Slowly, slowly, then all at once

The  North American fur trade collapsed by the middle of the 19th century. Despite this the cultural kinship community of the fur trade lingered on for decades. Old timers, mostly men, gathered in Detroit years later to dine and reminisce. Arriving from hundreds of miles away, they joyfully observed French North American culture. Some French-speaking men continued to ramble along the rivers and creeksides of the Great Lakes, checking traps, selling pelts to industrial age buyers. Tectonic plates colliding. Collapse is both gradual and sudden. Memories of memories linger into ages ill-equipped to decipher them. Finally, caricatures emerge of ancient great lineages that made more of life, with less, than can be imagined in our own collapsing times.