One Native Life: Remembering Shane Rivers by Richard Wagamese

[Skabewis]

News From Indian Country

There’s a romance to the feel of cold floorboards on bare feet. Just as there’s a romance to the snap, crackle and flame of the morning fire in the woodstove. The first tendrils of warmth poking outward are a hearkening to a new day, rife with possibility.

I’ve been on Indian reserves where you still have to chop a hole in the ice for the day’s drinking water. I’ve been to others where one woodstove heats a small frame house where twelve people live.

We spend a lot of time at our cabin in the mountains. During the winter that morning chill is sharp and making the fire is something that has come to be special for me. I can sit in front of it and watch the flame lick its way upward, sip at my coffee and marvel at how life sometimes becomes art.

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