First Impressions

NOTE: This is not my best work, but it's interesting. I found a notebook while I was home at Christmas that I thought was something else, but it turned out to be a forgotten Journal from my season at Big Bend National Park. First impressions are always fascinating to look back on, so here are mine in four short journal entries. Enjoy!

January 5^th, 2009

My first day in Big Bend National Park. Well, first day of work, my “entry on duty” or EOD for short. I am working as a biotech (grasslands management) and am a member of a four person team consisting of Jamie, Hilary, Christina, and myself.

My coworkers seem like a nice crew and I think I will have a good time with them. They are all from the east but have a long list of parks under their belts.

Today we planted at the “mosquito” site out on the old Terlingua Ranch property. We used a hydromulcher but spent much of our time waiting for the water truck to come. What an amazing spot. We were in the middle of a huge plain of creosote and crucifixion thorn which ended abruptly in a wall of barren mountains in any direction. The sky was a lattice work of scudding altostratus and was deciding whether or not it wanted to rain. (it hasn’t since September) The beauty here is so savage, raw, violent. Mountains are sharp and tooth-like, trees are scarce and are found almost only in the protective confines of the Chisos.

The sun is harsh and the shadows black, every moment is different and in the evenings the very air seems to glow.

I made my chili for dinner tonight and took some to Hilary since she had lent me her stewpot. It was a decent batch but needed more heat (maybe more chili powder?). I spent the evening straightening my trailer and it is beginning to feel slightly more liveable. In fact, I am going to bed. Early day tomorrow.

January 6^th, 2009

First full day of fieldwork. I got up before dawn and made toast and coffee. I shrugged on my field uniform (green jeans, grey shirt, fleece, and ball cap). No badges or nameplates in this job. Just the basics.

I met my crew outside the ScRM building and we went to the maintenance yard to load the hydromulcher. The sun was just coming up and the creosote and sotol were backlit by crimson. It was really windy as we filled the mulcher and more of it went on the engine and crew than in the tank. Next came the breaking up of the mulch which we had to wear a mask and goggles to do. With the wind, it was a lot like being in a green tornado; our hair and clothing was immediately stained with green and my hair still had a green tint at the end of the day before I took my shower.

I rode in the backseat of the truck on the way to the site and watched the barren hills slide past outside the window. We retrieved the UTV from the barn and I rode with Christina out to the mosquito site while she instructed me on the finer points of UTV operation.

We arrived at the site and I soon learned how to plow a line with the UTV as well. The wind was howling across the plain and we were all soon coated with pale dust (which complemented our green hair fairly well). Hilary and I worked with bandanas over our mouth and nose to keep out the grit, Jamie put a bandana around her head and when she and Hilary were driving the UTV in a cloud of dust, I was strongly reminded of Thelma and Louise.

The hydromulcher broke and Christina and I were unable to fix it, so we headed back to base. Turns out we hadn’t disengaged the clutch and it wouldn’t start because of that. Embarassing. Christina tended to the hydromulcher in the maintenance yard and the rest of us went to load a large trailer with spiny brush. After awhile, Hilary called a break and we all leaned against the trailer and watched the sun play across the mountains.

Though the wind continued to whip, I went for a run around the complex saying “hi” to employees out walking their dogs and looking at the park horses in the corral who looked back in a well fed sort of way.

The Javelinas were back in my area when I got back to my trailer and I watched my neighbor throw beer cans at them while I cooled down enough to go inside. I did a workout on my iron gym and then dragged my dusty and sweaty self into the shower where I watched the “remains of the day” spiral down the drain. Refreshed I heated up some chili and made a salad for dinner. After making tomorrow’s lunch, I settled down to drink tea and listen to Jimmy Buffet. Good (but tiring) day.

January 7^th, 2009

A warm day at last! The hydromulcher broke early this morning and Jamie, Hilary, and I were sent to Rio Grande Village to cut brush.

We stopped at the dugout wells on the way down to RGV for a break, what a nice spot! It’s a small cattle tank and windmill pump that has provided a water source for a stand of water-loving cottonwoods and other sizeable trees. The Chisos glowed in the morning sun and the plain of creosote was sufficiently thick as to give the appearance of a verdant plain, with green or purple islands of prickly pear occasionally breaking the surface.

Our site at RGV was on the river on a portion of what used to be Sotol grassland and is now an overgrown forest of tamarisk, mesquite, and other strangling trees. Hilary and Jamie trained me in chainsaw ethics and safety and we had a lot of fun.

After work I went to the hot springs with Christina, Mark, and Joe and we soaked under the full moon and gazed across the river at silent Mexico. Good day.

January 8^th, 2009

It is late and I am tired. I’ll be short.

