Soon, all will be ready for the southward trek. The clan will file from the camp in a long winding processional towards the hills. A few final words of parting, some brief embraces to clothe the small group of old ones who remain, wrapping them in warm memories of the long train of seasons where they bore and nurtured the clan at their ample breasts and held them in generous laps. Some small parting gifts are exchanged: a woolen scarf, a leather strap, a string of beads, a bit of dried meat. Here and there, a daughter gives an affectionate and intimate squeeze to a father or grandfather, to fill their last bowl with the remembrance of those spring days when they last sported and rambled in the delights of young bucks and lusty chases. A last caress too from sons and grandsons for sagging breasts that once poured rivers of milklife into the heart of the clan. Then the march begins.

The old ones sit at their hearths and watch, nodding to an occasional glance or wave from the thread of life now silently winding itself up the valley and onto the gentle rise that marks the start of the journey to the southern pass. Some only listen as the footsteps file through the lake of fallen leaves that bridle the path; knowing well each of its owners by the special sound they make as brittle leaves and twigs crunch beneath the parade of passing feet. Savoring, at this last meal, the sweet sounds of their children, and their children's children, and their children, as they move across the carpet of seasons that the Great Mother has laid for the trip.

Within a week, the camp will be almost entirely empty. One by one, the old ones will gather a special companion for their own solitary journeys -- a tuft of grass, a piece of flint, a small string of beadwork from their own seasons of initiation long ago, a spoon of dirt from some private memory, a dried umbilicus from a stillborn child. Whatever the object, they will gently fondle it for a moment in a withered hand that has felt so many seasons, mended so many tunics, sharpened so many arrows and knives, brushed away so many tears. Then, they will carefully place it in the crossing-bag that hangs on the scrap of leather or tendon or grass that is tied to their waist. Some of the bags are elaborate and ornamented, some are quite plain. Some are of doeskin, some of otter or elk, some of grass or bark or dung. Each is exquisitely sewn or woven through the entirety of the final year. Each is made complete with dyes, emblems, symbols, feathers, shells or leaves unique to the life that now wears it. Each a cup of life, and more, for the one who now entrusts itself to its care.

Within a week, almost all will have left on their own silent journeys in their separate directions. There are no leave takings for those who remained behind. Each goes when it is time. All know well enough the heart of the final way. There is little call for tears or tidings. Within a month the first snows will come and the bitter winds will clean the camp of all trace.

This year, there is one old couple among them. That is unusual. Not rare, exactly, but it has been many seasons since that has happened. No one really knows if they will leave the camp together or separately. No one really thinks much about it. Only that they will each go at the right time, in the right way. The wind has begun to rise. The last clan member has long since disappeared over the higher hills. Most of the old ones stay alone, tending their small fires, heating a little broth, watching the sun decline or merely singing softly to themselves. Here and there, a few may speak quietly, or sit side by side in the coming night, saying nothing.

It has been more than a month now. Soon I will gather a few things and return to the camp for one last look. There will be nothing there but a sigh of wind and some ash. It reminds me of something. I don't know what. Something half-conscious, half-forgotten. For the past few years, there has also been something else. Nothing much really. A feather or a small stone, a piece of dry meat and a hearth where one shouldn't be -- a few rocks at the furthest edge of the gathering ground, away from all the other sites which I know quite well. And it will be clean, without a trace of ash or bone. Just a small pile of stones and kindle, as though waiting for someone to return momentarily. And, in the spring when the clan has returned, it will be gone as strangely as it appeared. It is no accident. Of this I am certain. Last year, when I came and made a fire in this strange hearth-with-no-friend, and passed the night with thoughts of those I loved and wished well on their journey, I carefully covered the little hearth with stones, so that the ash would remain when the winter had passed and the clan would return. But the next season, when I came back, the hearth was gone, the ground swept clean.

At first, when the site appeared, I would remain for a few days waiting to see if someone, perhaps its maker, would return. For three seasons I did this. But finally, I knew that no one would come. No one else had stayed behind. So it was just there. But for whom? To what purpose? Every year, I took the odd token that was left and put it carefully away with the other sacred markings of my life. What could the objects mean, I wondered? Why were they here and why did I find them? Yet, just as surely as I knew I would find them there each year, I also knew they were to be saved. They were not meant for me. That I knew as well. There was a power in them which wasn't mine; which I did not understand. A contrary knows this, it is part of our sacred trust. What does not belong to us is never falsely claimed.

I said nothing about this matter to anyone. Neither did anyone mention it to me. So, for the past seven leaving seasons, the mystery has remained. Each season, the sacred objects are taken safely to my keeping until such time as their owner should come to claim them. Since then, when the first unknown hearth appeared, I have always come back to the empty camp for one last time, just before the first snowfall. There I spend the day in silence, feeling the departure of the clan, absorbing the lingering presence of the old ones who had stayed behind and so recently had begun their own great journeys. To feel the precious welcome of the North Wind as she found her way at last to this forgotten place and filled my first new breath with the scent of something both remote yet familiar. Though I could not name it, like the purpose of those objects of their absent owner, neither could I mistake its pungent presence. Something known, yet faceless.

I would sit there then, and feel the power enter this place and drift through my heavy coat and into my body as though I were completely naked. The breath of cold would enter me then, not as the bitter chill that swept around me, but a great cleanser that opened my heart and wiped a smoky film from my eyes. It made everything anew with a brilliant clarity and erased the names and times and reckonings of all I had previously learned, as a pile of dust is swept from a shiny mirror. Then would come the night and the silence and the swelling of my loins and the dreams. The strange dreams that I also knew were there to be saved and protected until their true owner came to collect them. The dreams I knew but couldn't understand. The dreams from which the shadow of reality is cast.