Two Old Women

Through a strenuous and long process of finding, breaking, boiling, and bending birchwood, the two women fashion snowshoes for themselves. They then decide to travel to an old fishing spot instead of staying at the abandoned camp because they fear there are too many threats to their survival in their current location. They use caribou skins to fashion sleds that they fill with their possessions. They then tie the sleds to their waists using a rope and begin their journey. “[L]ate into the night” (31) they stop and make a small camp for themselves before falling asleep. When they awaken the next day, they are in pain and have to start the day off slowly. They have difficulty that day, constantly falling from “sheer fatigue and old age” (33). At night, they approach a lake and decide to make a snow pit to sleep in before crossing. The next morning, Sa’ wakes up and thinks about how miniscule their problems were before they had been abandoned. They spend the day trudging through difficult terrain and end up at a “large river” (39). They nervously cross the potentially thin ice and make it to the other side where they set up camp for the night.