Today was delightfully sunny and warm, and my crew and I worked on planting in the creosote flats all day. The air was clear, the sun bright, and we watched a shrike fly around during lunch as well as a variety of creatures attracted to our water truck leak—write more on that later.

Day went by fast without a hitch and I ran the loop after work. Meant to work out, but had Peace Corps interview. It’s between Africa and the Phillipines. Exciting. Hand numb from cell phone. Need bed. Friday tomorrow!

Mornings

NOTE: A brief thought, to be expanded upon later, but for now enjoy this excerpt from today's freewriting.

Mornings. The air is heavy with possibility and potential, indeed countless things are possible on any given day. Then, after a few hours the sun rises higher and the list dwindles until only routine is left. In the morning the world is reborn, animals awaken and shake the sleep from their tired limbs, frost melts from the trees and fields, and the cold mists of evening lie heavy in the valleys both obscuring and embracing the river banks and lakeshores

and thus extending the night that much longer. My best days come from watching the sunrise, to greet the day with that first fiery burst of crimson crests the horizon. I remember being able to catch the sunrise every morning for nearly a month, it was down by the sea on Hatteras Island where I lived and worked for a time.

The day would begin dark and blue, deep in the southern pines that surrounded my home. I would run down the road then, looking at the blue mist between the trees, choked with trailing vines and greenbriar.

Making my way out on the elevated abandoned road above the salt marsh, I would watch as herons and egrets strode sleepily about, looking for fish among the rushes. Cresting the low dune line, I would kick off my shoes man make a beeline for the surf, still the color of night burnished silver, with the faintest semicircle of gold attesting to where the sun would soon appear. This gold would grow into blazing red and I would stop my run along the beach and sit back on the hard sand to watch. For a few moments, the sun would be visible below the water, like a great shining behemoth lurking beneath the waves, and then the thinnest sliver of molten gold would break the surface as Apollo’s chariot climbed slowly from the sea, illuminating the sand, the breakers, and the tall shimmering dunegrass with a strange and beautiful light.

Every morning for a month my day began thus, to watch all of the glory of our neighboring star burst shining from the ocean each morning was a unique and special gift. I believe that few of us realize the magic of the sunrise, and only by virtue of its repetition are we desensitized to it.

The Predator

NOTE: a memory from today's freewriting.

Up a gravel road from my trailer in the shadow of the ragged Chisos Mountains in South Texas, lies Mouse Canyon. It is discernible from my front steps in the mornings when I watch the sun illuminate the mountainsides and every dark stone and pale green Sotol seems to glow with an ethereal light. In that rich winter sunlight, a dark cleft can be seen; a wound in the face of Panther Peak, where the dry wash that curls around behind my temporary home is disappears, swallowed by the mountain.

One midwinter afternoon, I set out from my house beneath the blazing South Texas sun and walked the wash toward the mountain. It curled this way and that, cobbled with water smoothed stones and walled in by eroded walls of desert earth. At one bend in the wash stood a stooped cottonwood shimmering with the leaves of the previous summer that still clung to its time-sculpted branches.

I sat to rest in its shade and looked out onto the blasted landscape of jagged rock and thorny plants. Everything here was shaped by the desert around it. The landscape was vigorous in itself defense. Over there was a patch of Shindagger, and at my back stood the globular mass of a Sotol with last year’s flowerhead looming high above and casting a narrow strip of shadow upon its serrated leaves. Cacti come in all shapes and sizes here; from the tall rose-hooked Devil’s Claw to the low and lethal Horse Crippler, the plants of the Chihuahuan Desert are both beautiful and terrifying at once. They invoke a deep respect and admiration in me; one does not travel lightly in this country.

As I round a bend in the wash, the dark walls of the stone cleft loom over my head and I enter the narrow coolness of the canyon. Everywhere is the trace of water’s passage in through this deep defile, dead plants layered with sediment wrap the up-canyon side of each tree trunk and beneath boulders lie the concentric rings of slowly drying pools. Each day having taken a little more of their precious contents leaving only the dessicated bodies of the ephermeral pool-dwellers to rise again with the next rain. Water is so fleeting here, more-so than any other desert that I have found myself a part of. It has not rained here since my arrival.

Yet I smell water. A wet coolness borne on the sweeping downcanyon wind. Does it come from a spring in the heights of the Chisos? Unseen from my vantage point, the only thing I can descry of the world outside the confines of the canyon is the pale sliver of the winter moon riding high in the unbroken azure ribbon between the towering walls.

As suddenly as the canyon began, it came to an end, and a pile of smooth boulders lay piled below the twist of a high pour off that lay at the utmost end of mouse canyon. Beyond its lip I could see the broad expanse of Sotol grasslands leading up the mountain side to the cliffs ringing Panther Peak. Off to my left, another pour off beckoned, darker and narrower, its end unseen and unknown. I clambered up the boulders to its entrance and eased myself gently into its cool embrace.

