I carved it with the kids for what seemed like hours. Days there did not progress in the strict units of time they have elsewhere...time passed languidly with the movement of the sun and we were moved with it.
I remember patiently scaling out the yin and the yang and using the thinnest file I could find to get the tails right...I remember cupping the curved edges with sandpaper and stroking tenderly the surface so the dusty, cold stone became soft somehow. I did not understand the craft and I did not understand the material the same way I could carve wood so absently. Indeed, carving soapstone demanded a presence for me and I was stolen from the overbearing mountains, the distant hiss of the nearby streams, the conks of the canoes hitting the dock...the birds, the bees, the wind, the trees...I was stolen and captivated making this little thing. I made the yin for my sister and the yang for myself.
Kids always made their first crafts for their parents. It was as if the things had no value unless it could be given away...freed from its creator, restored and timeless with sentiment as a gift.
I finished the yang and when rubbed with oil I saw the rich marbled interior which needed only to be exposed. Today, it has lost its former sheen and glory. The sun may have bleached it throughout the summer and perhaps in living in a dark drawer a little of the life it first had when I drilled a hole in it to attach with string to my backpack had been lost. The spirit of the thing is not obvious, anymore, but it has always been there. Patience is a virtue and with insight one could reveal its true colors.
But until then, I have it with me. When I hold it I still feel that silent, easy pride. I feel lifted, still, by the magic I found in that place and I carry the soapstone and spirit with me. Camp Chief Hector is a part of me now because it was the catalyst to my piecing myself together. I found myself there, it seems only natural I could store a bit of myself in such a relic.
Should I ever need to be killed, soapstone may not have been my wisest choice. I have few meaningful possessions, but soapstone is weak and changeable. It would depend on what I put in to it to be strong.
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