Teepees

At night, our hosts tell us, they dream of the Yukon. The mountains, the open spaces … the fawn-like gentleness of the Yukonites … the lakes, beside which you can pitch your teepee. Hadn't they spent whole summers by the Yukon lakes in their teepees?

Our Canadian hosts – latterly stranded in Nashville – are people of the expanses. They have expansive souls. They're used to the outdoor life, to taking great strides in the wilderness. They're used to horse riding and kayaking, and of singing close harmonies around the fire at night.

They're used to the Canadian summer, of days that go on forever, and to the Canadian autumn, when the aurora borealis flashes about above the frosts. And in the Canadian winter, the absolute clarity of the Milky Way crowns them, stars pinprick sharp in the frozen winter.

The Canadian is a friend of the bear, of the wolf. The Canadian is a friend to his fellow Canadian by way of his friendship with the bear and the wolf. The wilderness opens between them, Canadians. They safeguard it; they inhale it; it's the element of their lives, W. says. He knows that because he spent his childhood in Canada. He knows something of teepee life. He knows something of Canadian loyalty, he says, and of close harmonies sung in the Canadian life.

Out hosts are gentler than us, W. says, kinder. W.'s tried to explain it to them. – 'You're not like us'. They're not rats crawling over rats. They don't bicker. They're not vicious. Once, he wasn't vicious, W. says. He didn't bicker. He sang beside lakes. He hiked on forest paths. And then what happened? They moved home, his family. They moved back. Disaster! That's when it happened, the fall, W. says. They moved back to Britain, and his soul became crabbed, mean. His soul shrank. His friendships shrank.

And now, like me, he has trouble imagining himself in a teepee. We're men of the city, W. tells them. We're rats, used to tight corners and narrow corridors. We're channelled; we're not men of the expanse. We never lift our eyes to the sky, or look out over bodies of water. – 'Look at us!', he cries. 'Look at him!', he says, pointing to me. 'Can't you see?'

We'd be lost in the Yukon, W. says. Looking out over the lakes, we would have to search our souls – a melancholy act. We'd have to contemplate our failure yet again, and from a new perspective. How could it end but in a drowning, two blue corpses face down in the water?