“I’m going to stay,” Marv said.  Time slowed down, ski tracks appeared and disappeared in the wind and snow, and he settled in for the day.  First he climbed a ridge above camp and sought the hardest hard wood of Northwood’s forests.  The bluff’s snowy downslope made easy the task of dragging those rare standing dead Ironwood poles from the hilltop back to camp.  He was in no hurry and stopped frequently this day to watch the intermittent chirp of a chickadee soundboard from a nearby balsam-fir, and thought about the crisp resin smell of camp filtering from its fresh boughs he wove beneath the shelter’s wollen floors. 

At camp, he took a rusty sawblade from the broken branch of a nearby Maple and fixed it on an old camp saw with a twig and some twine in the broken rivet hole.  He made quick work of the Ironwood into woodstove sized rounds, and stacked it near the remnant stove heat inside the shelter.  Marv then placed a summer sausage on the doorstep.  He took off his boots and reclined, drinking tea, listening. 

After some hours that passed like this, he heard the wheezing grunt of an American Marten approaching camp.  As he reached for the hatchets handle at his side the sudden guest seized the sausage bait, and without hesitation Marv dove towards the unzipped shelter door.  The Marten’s eye gleaned this flanking assault through the faded interior light of the canvas-walled tent, saw the glimmer of iron wrought from sub-surface bellows on the hatchet’s cheek, spotted the furious and general attack of a partially suspended blade-wielding human, and his tightened leg muscles dug shocked weight into the snow.  As the flying Marvin crashed askew through the shelter door’s adjacent fabric, as he surges from the tent’s interior through both the door and the sliced tent wall, the Pine Martin skillfully bounded clear, yet chose poorly to climb the nearest mature tree.  From this Sugar Maple’s crown the weasel regained his senses so recently flooded in sudden fear, and looked down at the human predator regrouping below.  Before he could run down the Maple’s trunk, as weasels proficiently do, the general attacked continued with sticks, snowballs, cuss words, and loose camp gear.  It was at this point I returned to camp along the lake path, and saw the present scene.

“Looks like he weaseled out of that one” I said, and stood beside Marv at the base of the Maple.  We stood in the dying light and examined the fluid movements of the Marten as he explored different branches for possibilities of escape. 

“What are you going to do?” I asked, after some time passed.  Then suddenly the Marten dropped 30 feet from a distant branch like a fur covered brick and disappeared beneath the powdery surface

“There he goes!” exclaimed Marv, and we both ran clumsily in the deep snow after him as he skillfully bounded across its surface, landing first with his front feet then followed by well landed hind legs ready to propel his fluid accordion gallop without pause.  We were surprised to overtake him, as he easily could have outdistanced us on foot.  Cautiously we approached a dark recess of lichened till we had observed the weasel-one retreat to. 

“What are you going to do?” I asked again, catching my breath.  Marv stared silently at the hole in the ground. He had already come to terms with his urge to lay this weasel low.  We poked sticks in the hole and caved in the snow around its opening and the Marten squeak-snorted from below the hillside.  After some time he dug his way out and the reflective lens of his retina glared in a moment of eye contact, and he retreated once again below the snow. 

Marv realized right then we were only visitors in the Weasel’s home, and came to peace with an American history of displacing its native residents.  It did not matter how many food items this weasel had stole from us, nor did it seem wrong he had summoned us from our sleep inside the tent’s walls with a blood curdling hiss from his rounded fanged mouth.  It did not matter he had shaken our safety when he rose on hind legs and cocked his raised head hairs in defiance of our headlamps, staring us down with his green fire eyes.  It was neither right nor wrong, and our judgments disappeared like the daylight, slow yet complete.