As with any story it is difficult to know where to begin. Perhaps I should start by saying that I am not native to ’these United States’ although I have been here now for thirty six years. During the greater part of that time I have been employed by Meredith Medical whose business, as you may know, is the providing of a range of diagnostic equipment, mostly electronic, for the medical profession. Some of it one-off and extremely expensive. I came to their attention while working for their Australasian agents. I had gained some reputation as a troubleshooter both in overcoming technical problems and in clearing up misunderstandings that would damage Meredith’s reputation for service. I was called upon increasingly to solve problems for other of Meredith’s agents and was eventually invited to work for the parent company. I retired a year ago after being with them for thirty five years. Always a troubleshooter, I have been rushed all over the world and have seen little of it apart from hospitals and clinics. I have had my fill of travel. It has long been my wish to write. Real writing. I have written any number of reports and technical articles for trade magazines. I have even had several short stories published but a novel has been in my head for many years. Retreating into ones’ mind can ease the frustration of airport delays and interminable plane trips in a way that in-flight movies cannot but I am finding that getting that novel out of my head again is not as easy as I had imagined. My thought was to get off on my own away from distractions which is why I rented the cabin that I am now in. Some people build in mock-Tudor or Georgian but the cabin can only be described as mock-Hillbilly. Apart from the usual offices it has just one large space which is everything, kitchen, bedroom, lounge and working area. This presents no problem for a bachelor
and I am, unfortunately, such. A messy one too. One has no chance to get to know that special person when one is constantly on call and spends much of ones life flying here and there. But there’s still time…..I hope. The cabin is built on a shelf at the top of one hundred and thirty one precipitous steps. My car has to live in a shed at the foot of them and the shed itself is a steep drive up from the valley floor. In my eyrie, I look down on the small town that once grew to take advantage of the supposedly-healthy hot mineral springs in the area back in the days when people ’took’ the waters. Now-a-days it’s mostly just affordable housing for retired people. Although the cabin is more recent than the town, its furnishings are clearly from the time it was built. After struggling to get them up here, the original owners must have been happy just to leave them behind when they left which would also be true of any subsequent tenants. But then again, how were the materials for the cabin got up here? Could it be that the cabin was built elsewhere and transported here by helicopter complete with furniture? Anyway, the furnishings, worn though they are, are good enough for me in the short term. The cabin has a front verandah complete with the traditional rocking chair, as I said, it’s pure Hillbilly and, from this verandah, I can see down the full extent of the valley and well out onto the plains. I can even see the distant city although from here it is scarcely more than dirty smudge. I woke one morning with the realization that someone was sitting in the rocking chair. I had heard no sound. It was something that I just knew. I also knew without seeing him that he was an American Indian or, as political-correctness would now insist, a Native American and that he was there because of the canoe. So I must tell you about my experience with the canoe.
I have always insisted that there is a simple and rational explanation for everything but in this matter rationality seems to disappear. Perhaps there is reason behind it somewhere but don’t ask me what sort of reason. My first contact with THE canoe would be somewhere around 1942 which would make me about eight. One my friends had heard that a man living nearby was building a canoe. Canoes of moulded plastic are readily available now but in those far-off pre-plastic days canoes had a wooden frame and one had to build ones’ own. They were so uncommon at the time, or maybe just in our Auckland suburb, that neither of us had actually encountered one and our Saturday- afternoon diet of B-grade movies had led us to associate them solely with the wilds of North America and Indians’. Hence our particular interest in this one. We had never seen this man nor seen his house even though we passed it daily. The house was below the road level and rampant wattles hid it from view. Were it not for the named box at the street and a dog-legged clay path, one would never guess that there was a house there. It would never have occurred to us to knock at the door and ask permission to look at the canoe. We sneaked down that clay path ready to run at any moment. It was an adventure. A foray into the unknown. An act of extreme courage. There was not really much to see. Just a fragile looking frame as yet unfinished and nowhere near ready for its covering. No big deal one would think but for me it had some unexplainable significance which even at this distance I can remember even if I can still not explain it. I must jump forward now to about a year ago when I was very recently retired. I must admit that all my close friends have had a connection with Meredith Medical and I say ‘have had’ with good reason. Like so many U.S. companies, Meredith has shifted all of its manufacturing off-
