A yellow birch tree popped. The bang rattled through the frigid bottomland like a hostile rifle shot. A blue jay started to scream a warning, but quit after the first penetrating “Jay!” It flitted to the top of a nearby maple. After a few seconds it swooped low over a snow-covered patch of sedge grass, then rose up and perched on the lowest branch of the noisy birch. It cocked its blue tufted head from side to side as if perplexed.

The light snow resumed. The Ojibwe-style wool hood limited the view to the north and to the south, more so than a pupil in the wilderness classroom was comfortable with. “The hood needs a different tie and it is still too deep,” the brass lead holder scribbled. Withthat revelation, I slipped the folded page into the buckskin envelope, along with the lead holder, and tucked the journal under the Northwest gun’s butt stock.

Round white balls tumbled into the folds of the crimson trade blanket as the snow pelted down. My eyes looked left, then right as I sat cross-legged on the mossy root ball of a scrub maple, just inside the west edge of the sedge grass haven. To the north, another tree cracked in the unseasonable cold. I realized I had lost track of the blue jay.

Five Canada geese winged high overhead, headed south in silent resolve. Picked clean by earlier flocks and browsing deer, few kernels remained in the cornfields. In the bottoms, sixty paces distant, the River Raisin lay frozen over. The