In the novel, the land of backwoods British Columbia is practically a character itself. Besides the old man, the land is the kid’s closest companion and the place where he is most himself. He describes the open land as “real,” a place where a person is free from artificial structures like school and can learn to truly “see”—whether by tracking an animal for hours through the forest or simply learning the rhythms of the seasons. When Eldon is dying, he and the kid (Frank) travel through the backcountry so that Frank can bury him on a particular mountain ridge Eldon loves. Against this backdrop, the kid hears stories of his father’s painful past and finally learns more about his own background. The ridge—the only place where Eldon ever felt at peace—gives Eldon enough strength to open up to Frank and unburden himself of guilt he’s carried for decades. In this way, the novel associates nature with personal peace, suggesting that a person’s harmony with the land promotes a more stable sense of self.
Nature is a place of comfort and stability for both Frank and the old man. Instead of in school or in play, Frank finds “his joy in horses and the untrammelled open of the high country […] if he was taciturn he was content in it, hearing symphonies in wind across a ridge and arias in the screech of hawks and eagles[.]” Frank finds peace and contentment in nature’s beauty rather than in conversation or in conventional childhood activities. No matter what struggles Frank endures in school, the old man teaches him to value what’s “real”—that is, nature: “by the time they were down the other side the land became what the old man called ‘real.’ To the kid, real meant quiet, open, and free […] losing schools and rules and distractions and being able to focus and learn and see.” Frank doesn’t find school’s artificial structures to be very meaningful, but being in nature helps him connect to what’s most important, hereby restoring a sense of peace with himself.
For most of his life, Eldon never connected with nature in the same way, and he suffers because of this. Eldon doesn’t share Frank’s connection to nature because he grew up struggling to survive. For him, spending time in the woods meant scavenging wood to sell, and his family was too busy seeking work to spend time hunting or living off the land. Because of this, he spent his life moving from place to place and never establishing roots. Working as a logging scout at 15, Eldon had his first and only experience of connection to nature and peace with himself. When he and Frank revisit that particular mountain ridge, Eldon tells Frank that he “Stayed here two days just sitting on the edge of that cliff looking at it all. That's all. Just looking. I don't recall even thinking anything except how good it felt to be there […] This here's the only place I felt like I belonged, like I fit[.]” Eldon’s experience on the ridge, simply enjoying nature’s beauty, gave him a feeling of peace with himself he’s been unable to recapture since. That inability to “fit” elsewhere implicitly contributes to Eldon’s tormenting sense of failure, which leads him to drink.
Eldon’s journey toward his burial parallels a growing peace with himself. Eldon chooses to return to the overlook because it’s the only place he’s ever experienced peace with the “Great Mystery” of who he is. Before telling Frank about the most significant parts of his past, he reflects, “Jimmy used to say we're a Great Mystery. […] Said the things they done, those old-time Indians, was all about learnin' to live with that mystery. […] Just bein' with it. I guess I wish I'da learned the secret to doing that.” Eldon admits that he’s never succeeded in living with the “Mystery” of his life. But being in this place makes him feel secure enough to tell Frank the stories he needs to hear and thereby to lay down the burdens he’s carried all his life.
After telling Frank about his mother, Angie, Eldon seems to let go of the pain of his past. Once Frank hears the story, Eldon stands on the edge of the cliff overlooking the valley, weakly lifts his hands, and whispers, “I’m sorry.” Even though he can’t undo his past, Eldon’s visit to the ridge allows him to unburden himself enough to die in relative peace.
After burying his father on the ridge, Frank journeys home and reconnects with the land that’s made him who he is. This time, when he overlooks Bunky’s farm, he imagines he sees a band of Indians riding joyfully through the woods. Finding unity with both his father’s heritage and his childhood home within the beauty of nature, Frank feels a deeper peace with himself than before.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Nature and the Land ThemeTracker
Nature and the Land Quotes in Medicine Walk
The old man had taught him the value of work early and he was content to labour, finding his satisfaction in farm work and his joy in horses and the untrammelled open of the high country. He'd left school as soon as he was legal. He had no mind for books and out here where he spent the bulk of his free time there was no need for elevated ideas or theories or talk and if he was taciturn he was content in it, hearing symphonies in wind across a ridge and arias in the screech of hawks and eagles, the huff of grizzlies and the pierce of a wolf call against the unblinking eye of the moon. He was Indian.
Truth was, he wanted nothing else because that life was all he'd known and there was a comfort in the idea of farming. He knew the rhythms of it, could feel the arrival of the next thing long before it arrived, and he knew the feel of time around those eighty acres like he knew hunger, thirst, and the feel of coming weather on his skin. Memory for the kid kicked in with the smell of the barn and the old man teaching him to milk and plow and seed and pluck a chicken. His father had drifted in and out of that life randomly[.]