As my eyes adjusted to the light and the echoes of my clumsy passage died away, I became aware of being surrounded by the strong smell of water; cool, clean, and strong. At my feet lay a deep pool cut from the solid stone of the canyon. It was small, no more than two feet across, and the reflection of the sky in its glassy surface made the canyon walls around glow a deep sapphire. It was everything cool and pure in the midst of a land defined by sharp edges and searing heat.

So taken in by the beauty of this perfect window, that I did not at first realize that I was not alone. It stood there, perfectly still, the smooth vertical expanse of the canyon wall at its back and the pool before it, so close it almost brushed the surface. It was an ancient predator, and it was poised above the sky-mirror ready to strike at the slightest movement within the depths of the water. A living fossil, the water-bug waited for its prey. It was like the landscape surrounding it, beautiful and terrifying, a perfect killing machine of lethal precision and ruthless appetite. It was the largest I had ever seen, the golden oval of its carpace nearly six inches in length. Beneath it were folded six deep yellow legs; thick with cruel barbs and each one ending in a long claw that gripped the slick stone. It would stay there, motionless, waiting for a succulent canyon toad or slow-moving lizard to cross its path, or for an unlucky insect to break the glassy surface of its pool.

I was an intruder in its domain, and remembering myself, I nodded my head in aquiesence and left it to its hunting. Life in the desert, always juxtaposed with death. Like the siren song of a selenium spring, what I had just seen was a clear and beautiful illustration of this ageless dichotomy.

Life.

Death.

The pool.

The predator.

One cannot exist without the other...

-Charlie Kolb, Atlas Mountains, Morocco

God's Dog

NOTE: A few paragraphs from today's freewriting...

I remember one night when I was camped on a cliff high above Canyonlands National Park, a campsite I had been to many times with many different people, I built a small fire of juniper twigs in an elevated and established ring, shielded from the desert wind that always sweeps in at sundown. Peeling the dead outer bark from a nearby wind-wizened tree, I knelt above my firelay and rubbed the bark gently back and forth between my hand showering the bed of twigs with tiny fibers. Twisting the remaining bark in to a nest for the coal, I pulled out my flint striker and began to shower sparks into the nest with my knife.

A momentary red glow signaled to me that one of the sparks had caught and I began to blow on the coal. Gently at first, but constantly, I breathed oxygen into the nest and the fire-ring began to fill with thick smoke. But soon, with a tiny wooshing sound, the bark caught and within minutes the air was filled with the heat and light of a campfire and the aroma of juniper smoke floated on the breeze that carried with it the mournful yipping of a distant coyote, alone on the endless mesa-top.

~

Coyote is a fascinating figure to me, he is saint and sinner, trickster and sage, God and Demon. Much of Native American mythos revolves around him from sea to sea, but to me he best represents the spirit of the Southwest and the red-deserts of the Colorado Plateau. Small and elusive, like a grey whisper on the desert wind, Coyote is nonetheless seen often by men, many of whom view him as a pest or “varmint”. I have seen him many times myself, trotting nonchalantly across an open field, or sitting on his haunches in an oak opening watching me pass; occasionally I will only see his tail as he disappears into the brush along a road or trail. When he is not seen, he is heard, along with a small group of his fellows. In the cold watches of the starry desert night, they hurl their shrill voices skyward, sounding like an army rather than a band.

When he is killed, another steps forward to take his place, indeed in many of the ancient stories coyote is easily killed but staying dead is another matter entirely. Coyote has flourished while their big brother the Wolf, and cousin the Grizzly Bear have been hunted and driven far into the dark, cold forests of the north, into only a sliver of their former range.

No, coyote continues trot along the deer trails on the sage plateau, and to laugh at the moon as it crests the rim of his deep canyon. Indeed “God’s dog”, to borrow from Mary Austin, shows no sign of going anywhere despite all our efforts to the contrary. So when I hear his wild chorus, sung unseen off in the silver sagelands, as the moon rides high in a sea of stars, I smile to myself knowing that my world is still wild and that no one can take that away.

-Charlie Kolb, Atlas Mountains, Morocco

Stars: Musings of a Cosmic Speck

Note: this essay was written during my season at Grand Teton National Park in the Fall of 2008. My writing style has changed quite a bit since then, but I think this is still worth sharing...

It is evening, here in Grand Teton National Park. I sit in my one-room cabin (where you can eat, cook, pee, and sleep all in the same general vicinity…). The wind howls outside, weather coming in, heralding the Fall, the coming of the cold, and the hammerblow that is winter in Jackson Hole.