shore along with many other parts of its operation. This is even true of the firm’s Call Centre which used to be manned by inmates of the State Penitentiary. The calls are now answered in India. Its cheaper apparently, cheaper than jail-birds. And experience and loyalty count for nothing when money is involved. With the majority of my friends I was put out to pasture. I said ‘retired’ before because it sounds sought-after and unforced. Much better than redundant. One of my friends in this same boat gave me a bundle of thirties and forties magazines that had been hidden in somebody’s attic. He had picked them up at a yard sale, thinking of me, knowing of my nostalgia for a dream world that had never existed. “I know you like a good wallow”, he said. I had told him of my naive childhood picture of the United States as a wonderland, the nearest thing to heaven. A phony world conjured up by Madison Avenue in popular magazines such as ‘Life’ or ‘The Saturday Evening Post’. In those days a very simple me accepted without question the ecstatic fulfillment of a fashionably-dressed housewife who has equipped her kitchen with the latest Westinghouse appliances. America was, so I firmly believed, the exact counterpart of a Norman Rockwell cover. In the magazine bundle there were several ‘Popular Mechanics’ from 1939 and in one of them was the instructions for building an ‘Indian Canoe’ this being before the days of ‘Native American’. The article was headed by a drawing of a ‘Red Indian’ paddling the canoe on a stream flanked by dark virgin forest. I knew immediately that this was THE canoe, the one that I had seen so long ago. Don’t ask me how I knew this. I just can’t tell you. Even less can I tell you why I knew that I had to build this canoe. I have no use for a canoe and am not particularly good with my hands anyway. I have made a living from applied logic. I am a reader and thinker, a
brain man, rather than a craftsman. But the compulsion that came to rule me would not take ’no’ for an answer. Another of our crew, a woodworking hobbyist who knows how helpless I am in such matters, selected the timber for me and cut everything out. Although that part was beyond me, I could follow the instructions for assembly. The frame is glued and it is the light canvas being shrunk on to it that makes it rigid and yet light enough to be portaged for a considerable distance. But back to our Native American. Look, I’m going to call him an Indian. It’s easier. He appeared to be impossibly old, wrinkled, shrunken, carved from a well seasoned log. He was wearing what I would take to be trading-post clothes. Not buckskins but not present day. He didn’t appear to know any English and yet we understood each other perfectly. I must confess that I had not actually started the canoe assembly. Ongoing business takes me down to the city about once a fortnight and I do my marketing then. I have my hands full enough coming up those dreadful steps without the addition of any frame parts. I had been bringing the materials up a little at a time, those steps were enough to put a damper on any compulsion, but at least all the bits were finally up and in a heap in the middle of the floor. I could sense the Indian’s disapproval at my lack of progress, his sense of urgency. Yet at the same time it was clear that he had been well aware of how things stood. He had brought with him a water-bath gluepot from the pre-electric era, some sticks of animal glue, and a large tin of late-1800s varnish, the tin in pristine condition. Where on earth would one find such things in this day? He was adamant that only these and other natural products should be used on this canoe, no modern synthetic resins. How he conveyed this I do not know. When later I enquired
about him, he appeared to be entirely unknown in this small rather-closed community.. The canoe went ahead much quicker after his visit. I was having trouble with the novel which clearly needed a different approach and a lot of rewriting which is not something that anybody
looks forward to. I was only too happy to put it aside for the moment and, anyway, the canoe deadline now had me in its thrall. The framework was fairly straightforward, assemble, glue, then varnish, but I had problems with shrinking the fabric covering. It had to brace the flimsy frame without distorting it. Not an easy thing to do. Waterproofing was also a problem. My Indian had brought me nothing suitable for this and no modern product was going do. Friends came to the rescue but there were a few funny looks. Some over-long days and it was finished, a few blemishes perhaps but near-enough. It would float and that was the main thing. I had to stay up late putting in the finishing touches and woke in the early light next morning knowing that this was the day. Without looking, I also knew that the canoe was no longer in the cabin but was now outside and that this had happened only moments before. This gave me no surprise. There was an inevitability about everything that was happening. My feet found the floor and in moments I was out on the verandah. My Indian with the canoe on his back was going carefully, carefully, down those steps. Even without a load they require one’s full attention. The town below and the entire valley lay hidden under the first fog of the Fall. From above it was a sea of milk with the landscape greatly revised. To negotiate the steps in this fog would be foolhardy but, on reaching the sea, the Indian stopped to launch the canoe and climbed into it. He began to paddle down the valley on this cloud sea. I accepted this as entirely feasible and this was me who had always prided himself on
having his feet firmly on the ground. I suddenly realized how cold I was but only because I found myself to be shivering uncontrollably. Don’t tell anyone but I usually sleep in nothing more than a pair of boxers. Sometimes not even that. On one’s own who’s to care? The cabin has no heating but I pile the blankets on. So I had to go in and wrap-up…and quickly. I grabbed my field glasses while I was there. I kept watching him until he was far down the valley. I being, I’m sure, the only witness to this impossibility. The poor souls in the depths would remain forever unaware of the magic that had passed over their heads. Further down, toward the plains, the ridges tend lower and lower so that the sun climbs from his bed just that tad earlier. The fog there was already no more than a thin mist and, as he reached it, the Indian and the canoe also began to match that transparency. And gradually…..very gradually…..they were no more.