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 John Mahoney  His previous columns are archived HERE. |
Posted 03.01.10
Cobden, Ontario Muskrat Johnny's Swamp Flute
COBDEN, ONTARIO | More than 400 years ago Muskrat Lake was home to the Nibachis, Algonquin people who lived along the Ottawa River. These days, few here remember that other people lived here before, much less their name.
At the swampy east end of the 10-mile-long lake, there is a stand of old willow trees, hard by a spring that runs all year and spills over the ice in winter.
Several hundred yards up Bonnechere Street, which parallels the lake, is the site where French explorer Samuel de Champlain met with the Nibachis during one of his North American adventures in 1613.
That same year, Champlain lost his navigational astrolabe. It was discovered some 254 years later, in 1867, just down the road by teenager. The tree from which this swamp flute is made grows a few yards from Astrolabe Street here in Cobden.
I found the branch on a pile of trash that had washed ashore after ice-out around 2008. It looked promising, so I took it home and placed it among my stash of possible flute blanks.
Eventually, my son Keith in Ottawa ripped in lengthwise on his bandsaw and I taped the halves together to prevent warping during further drying.
I don't have a router so I drilled and chiseled and sanded the 20-inch-long branch until I had the slow air chamber, the block, and the main body of the flute hollowed. Then, I carefully glued the two halves together.
I added two pieces of 1-inch-thick cedar blocks to the north end of the flute to sculpt a mouthpiece. I drilled a quarter-inch blowing hole before affixing the blocks to the end of the flute.
Then I began shaping the flute with sandpaper glued onto flat paint-stirring sticks, finishing with hand-held sandpaper.
 The flute wanted to be in the Key of F and, following advice from a flute manual and some found on-line, I roughed in the finger holes and began fine-tuning with a drill press and rat-tail files. Because of the irregular bore, this took some time. I finished with flute with many coats of walnut oil, and hand-rubbed for hours between coats. The bird is branch wood, oiled, and tied on with a rawhide bootlace. It's about as natural a flute as I could make. It is a work of love and remembrance, not a concert instrument. I made it to play what is in my heart. Sometimes, when I look out the living room window across the street at the spring, the lake, and the willows, I can see the Nibachis people living on the lake, fishing, swimming, eating, living -- it's night on the Muskrat and they're telling stories around the campfire, and I like to think they hear this flute recognizing them for having been here. A final note: Since trading for a bamboo shakuhachi with an Andean-style notched mouthpiece, the Swamp Flute lives with Kit in Kentucky where it is played and loved, and where the Nibachis live on with every note played, every breath taken. |