Despite the wind’s ferocity, the sky is crystalline in its clarity and the stars shine with an icy blue intensity. Looking up, (or is it down?) I have the sensation of falling into the vast expanse and the wind whips around me, intensifying the feeling. Looking at the icy blue pinpoints of light, and the gaseous splash of the Milky Way, I have that feeling of smallness, of emptiness. The fact that I can live, breathe, think, and function in the face of that infinite vastness, is nothing short of amazing: a testament to human arrogance and denial.

What can I say? We are an arrogant race, the fact that we think that we matter at all in the scope of the universe, that we can actually alter our climate enough to cause lasting damage bears witness to this. The planet will check itself, it always has, it was created that way. The truth of the matter is, when we have gone too far, this awful, beautiful, perfect creation that is nature, will simply rid itself of us like a dog scratching at a flea. Thankfully, we have God to collect our souls when it all goes to Hell in a handbasket.

The fact that we matter one whit to the creator of the icy blackness which I gaze into now is nothing short of miraculous. It is a privilege of which we are certainly not worthy. I had a long and involved discussion with a colleague of mine, just a short while ago, while out on the trout stream north of our housing area (where all good discussions should take place), about the hopelessness of our current state of affairs. From our dependence on oil to the failure of politics in general, we covered all bases, and differed in our opinion on many points (us stubborn christo-liberals are hard to please).

Some very good points were made on both sides, and the most interesting point of conversation was on the ‘green movement’. I’ll be the first to admit that the green movement has made too many mistakes, we have gotten too preachy, too political, shamefully arrogant and greedy; a failing of much of America in general. Like the mainstream churches, we preach a philosophy which we do not follow. We are hypocrites in tie-dye. The worst sort of shallow, we view the average person as uninformed and stupid, in need of a view into the ‘light’ of our message. There are many parallels to be drawn between the green movement and the church. Like the church, we can stand on our soapbox all day and preach conservation and the skeptics will simply listen politely (or not) and ask ‘what’s in it for us? Why should this matter to me?’ The simple answer for the green movement is that it won’t matter to you, but your grandchildren will be very grateful. This, like the church’s promise of eternal life, but only after physical death, rings hollow from our hypocritical soapbox.

Have you ever noticed the people who have had their lives changed by something, Christ or otherwise; the people that reflect peace, serenity, and security in their day to day life? Notice that it is these people that have the most effect; these people can say little or nothing at all and still their message rings in your ears long after you have parted company. They are not hypocrites, they are just making their way in the world in the best way they can.

In the green movement, these people have realized that they are worth about as much as a rat turd in this vast, cold universe. And yet it gives them peace. The idea gives me peace, that’s for sure. Especially as a christo-liberal, I get to experience the awe of looking into the yawning abyss of our unimportance, but I have God hold my hand the whole time, lest I fall in, fall into the freezing stars.

But why, if we matter so little, if the earth is just going to shrug its shoulders when it tires of us, why then should the green movement prevail, why then should we not hedonistically burn the planet to the ground around us in one great orgy of pleasure and entitlement? Come the rapture, it won’t matter right? The answer is a complicated one. From our soapbox, we can say that going green is simply the right thing to do, that as environmentalists, Christian or otherwise, it is our duty. My friend says that people won’t listen until there’s strain on their pocketbook, this is true but it shouldn’t be. Usually, that sort of strain appears after the problem has already reached crisis point and trying to address it then is like getting a vaccination after the symptoms have already appeared.

Why then should we continue with the green movement? My friend puts it well, in that the green movement should be the ‘common sense’ movement and not be a lunatic fringe, but a part of everyday life. It seems common sense to us that are already part of it, I love my life in the little cabin eating soup and the occasional fresh salad if I can afford it (Organic? You bet!). But the average person cannot see the sense in this very well, and being raised in the shadow of the entitled American dream, it is difficult to shift gears. A defense of the American dream is that we Americans earned it, every penny; while that may be true, it is not true elsewhere, where people can work 10 times as hard as us ‘hardworking’ Americans and still barely get by. So, rather acting like we’ve sacrificed so much to earn our lifestyle, we should accept it as the privilege it is and use it wisely and simply.

I have a difficult time seeing how one can be happy in a huge house surrounded by possessions, things of human make and manufacture. They are such poor substitutes, all art is but imitation of things already wrought by the master artist. My home (for now) is this park, my vaulted ceiling is the cobalt sky held in place by the soaring peaks which fill the view from behind my house. My entertainment comes in the form of a good book and a steaming mug of tea, or the exhilaration of a fish taking my fly in a quiet hole of a forgotten creek. These are simple pleasures, not the stimulatory overload that defines most modern entertainments; that sensory bombardment that leaves our synapses fried and quivering in some gelatinous corner of our brains. If people could be shown the joy and serenity there is in living simply and lightly, they wouldn’t feel like the greenies were trying to take away their possessions, their TVs, their SUVs; but rather that we were offering them a gift, an alternative, a sense of serenity and fulfillment. So I will argue for conservation with the best of them and I will continue to stand on my soapbox, but if I can win over one person just from them watching me and seeing the peace and serenity that I reflect in living simply, it will all be worthwhile.

