The Long Ago Person, Found

He crossed the mountains.

We do not know exactly when, or exactly why.

We do not know his name in the language he spoke.

We do not know his community’s name for itself.

We do not know whether he was young or old, healthy or ill, traveling with others or alone.

We do not know whether his death was quick or slow, whether it was witnessed or solitary.

What we know is this: he was a person of the Northwest Coast and interior subarctic, connected to both worlds in the ways that the people of this landscape have always been connected — through trade, through family, through the specific routes and relationships that the mountains and the coast and the rivers have structured for as long as people have been here.