Keith Billington - Tse-loh-ne (The People at the End of the Rocks): Journey Down the Davie Trail

Only 460 kilometres to go, eh? Author Keith Billington on the Aatse Davie Trail.

During a 460-kilometre hike through Kaska and Sekani territory on the Aatse Davie Trail, Keith blends some of the joys and tribulations with stories of the realities of the Sekani life. The People at the End of the Rocks brings together events that have occurred in the past in this wilderness area, which is still on the very frontier of British Columbia, but is now in danger of changing radically as its resources come into demand.

A birthday present that almost guarantees that you will lose twenty pounds would delight most people and I was excited to receive such an invitation. The downside of the invitation was the seventy-pound pack I was going to have to carry for 460 kilometres along a little-known trail in the Rocky Mountain Trench.

I had been the Band Manager for the Fort Ware Indian Band for over ten years, and had travelled on the Finlay River by river boat and over many of the local trails by snowshoe, snowmobile, and on skis, but the trail that fascinated me most was the Aatse Davie Trail that ran from Lower Post on the northern border of British Columbia to Fort Ware in north-central BC.

Charlie and Hazel Boya were the only people who were familiar with the trail, having both spent part of their childhoods on the trail and having walked it many times over the years. Now they were talking about hiking the trail again to ensure that it would be part of the Bands land claims strategy when the Band, a member of the Kaska Tribal Council, entered into negotiations with the government.

We have a birthday present for you, Keith, Charlie announced one evening when I was visiting him and his wife, Hazel. Charlie and I had been friends for years and I spent a lot of time at the Boyas house drinking coffee and listening to the tales Charlie told. Charlie knew that I had a great desire to walk the Davie Trail, having heard so much about it from him.

Whats it going to cost me? I asked, knowing that Charlie always had a scheme going that would cost me money.

How would you like to walk down the Davie Trail with us and really experience how we used to live in the bush?

I was delighted and excited at the prospect. I knew that the Kaska were doing everything they could to document their relationship to their land, and that they had negotiated with an environmental group in Williams Lake for Eric Gunderson to do some mapping for them. At the time I didnt mention that my upcoming birthday was going to be my sixtiethit was going to be now or never!

When shall I start packing?

The Jet Ranger helicopter flew north for two hours along Williston Lake and then up the Finlay River. After sighting a small cabin, the pilot brought the machine down from three thousand feet, banked to the right, and descended with the nose tilted slightly up to a landing on the riverbank. The downdraft from the huge rotors whisked leaves and debris into the fast-flowing river. A few dogs tied up behind the cabin took refuge in their broken-down boxes and then, as the noise and motion slowed down, a man peered out of the cabin door and walked slowly towards us.

He was a tall, lean, angular man dressed in blue jeans and a black western shirt. His shoulder-length black hair was crowned with a black cowboy hat. He smiled and walked over and greeted me, shaking my hand in the brief handshake used by most First Nations people. He told me that his name was Emil McCook and that he was the Chief of the Fort Ware Indian Band.