Regardless, the stars will continue to shine and no matter the outcome of our small, blue planet, they always will. For now, I will just sit and listen to the fall winds, and think about where I want to fish tomorrow…

-Charlie Kolb, Jenny Lake district, Grand Teton National Park

a Weekend in Teton

NOTE: This is an essay I wrote during my time in Yellowstone in the summer of 2007. It describes a weekend I spent exploring Grand Teton National Park. It is the first time that I had seen Jenny Lake, the place where I would work the following summer, and many of the people that I encountered there and who were unknown to me are now my friends and acquaintances. But to remain faithful to the present tense in which it is written, they will remain nameless.

28th of May, 2007

Another long week draws to a close up here in the sticks and I hit the sack hard. Next morning I’m up at 10:00 (hey you have to sleep in every once and awhile) and throw my sleeping bag and a little bit of food into the truck. My plan is to explore Yellowstone now that everything is open but it is not to be: Cars loaded with tourists and a few angry locals who were too stupid to stay home Memorial Day Weekend, block the northbound lane so turning left is not an option anytime before, say, dinner. I turn right and head down the road into a relatively quiet Grand Teton
National Park.

I hit Leek’s Marina after a ways and remember that I had heard of them having excellent Pizza so I drove to the little pizzeria by the Marina of Jackson Lake. I order a pizza called the “Maintenance Man”. It’s fit for any self respecting carnivore cum wolf lover such as myself as it possesses every type of meat available as topping. I seat myself out on the deck under a shade umbrella and look out toward Mount Moran which looms over the bay. It’s a clear day, with temperatures in the 70s; nice weather for any man, beast, or even tourist. There are a few of them on the deck, carefully avoiding eye contact with anyone outside of their own party, staring into the middle distance. I always make a point to wave and say “HI!” very loudly which tends to provoke a slight jump and mumbled reply of some sort. I begin a letter to my Grandmother back home in Durango and wait for my pizza to come. I’m about halfway through writing it when the pizza arrives, borne aloft by a rather incredible waitress. I spend the next few minutes alternating between eating and writing (sorry about the tomato sauce Meme…). I consume roughly half of the pizza and set aside the rest for dinner. I seal the letter and finish my iced tea looking out over the bay.

I get back into my truck and cruise down the road at a healthy five over-and get passed constantly by expensive cars with California plates which are doing around 20 over. I could go into a long rant about the fact that Californians not being able to drive, but I’d rather just give you the condensed version: “Californians…” *quiet swearing*spit on the ground*. I take my time and park at the String lake picnic area and take the ladder out of my truck so I can get at my bike. It’s mounted on a new kind of rack so you have to roll it backward to remove it. Unfortunately this almost sends it off of the back of the truck so it’s quite a balancing act to remove it with out falling off of the ladder into the expensive car next to me-probably one with California plates…

I screen up and hop on the bike. It’s a brief ride down the one way scenic drive to Jenny Lake. I meet a family riding the wrong way in my bike lane; I smile and give them a wave and a smile: no need to bother them with the rules. A bike path that appears to be the old road appears on the right with enough signage indicating its location that even Helen Keller could have found it ok. What is it with the NPS and signs? There’s idiotproof and there’s overkill: the NPS seems to err on the side of overkill. For instance, at each junction here in Grand Teton there are signs warning of the upcoming junction sign. There is even a series of four signs on the highway that read:

~WE SAW WILDLIFE~

~FROM AFAR~

~UNTIL WE HIT THEM~

~WITH OUR CAR~

That’s what I mean by overkill. Anyway, back to the bike ride.

The bike path was pretty overgrown and had small mounds of pine needles everywhere, washed there by the melting snow. I meet no-one and pass the campground before the path narrows and I drop down next to Jenny Lake. Jenny Lake is a glacier lake and was formed by the very glaciers that sculpted the Tetons. I learn later that the dark water toward the center marks a depth of nearly 300 feet. I cruise into the main Jenny Lake Village and lock my bike on the bike rack. There are only four spots to park a bike in this entire place—contrast this with the 200+ parking spots…hmmm… The ranger in the visitor center recognizes me from a bear jam I had stopped at about a week earlier and we chat about the Jenny Lake ferry. NOTE: I never, as rule, stop at wildlife jams, but this one happened to be a female Grizzly nursing three cubs by the side of the road. How could I resist?

