Shaman’s Lake is a poem that appears in North Country Notebook, volume II on page 8. The poem was printed in several different publications. The version from Shaman’s Drum is included, partially because of the appropriateness of the name, but also because it is in the proper form as George wrote it. In one publication, the editors shifted the spacing of the lines to fit it more appropriately in a column format. But that broke up the form of the poem. Although the words were the same, George was disappointed that the form wasn’t correct.

Shaman’s Lake is also one of the four essays read by George in “Pages from a North Country Notebook”, a cassette released by George’s North Country Press.

In volume II, George prefaced the poem with this statement:

“This poem is a sestina, an old French form that employs 36 stanzas of six lines each to produce the illusion of rhyming.

The sestina is also a narrative form of poetry that was traditionally used to tell of heroic, larger-than-life happenings.  As Steady Eddy points out, the form is sometimes utilized at the American Legion Bar in Three Lakes when the going gets tough and the tough play cribbage.

A shaman, as you know, is a medicine man or a medicine woman with great powers that seem downright inexplicable, unexplainable.  When you meet a shaman, you’ll know you’ve met one.  Then again, maybe not.”