The Last Speaker of Bear: My Encounters in the North - Softcover

Millman, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1595349855 ISBN 13: 9781595349859

Publisher: Trinity University Press, 2022

Synopsis

The Last Speaker of Bear is the patchwork story of a life spent traveling in the north from Alaska to Siberia. Lawrence Millman first visited northern Canada as a child and has spent four decades since on some thirty-five expeditions in search of undeveloped landscapes and traditional cultures, not to mention untamed wildlife. While much of his experience is centered in Canada—including territories from Yukon to Quebec and Newfoundland/Labrador—he includes stories from villages in Greenland, Iceland, and Norway as well.

Early on, Millman developed a reverence for the wisdom of indigenous and native communities with histories spanning centuries: Inuit, Inuk, Innu, Alutiiq, Cree, and others. Whether dining on mushrooms, fungus, tobacco leaves, or unusual foods that would have made even Andrew Zimmern or Anthony Bourdain turn up their noses, or exploring northern tundras, rugged mountains, or remote islands, he paints a picture of people often living in tenuous conditions but rooted in a faith that their worlds will provide for them. Relationships with bears, caribou, reindeer, walruses, seals, whales, and abundant avian life serve spiritual, companionship, and sustenance purposes. Traditions grounded in family and community rituals thrive, as do lost languages, natural medicine, and time-honored ways to survive difficult circumstances.. 

In this collection of vignettes, Millman reminds us of the potency of endangered knowledge as well as the importance of paying close attention to the natural world. He opens our eyes to a life in remote places thousands of miles from the fast-paced, urban world so many of us inhabit.

About this title

About the Author

Lawrence Milliam is an arctic explorer and mycologist. He has taught at Tufts University, the University of Iceland, University of Minnesota, Vermont College, and Harvard University (Extension) and is the author of sixteen books, including At the End of the World and Fungipedia. He has received a Guggenheim Award, Fulbright Fellowship, and Bush Foundation Fellowship. He has appeared in major media including National Geographic, the Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, Outside, the Times Literary Supplement, the Boston Globe, the London Sunday Times, and the Journal of American Folklore. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

            My love affair with the North began when my parents tookme on a fishing trip in northern Ontario. Our Cree guide reputedly talked tothe fish, which, according to the other guides, was the reason his clientscaught so many walleyes and northern pike. Once we got into his boat, I gazedat the myriad lines on his face and observed his bodily movements with suchinterest that my fishing line invariably got tangled up with my parents’ lines.

            Whenever one of us caught a fish, the Cree man wouldremove it from the hook, bring it closely to his lips, and whistle into itsmouth. He also seemed to be communicating with the lake itself, now nodding andnow shaking his head when he looked at it. Out of my parents’ hearing, I askedhim whether I could come and live with him so I could learn the ways of theCree. He laughed. I was 12 years old at the time.

            When I started venturing North on my own, I would findmyself in a realm where Nature triumphs over the machinations of Man (Woman,too). Hurrah! I’d shout to myself, but then I would see evidence of climatechange raising not just its ugly head, but its ugly body, too. After all, theNorth is warming two to three times faster than the rest of the planet. Whenwill the last hurrah occur?  

            During my northern journeys, my only companion was oftensolitude, but no less often I would hang out with grizzled (the more grizzled,the better) facsimiles of the Cree fishing guide. These individuals wouldgratify me with traditional lore as well as tell me stories about their ownpast lives as hunter-gatherers. Sometimes I would hear what happened in the olddays when they

ran out of food.

            Speaking of food, I often dined on time-honored victualssuch as seal liver, hakarl (putrefied Icelandic shark’s meat), mataq (rawwhale blubber), caribou tongue, igunaq (fermented walrus meat), old sleddogs, and jerked whale meat. Such culinary items helped me conquer a linguistichurdle. After all, food is a shared language, so even if I barely spoke thelanguage of my dining partner, I could at least speak the language of the foodwe were eating. Hm-m-m, very nice seal nose, the expression on my face wouldsay.

            Given my variety of experiences, I decided to write amemoir about my time in the North. Easier said than done, for the narrativethread kept snapping under the weight of its numerous episodes. When the threaddidn’t snap, it would rush off in all sorts of strange directions withoutasking my permission. Meanwhile, chronology itself bowed out, saying, ineffect, “Sorry, but this is not my bailiwick.”

            I ended up banishing the idea of a memoir. Instead, Idecided to collect the snapped episodes and put them together in a book. Brevitymay or may not be the soul of wit, but it happens to be the soul of this book. 

Edition details

• Publisher: Trinity University Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1595349855
• ISBN 13: 9781595349859
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 228