I grab my water bottle and went to catch the ferry across the lake to the Inspiration Point trail. The rate was $10 for a round trip fare. But for Yellowstone and Teton employees it was $2. That’s a nice touch. I get my hand stamped like a little kid at the water park and board the boat, which seems to be the spawn of an illicit tryst between a pontoon boat and a safari bus. The boat starts with a roar and powers out into the deep, cold lake. The boat driver is an exceptionally attractive dark haired woman perhaps six years my senior. She gives a great leave-no-trace/don’t-feed-the-animals speech as we near the opposite shore which is definitely a turn on for ranger nerds like me. I leave the boat dock and start up the trail behind about 20 slow moving tourists. They soon step off the trail to take the first of several hundred pictures and I waste no time passing them. I half run, half walk up the steep and rock trail, soon coming to Hidden Falls, whose 70’ span I admire for awhile before continuing to inspiration point.

Inspiration point is, well, inspiring. It is one of the few overlooks in park that looks away from the Teton range and rather at the immense glacier carved valley of Jackson Hole. Jenny Lake is spread out far below, the boats humming across her surface looking like fairy shrimp in a pothole. I can see Yellowstone off to the North, home. To the south, the town of Jackson peers out from behind the large Butte that shadows it; Snow King Mountain—devoid of snow now—encircles it protectively. I look west into the mouth of Cascade Canyon, one of many glacial gouges that score the range. I can’t see much but the peaks on the canyon’s opposite side beg exploration. I decide that I’ll hike it tomorrow.

I race back to the dock the catch the last boat, soon running out of water. Not carrying enough is unusual for me being that I’m the desert rat that I am. I swear at myself and keep walking; I’ll find water back at the visitor center I’m sure. I meet a large red-faced man puffing his way down the trail. We chat for a while and I slow down to match his pace. He tells me that he doesn’t think he’ll make the last boat and begs me to ask it to wait. I comply and start running to the dock. My haste is unnecessary and the boat ends up leaving at 4:30. My friend makes it down with no problems and we wait in line. A child screams in front of us, squalling that they had already ridden the boat and that he wanted to keep hiking. It’s a comfort to hear really, that in this age of morbidly obese children drooling in front of their video game consoles that there’s still a kid who wants to be outside enough that he’s actually pitching a knock-down, drag-out fit. Three boats arrive to round up the stragglers and I board the second one and enjoy the cool lake breeze blowing through the cabin of the boat.

I arrive back at my bike, and soon my car, with no problems and wrestle it back into the roof rack. I drive to Moose Village and shop around at Moosely Seconds: Gear Store of the Gods… I then get back on the highway and turn at Gros Ventre junction. I dodge a large herd of bison and a herd of tourists watching the bison and race across the sage flats toward the campground. The campground is comprised of several loops spread out beneath towering cottonwoods along the Gros Ventre river. Grabbing a fee envelope I fill it out and go to find a site. There are plenty to choose from and I pick one near the river. I claim the site and race off the find an ATM, ending up going back to Moose for the $20 necessary to pay the overnight fee. Upon my return, I go down to the river and gather some firewood for later that night. The two familes in the site across from me (who I had enlisted to guard my site earlier) invite me over for BBQ chicken and potatoes cooked in the Dutch Oven; it’s the best meal I’ve had in weeks. We talk for a long time and I learn that they’re Mormons from Layton, UT, and that the two babies are the same age and both wives are pregnant and therefore moody. They’re a great bunch and we speak on a wide range of topics. They ask about my job and I ask about their trip. We part when it begins to get dark and I go to revitalize my fire. I watch it until it burns down to coals and write a letter with the day’s happenings and address it to “Mi Familia”. I call home from the pay phone and ask what I’ve missed. Turns out two graduations and a wedding; I guess life continues back home whether I’m there or not. I go back to my site and add more wood to the fire and watch it burn down again, enjoying the rich aroma of woodsmoke.

A distant roar interrupts my quiet contemplations of the flame and I douse the fire, use the bathroom and dive into my truck as the thunderstorm hits. I turn my little clock radio to a classical music station and read some of Ed Abbey’s essays in “Journey Home” by the light of my gigantic maglite. I switch off my light and fall asleep to the rhythm of the wind and rain.

