"They had been smelling smoke for two days. At first they thought it was another camp fire and that surprised them because they had not heard the engine of a plane and they had been traveling the string of long lakes for days and had not seen sign of another person or even the distant movement of another canoe. The only tracks in the mud of the portages were wolf and moose, otter, bear."
"When Mamma and Pappa were an item in the sixties, Mamma’s face was so naked as to almost not be a face. It was constantly falling apart and putting itself back together again. Much has been said and written about Mamma’s face, her eyes, her lips, her hair, her unsettling vulnerability and the way in which all great actresses channel every emotion to the area in and around the mouth, but no one has said anything about her ears. When I was little, I liked lying close to her and stroking her hair, I didn’t yet have words for beauty, or for love; like most children I was more concerned with the size of things, whether they were big or small, and Mamma had big feet and big ears. We would lie in her double bed with its golden bedposts and pink flowery sheets, and she would let me stroke her hair while she read a book or spoke on the telephone. She often ended a phone conversation with the words Men–over and out."
