About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory by Barry Lopez Page A

at his feet, is a birdcage in which two redpolls perch, watching him. They haven’t made a sound.
    Later, Mr. Hikawa brings out an aboriginal longbow, a present from someone who purchased it from Indians in the interior of Brazil. I am able, solely because of the coincidence of some of my own reading at the time, to say a few words about two of those tribes, the Kréen-Akaróre and the Yanomami; and to describe the great cedar logs carved into totem poles which still stand on British Columbia beaches before the abandoned villages of Tlingit and Kwakiutl people. But, to my obvious distress, true conversation is not possible. I must be satisfied with what I can see in the room, and with a few words and drawings. I feel I have offered nothing of substance to the conversation. As we are departing, Mr. Hikawa, with a hand at my shoulder, gently turns me around. He meets my eyes, smiling, and hands me the two figures he has carved.
    On the road back to Naoki’s farm I watch dusk descend over the countryside. A nearly full moon rises yellow-orange in a deep blue sky. Stout-legged horses graze in fields along the road and herds of Holstein cattle drift toward the milking barns before sharp-voiced dogs. Over long distances I am relieved of the urgent sense of time. So much of northeastern Hokkaido seems to stand quiet at the edge of human endeavor. Nowhere here is the scale of human enterprise large. It meshes easily with the land.
    Time accelerates very suddenly as we turn into the driveway at the Nishibe farm. Mr. Taketazu is waiting there to take me to his home for dinner. (Though we know few words in common this strikes neither of us as a problem. He has also asked a translator to join us later.) It’s a short drive. Raccoon dogs, Japanese hares,and red foxes reside in pens outside the two-story, log-frame house. Inside and upstairs in Mr. Taketazu’s study we settle down across from each other at a low table, a
kotatsu
, that has a heating element underneath. We draw its quilted cover over our legs and around our waists and then open out a dozen or so large books in front of us, filled with pictures. For the next hour they serve as guides and references as we mimic the movements and sounds of various animals in order to frame our conversation.
    Initially our two worlds are drawn together in a discussion of birds. At Lake Notoro, I ask, were those ravens or Japanese fish crows scavenging so artfully in the fishermen’s nets? “Ravens,” he says, smiling in an amused but disapproving way at the thought of them. The level of communication in our conversation is good; it occurs to me to try to convey something subtle. In Japanese folklore the fox, with which Mr. Taketazu is so familiar, plays a role similar to the one the coyote plays in Western American folklore—a trickster. I often think of ravens, also trickster figures in North America, as “flying coyotes.” I wonder if it’s possible to draw on Mr. Taketazu’s understanding of the similarity between fox (
kitsune
) and raven (
watarigarasu
), and then to introduce the idea of air coyotes, of airborne
kitsune
, and make the joke carry. I page quickly through my English-Japanese dictionary.
Tondeiru
seems to do it for “flying” and I try, tentatively,
tondeiru kitsune
. For a moment there is nothing but consternation in his attentive face. Then a broad smile of recognition.
    The translator eventually joins us, but Mr. Taketazu—he is very voluble, very passionate for a Japanese—and I are getting on well. To be sure, the translator allows us to be more precise. I ask the translator to inquire which bird, of all the ones he knows, Mr. Taketazu most looks forward to encountering. “The fish owl,” he answers solemnly. I’m puzzled. In North America the owl has a contradictory image. It’s seen as both a wise creature and a sinister animal, a night hunter. Among native peoples in North America the owl is generally associated with death. Mr. Taketazu elaborates