With their unique pen and their own sensitivity, four artists take turns presenting their vision of the world around us. This week, we are giving carte blanche to Natasha Kanapé Fontaine.
I am in Amos. The snow has fallen, and for me, it fell for the first time today, on the road between Mont-Laurier and Amos. I don’t know if people here have seen her appear in the week before, or even earlier. But here I am, receiving in my eyes for the first time the ever-revived memory, year after year, of the sensation of snow falling from the sky, under the sun hidden behind its white clouds. The light, crossing the prism of the snowflakes, brings me back to those childhood memories where playing outside for hours was no problem.
In this car which takes me to Chibougamau, my only vision is the trees by the side of the road. I fall asleep, I put my head on the headrest, I close my eyes. The other day, I had the impression of seeing in a shadow the silhouette of a small being barely two feet high. I never really see them quite, neither their faces nor their looks. Nothing but a shadow that passes and flees as soon as I turn my head, like the day before yesterday, at the restaurant in Mont-Laurier. When driving on the road, especially when I go further north, I sometimes have the impression of seeing them pass between the trees.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR
On the way to Chibougamau
In Innu-aimun, we would call them Memekueshut. They are named so because their heads are said to be shaped like the end of an ax. Or that their face is very narrow, and their eyes vertical. According to some, they live in the cliffs, and according to others, in the boreal forest. For me, in my travels, I had been able to hear about them in all kinds of languages. The Korrigans, among the Bretons, the Patupaiarehe, among the Maoris, the Ta’ai, among the Saisiyat (Taiwan). The most surprising was the Menehune, in Hawaiian mythology, since the word is very similar to ours …
Fir and spruce trees cross the space for me who am in this car, and after them I revisit the memories of my peregrinations. Every time I blink, the image of the trees and the skyline stretches in the opposite direction from ours. Lines of green, blue, gray.
Asphalt is a place of flight and landing. So many departures, passages and arrivals.
And here, it is a crossing of moose, wolves and partridges. Do they cross me, when I close my eyes again? Like the time when I met these little beings on the edge of a forest in Brittany, their little hands reaching out to mine and their dances ended up clouding me enough for me to approach their circles dangerously, in the clearing. …
Among his family, my husband who is Maori told me that in the oral tradition, it is customary to believe that certain families were mixed with the fairies of Aotearoa (New Zealand), related to the Patupaiarehe. In Brittany, orality whispered in my ear that to follow the Korrigans was to run towards one’s own death. In this magical clearing around Douarnenez, I finally fled under the full moon, since it was there, she, the moon, full of its starry night. This little path in the dark, since the sunset had been stolen from me, made my heart beat so hard that I had difficulty breathing. But at the same time, when I revisit this vivid memory of this meeting, I regret not having continued my journey with the Memekueshut, since I believe that I would certainly have had the capacity to come back.
I remember the little lights that I saw here and there, at the destinations reached, above mountains, craters and on the edge of the woods. Their frivolous races in the dark, or in the shade of spruce trees. I am never alone.
Some people believe that the Memekueshut are the beings that came from the sky, these extraterrestrials. Perhaps those of the land and the cliffs are their descendants, having received the duty to keep the secrets of the territory.
I travel. My identity is one of those that circulate on the earth. If we wanted to settle down, well with me, it didn’t work. My soul is free, so I cross time and space. No one can have control over my mind.
If I can’t physically leave Tio’tia: ke-Montreal, I just have to close my eyes. And from dreams, I travel wherever I want.
Even though I know the roads all over the world, the only place where I spend most of my time is Nutshimit. Among forests and hills. Among the creatures of legends. Following the herds of caribou. It is said, when our elders die, that they all go back inland. And there, when we are there, they are always around us. They walk with us. They canoe with us. They sleep with us. We are never alone.
I open my eyes. My gaze is on the trees running at full speed, along the road. It is barely 8 am, we have just taken the road towards Chibougamau. Already, the forest is dancing. I wave my hand at the Memekueshut.