Headless Zaftig
Yesterday’s photo of Bill Lewis clearing snow off of his canoe with a wooden paddle brought this emailed response:
“Look at the picture you posted on the blog, the snowy one. That thing on the left looks like a zaftig headless, armless woman with very large breasts. I wonder what it means. Other than that distraction it’s a gorgeous picture.â€
That “distraction†was a snow woman (instead of breasts, I see Snoopy with those half arms looking more like ears) created by Adam, who sends this disclaimer:
“It means that Adam was at the time barely 30 , had been celibately in the woods for what at that time passed for a longish while, and was working out his own anxieties not with a knife to the throat, but by creating visions of comfort by turning the very stuff of threat into the stuff of play.â€
A closer look at the sculptor and the sculpture
The scene to which Adam alludes is Bill deciding to end it all because : A. We have canoed down a fast flowing river to get to this campsite and there is no way to paddle back up the river. B. The lake water is so cold that if we capsize we die, and C. We are in the middle of nowhere and our bodies won’t be found until spring. What Bill doesn’t yet know, and is an even better reason to cut his throat, is Adam’s plan – load the canoes with all of our gear and pull them overland back to our minivan. I don’t know the exact distance, but it took us two trips and eight hours.
View larger image
The rest of the story written soon after the trip is here.
Ah 1993, when men were men and snow women were snow dogs. What has happened to all the epics since then? They’ve been happening to other people, I guess. Speaking of epics…
No Man’s River, a new book by Farley Mowat tells a tale (one of many tales) about running Big River, which pours down from the Canadian Barrens into Hudson Bay. Farley, Charlie and a hawk named Windy run this amazing torrent through desolate arctic prairie, hundreds of miles away from nowhere. If they turn over in any of the scores of waterfalls they shoot through, it’s not drowning or hypothermia they have to worry about, it’s death by starvation or being eaten by wolves. Now there’s an epic.
Comment by rakkity — September 17, 2004 @ 9:55 am
My father’s favorite author is Farley Mowat. Do you want his address?
Comment by michael — September 17, 2004 @ 10:33 am
Sure, I’d like to ask what he thinks about the scurrilous rumors that Mowat’s sub-arctic stories are fictions. My feeling is, maybe there are some exaggerations, but they’re pretty factual.
Comment by rakkity — September 17, 2004 @ 1:38 pm