~

I awake to shafting sunlight, the clock reads 7:30. I boil water and drink some Green tea (God only knows how old it is) and begin to break camp. This is easy when you are sleeping the back of a truck as you just have to round up your camping gear and throw it in the back. I soon find myself driving out of the Gros Ventre valley back in direction of Jenny Lake. The storm system from last night is still blowing around so I fight with myself on whether I should go or not. The fight doesn’t last long (I won) and I pack my raingear, first aid kit, and water (much more than yesterday). I bring my trekking poles, knowing that I’ll get the inevitable “goin’ skiing?” question. Sure enough, it comes from a tourist on the dock as I wait for the boat. I just smile wanly in his direction and say “you know it…” I ride across and step onto the dock on the opposite shore

I pass the tourists and fly up the now familiar trail and arrive at inspiration point in no time at all. I take a deep breath and plunge into the dark forest of spruce that lines the bottom of Cascade canyon. It’s quiet here, although the occasional sharp whistle of a Marmot interrupts my reverie. The sharp, sweet scent of spruce fills the air and the creek rushes by on a bed of unforgiving rock. The trail winds up the canyon and in and out of the forest into boulder fields. I stop by the stream and eat a breakfast/lunch of smoked oysters (I pack out the can). The north face of Grand Teton looms to my left its summit, just shy of 14000 feet, obscured occasionally by a scudding wisp of cloud. The canyon itself is hemmed in my walls of ancient granite, rubbed smooth by the huge glaciers of a forgotten age. A peak whose name I do not know cleaves the sky at the canyon’s end like the prow of an ancient ship. It is where the canyon forks, my destination. I pass and chat with a couple of other rangers. One of them if obviously miffed that I am passing him and I assure him that I’m not really this fast (a lie) and that I am simply trying to get back in time for a BBQ (true). Mollified he let’s me pass and I am soon out of sight. The trail is winding through an ancient glade of spruce and fir, their boughs all but covered with wisps of old man’s beard, lichen that closely resembles Spanish moss. The glade is still, sound muffled as if time has stopped, yet as soon as I step out of it, it immediately starts rushing by again. I come to the forks and eat some dried fruit before hiking above it to a place that the other rangers had told me about. It is a view of a tumbling cascade that rushes hundreds of feet down a narrow, boulder-strewn canyon.

It takes me only an hour or so to cover the 4.5miles back to inspiration point; the going is slower here as I have to fight my way through the horde of tourists recently unloaded from the boats. I finally make it to the boat and ride back to the visitor center. I call home to get directions to my BBQ and watch a small armada of Brown-headed cowbirds (♂) trying to impress a lone female who eventually flew away.

The house is easier to find than I anticipate and I drive aimlessly through the neighborhoods in the riverbottom behind the airport. The people I’m having dinner with I have never met before and actually was first contacted by one of them several weeks prior via the Abbeyweb, an old style email forum devoted to Cactus Ed. After posting a hello from Yellowstone to everyone, I received a reply from a Kim Johnson who told me he lived in Jackson and that I should meet he and his wife if I’m ever down that way. Several emails later here I am driving through a maze of cottonwood trees waiting until I’m comfortably on time rather than a little too early. I turn into the driveway and park in front of a little log cabin where I am enthusiastically greeted by a small border collie. Kim is there as well and we shake hands. He’s a tall man in a baseball cap with a beard and ponytail and smiling eyes. His wife Charlie waits inside and I meet her as well; she’s blond, lovely, and according to Kim, about 3 or 4 months pregnant with their first child. I bring in my drinks that I had picked up in Jackson the day before and we get to talking. We talk about Ed and his work, the mountains, politics, and his next door neighbor who is apparently completely batshit. We have a lot of common ground, a love of the Eagles and Jimmy Buffet, as well as having the same obscure favorite movie (Jeremiah Johnson). Charlie watches in disgust as we recite various move lines to each other.

We sit on the deck in the sun with a great view of Tetons towering over us. In the distance I can see Cascade Canyon. I smile at the thought that I was deep in that canyon only a few hours before. The BBQ is wonderful, great potato salad, burgers, and baked beans. We continue to talk and clear dishes. Charlie goes inside out of the sun and turns on the hockey game, yelling the scores to Kim who stays with me. Time flies and soon I’ve been there for 3 hours and it’s time to start back to Yellowstone (home). I thank my gracious host and hostess for an excellent time and take my remaining drinks for the BBQ tomorrow night back at the South Entrance. They wave as I drive off and I wave back before looking next door to see if I can catch a glimpse
of the batshit, dog-hating neighbor.

The sun is setting as I drive home and the roads are all but devoid of traffic. Jackson Lake is mirror smooth and reflects the mountains on the opposite shore. I cross the Snake and make a left into the South Entrance complex and pull into the drive in front of my bunkhouse. A good weekend draws to a close. Can’t wait for next time.

-Snake River Ranger Station, Yellowstone

A Walk in the West

Note: I wrote this essay one fall when I realized I had never written about my home before. It went through several variations but this edit is the most recent and my favorite. Enjoy!

