glass beads are set individually into patterns–not sewn on as decals–but the fur is fake and I’m thinking of having it replaced with rabbit or coyote or fox. Which would you suggest?

I’ll never give these mukluks away, though daughters beg and my own limbs weaken as I slide towards my sixties (chanting, “These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do!”). My mukluks symbolize an era for me, when father and older brother went off to the frozen north to work on construction sites alongside Inuit and First Nations people, leaving me in urban civilization to read Farley Mowat and Robert Service, and to dream of snowshoe-ing over the tundra.

Christmas is coming. I don’t “feel” Christmasy–recent shoulder surgery has left me in an arm sling, incapable of decorating or baking this year. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit it; after all, I don’t expect to “feel” Eastery or Pentecosty. This forces me to remember that Christmas isn’t a feeling, after all, but a 2,000-year-old recognition and joyous celebration of the gift of salvation come to all mankind–and to me, Deb, in my little cottage on the snowy banks of a country creek.

The willows and pines outside are festooned in ice crystals today, the air hangs soft with fog, and my colourful mukluks are a Yuletide decoration for my heart.