How Bear Piss Changed My Life

Once upon an earlier time my parents took me to a fly-in fishing lodge in northern Ontario on the assumption that I might develop, like them, a passion for fishing. They also thought my experience of a back-of-beyond place might make a man out of me. I was twelve and a half years old at the time.

The fishing guides were First Nation Cree who lived in a makeshift camp a short distance from the lodge. Their actual home was somewhat farther north, and they traveled to the lodge not in a single-engine Otter floatplane, as my family did, but in two-stroke outboards and the occasional birch bark canoe.

Not only was the sky blue the first day we went out on the lake adjacent to the lodge, but the water was blue, and the air seemed to be blue, too. “I hope we catch something other than bluegills,” my father joked.

Our fishing guide was a middle-aged Cree man named Marius with lines on his face similar to the lines on a cartographic map. He was regarded as the best of the local guides, since he reputedly talked to fish. That our first casts brought strikes from walleye and northern pike seemed to confirm this talent.

Thanks to Marius, I had the desire to talk to fish myself. Thus I would study his face so intently that my fishing line would get tangled up with my parents’ lines. Each time this happened, Marius would chuckle, then patiently lift up the three lines and disentangle them. Unlike my parents, he did not reprimand me.

One day we were trolling and casting with spoons and spinners when a large yellow butterfly landed on the boat’s bow. “Don’t say anything bad,” Marius said, “because those are the Manitou’s ears, and he will hear you.” So it was that I uttered these words: “It’s a whole lot better to talk to fish than to people!”

Whenever one of us caught a fish, usually a walleye pike, Marius would remove it from the hook, bring it close to his lips, and softly whistle into its mouth. Later he told me he was thanking the fish for being so generous to us.

Out of my parents’ hearing, I asked Marius whether I could come and live with him so I could learn the ways of the Cree. “Maybe you can come and live with us for a couple of hours,” he told me after consulting my parents.

After dropping off my parents, Marius parked his outboard against a dock that consisted of some drift logs wedged against the shore. I now saw the Cree encampment — a single mud-caulked cabin and a bunch of tents.

We had arrived at lunchtime. A group of Cree were gathered around a fire eating what Marius informed me were beaver cutlets garnished with maskwa (bear) grease. He reached down, put a heap of this culinary delicacy on a plate and then handed that plate to me.

I noticed an elderly woman scraping a lichen from what looked like a deer or caribou skull. Why, I wondered, was she doing this? Because she suffers from terrible headaches, Marius told me, and when she drinks a tea made from a lichen growing on a skull, any skull, her headache won’t be nearly so bad.

I sometimes suffered from bouts of asthma, so I asked Marius what he might recommend to cure this health issue. “I think a tea of bear piss will do a good job of curing you,” he told me. I made a mental note to ask my parents whether there were any drugs stores near us that sold bear piss.

A short while later, Marius offered to take me back to the lodge in his outboard. I told him that I preferred to walk back, so he took me to the trail that led to the lodge. As a parting gift, he gave me some dried moose meat.

At one point, I stopped to answer nature’s proverbial call. As I was doing so, I happened to see a black bear standing some twenty feet away and also answering nature’s call. The only previous bears I’d encountered were Smoky the Bear and Winnie the Pooh.

Standing there, I was concerned that the bear might go into attack mode, but it seemed much too interested in answering the aforementioned call than to do so. Then I thought about gathering some of its piss and taking it home, but decided against doing so, lest it get upset. It’s my piss, not yours, it might roar.

Once I continued my wandering, I gazed back at the bear and saw it was now gazing at me. The expression on its face was not one of anger or even annoyance. Quite the contrary. Rather, that expression seemed to say, “You and I, we’re piss-worthy buddies!”

The door to my own future had opened. From now on, I would have a high regard not only bear piss, but also for traditional cultures. Whether or not I became more of a man as a result the fishing trip I cannot say.