It was the old man who had taught him to set snares, lay a nightline for fish, and read game sign. The old man had given him the land from the time he could remember and showed him how to approach it, honour it, he said, and the kid had sensed the import of those teachings and learned to listen and mimic well. When he was nine he'd gone out alone for the first time. Four days. He'd come back with smoked fish and a small deer and the old man had clapped him on the back and showed him how to dress venison and tan the hide. When he thought of the word father he could only ever imagine the old man.
“Least ways, you got this place and we get out to where it's real as much as can, don't we?"
"Yeah," the kid said. "That's what saves my bacon."
[…]
They'd take horses and cross the field and plod up the ridge and by the time they were down the other side the land became what the old man called "real." To the kid, real meant quiet, open, and free before he learned to call it predictable and knowable. To him, it meant losing schools and rules and distractions and being able to focus and learn and see. To say he loved it was a word beyond him then but he came to know the feeling.
When the slash was made the old man drew a smear of blood with two fingers and turned the kid's face to him with the other hand. He made a pair of lines with the blood on each of his cheeks and another on his chin and a wavy line across his forehead. His face was calm and serious. "Them's your marks," he said.
The kid nodded solemnly. "Because I'm Indian," he said.
"Cuz I'm not," the old man said. "I can't teach you nothing about bein' who you are, Frank. All's I can do is show you to be a good person. A good man. You learn to be a good man, you'll be a good Injun too. Least ways, that's how I figure it works.
“All's I'm tryin' to say is that we never had the time for learnin' about how to get by out here. None of us did. White man things was what we needed to learn if we was gonna eat regular. Indian stuff just kinda got left behind on accounta we were busy gettin' by in that world."
"So I don't get what we're doin' out here then."
[…]
"I owe," he said,
"Yeah, I heard that before."
"I'm tired, Frank."
[…]
"That's the first time you ever called me by my name."
Then he strode off and returned in a short time with mushrooms and greens and berries that he crushed up and fashioned into a paste. He gathered a clump of it on a stick of alder and held it out to his father.
[…]
"Sometimes I'll put some pine resin in with it if I got a pot and a fire. Makes a good soup. Lots of good stuff in there."
"Old man?"
"Yeah. At first he brung me out all the time when I was small. Showed me plants and how to gather them. Everything a guy would need is here if you want it and know how to look for it, he said. You gotta spend time gatherin' what you need. What you need to keep you strong. He called it a medicine walk."
“Near as I can figure they're stories. I reckon some are about travelling. That's how they feel to me. Others are about what someone seen in their life. The old man doesn't think anyone ever figured them out."
"Ain't a powerful lotta good if ya can't figure 'em out."
The kid shrugged. "I sorta think you gotta let a mystery be a mystery for it to give you anything. You ever learn any Indian stuff?"
His father lowered his gaze. […] "Nah," he said finally. "Most of the time I was just tryin' to survive. Belly fulla beans beats a head fulla thinkin'. Stories never seemed likely to keep a guy goin'. Savvy?"
"I guess," the kid said. "Me, I always wanted to know more about where I come from."
"Come here when it got too noisy in my head," he said. "'When the old man got too old for the ride he let me make the trip alone and I got to prefer that. Never was afraid. Never seemed to be a place for fear. When ya come to know a thing ya come to know its feel. I know this place by feel nowadays."
"You're a good man," his father croaked suddenly. "The old man done good turnin' ya loose out here. He know how good ya are out here?"
"He knows."
“Sometimes when things get taken away from you it feels like there’s a hole at your centre where you can feel the wind blow through, that’s sure […] Me, I always went to where the wind blows.” The old man put a hand on the kid’s shoulder and turned him to face him square on. “Don’t know as I ever got an answer but it always felt better bein’ out there.”
The kid nodded. They looked at each other. The horse neighed softly in the barn and the old man pulled the kid to him and clasped his arms around him and rocked side to side. The kid could smell the oil and grease and tobacco on him and it was every smell he recalled growing up with and he closed his eyes and pulled it all into him.
He closed his eyes for a moment and when he looked down into the valley again he thought he could see the ghostly shapes of people riding horses through the trees. […]
He watched them ride into the swale and ease the horses to the water while the dogs and children ran in the rough grass. The men and women on horseback dismounted and their shouts came to him laden with hope and good humour. He raised a hand to the idea of his father and mother and a line of people he had never known, then mounted the horse and rode back through the glimmer to the farm where the old man waited, a deck of cards on the scarred and battered table.
