The night had brought fresh snow. The next morning the Wallegas and Treeana and I ate a quick breakfast of jerky and broke camp. Scouts were sending reports of the Bear's trail. It seems it had crawled into some bushes for the night. This made his trail easier to pick up this morning. Husananin and his party struck out toward the Southeast with Treeana and I following. A Wallega warrior stayed with us even when we were separated visually by terrain from the main group. The Bear was moving slowly, so the pace was comfortable.

In about two hours the animal's trail turned more Southward. Husananain came back to where we were and gave us a reassuring smile. He pointed south and waved his hand across the sky, from East to West, three times. This I interpreted to mean that their destination was three days away. I pointed to a bluish stain, in the fresh snow along the trail, and raised my eyebrows to question their meaning. The Wallega leader shaped his arms like he was carrying a basket and said the words "chilska atewi". Then he raised three fingers to indicate the number of chilska atewi and pointed in an arcing fashion in the direction the trail was taking. He pointed to the warrior that was with us and said "chulma" and then combined all the words that he had shared in to "chilska atewi chulma". My intuition did the rest.

I turned to Treeana. He is telling us that three of the warriors with baskets of berries are leading the Bear. They are out ahead of it." She raised her eyebrows in surprise and replied," I wonder why?"

I turned to Husananin and made the signs he had made to us about the "berry warriors" and then added raised eyebrows to ask him why they were doing this. He understood quickly what I was asking. He raised up to his tallest stature and brought his hands up shoulder high in claw shape. Then he he spun around to face where he had been standing as the Bear and dropped to one knee and raised his hands, palms up, in supplication.

"The Bear is their God , or at least an object of veneration." I said to Treenana as I nodded that I understood to our host.

As the days wore on and we traveled further and further South, much effort and time was spent on our ability to communicate with our new companions. By the middle of the third day, we were understanding each other rudimentarily quite well. Treeana and I learned many skills of sign language and quite a few Wallega words.

We had actually traveled far enough South that the snow was reduced to a mere "dusting" on the trees and bushes, that closed in around us. This Forest was a wide band of Conifers and Deciduous trees that climbed up into fairly high hills. The trail passed between a couple of these and continued to wind among them, sometimes following cool streams. We ended up in a canyon that branched off in three directions. Here the berry warriors went to the left, presumably being resupplied by people from their village, way out ahead of us. Husananin indicated that they were taking the Bear back to its lair, a sacred place. The rest of us took the center trail, straight South, and it soon opened into a wide hill surrounded valley, that was verdant and lush. There we weer soon met by other Wallega People, who greeted Husananin return happily and showed great curiosity about us two pale strangers. We had arrived at the home of these strong people.

The village became visible when we passed around an ancient stand of Oak trees. It was larger than I had expected. I quickly counted about one hundred and fifty dwellings. Between them and around them were gardens. We were surrounded by over a thousand Men, Women and Children who were not shy about yelling and laughing merrily at their leaders return and our strangness.

We felt welcome and enjoyed being the center of attention.

MacJon