~Introduction~

It is an early morning in late Fall, and still dark in the basement room where I sleep. I throw on a pair of overalls and a warm shirt and trudge sleepily up the stairs. It is cold; the cold of a house still sleeping. The woodstove is dark and quiet, and the only sounds are the hum of the refrigerator and the gentle snoring of my dog, Zeb, back in the pantry. Outside of the windows the sun is beginning to brush the treetops and the long ridge of Basin Mountain is awash with the pale pink of sunrise.

My summer season at Grand Teton National Park ended a month or so ago; November is half gone already and autumn is slowly giving in to winter’s chill. I had expected to be elsewhere at this time of year, but all of my job applications fell short, lost in the federal shuffle. Perhaps there is still a chance that a park will hire me, but I am starting to lose hope. It is strange to be here, to be home again. But this is what seasonal life does, it gives me a taste of life on my own for months at a time but then I am always drawn back here.

It drives me a little crazy some days, even though it is a wonderful place. I feel that my parents have earned a break from their children now that my younger brother is off at College. However, after taking a job at the local ski-resort, I have accepted my situation and try to stay out of the way and help out whenever I can. So this morning I am up early to feed the animals and build a fire in the woodstove.

~I~

I can see my breath as I pick up two flakes of hay and measure out the morning grain for the horse. Zeb trails behind me and looks for an opportunity to dart in and harass her when my back is turned. The cats, Victor and Jack, meow and rub against my legs as I fill their food bowls and break the thin layer of ice which covers their water.

The sunlight is beginning to hit the tops of the ponderosa pines near the horse pen and the light on Basin Mountain is now the color of honey. It is noticeably warmer as I go to split kindling. Our woodpile is in a small shelter attached to the side of the barn and separated by type: oak burns long, pine burns hot, aspen burns fast and ignites easily. We have mostly Aspen here at the house because the Excelsior lumber mill in nearby Mancos charges only $30 per truckload for its scrap wood.

Going to the Excelsior mill is a fascinating experience that has become a family tradition. The pile of lumber there is sometimes 20-30 feet high and you have to climb onto the top to throw down some of the choice pieces of wood; logs for the fireplace, rounds for the stove. From the pile you can see other pickup trucks, often from the nearby Navajo reservation, with other families loading their trucks to the very top sometimes using vertical pieces of scrap wood to brace the sides of the stack. After the wood is loaded and paid for, we always go to eat at the Absolute Bakery for lunch and drive home to unload and get warm.

I pull the axe out of one of the stacked rounds and take several of them out to the chopping block where I split them into pieces that will fit into the stove. Using the hatchet, I shave kindling off of one and pick up a handful of wood chips for tinder. Walking back into the house, I set down my load of wood and take off my coat. I light the stove as sun begins to shaft into the eastern windows and I boil water for tea and scramble some eggs. I love to drink my morning tea while looking out the windows of the house. In summer I would sit out on the deck in the mornings and watch the world wake up around me, or sometimes sit back in one of the wooden rockers and watch lightning crackle over Basin Mountain just after sunset.

The stove is ticking as I finish breakfast and the house is beginning to warm up. Zeb is whining to go out on a walk. I shrug on my coat and we leave the house. No one else is awake yet, but hopefully the house will be warm and cozy by the time they are.

~

I walk up the driveway, Zeb gallops ahead excitedly, a chewed-on stick hanging from his mouth. After closing the green metal gate behind me, I step off the road into the forest. My family’s land sits in an ecological transition zone between Piñon-Juniper woodland and Ponderosa Pine forest, so all three species are plentiful. The ponderosa, giant, long-needled “orange-bellies” that smell vaguely of vanilla or butterscotch tower above the squat Piñons and the feathery, blue Junipers. We are lucky to still have so many Piñons left on our land, as much of the surrounding forest has been killed off by climate-change, in the form of pine beetles.

I am following a faint game trail, my boots crunching over the snow crust that still stubbornly clings to the hollows and patches of shadow beneath the trees like a negative reflection. The dry winter grass rustles in the clearings, pale imitations of now nearly forgotten summer greenery. The Gambel Oak, grows twisted and stunted beneath the larger pines and the holly-like Oregon Grape grows in patches beneath them in broad splashes of burgundy. The oak leaves still hang from the branches despite being brown, curled, and dead. A breath of wind rustles through them and the resulting sound reminds me of rain falling on a still lake in midsummer, or the muted hiss of seeds falling through the hollow interior of a rainstick. The music of the world is not wholly original, and often repeats itself in unlikely places.

I cross a dry ravine, lined with mossy sandstone and make my way up the other side where I encounter a fence. I don’t pay much attention to fences, perhaps at my peril, and I quickly duck between the strands of barbless wire and continue up opposite side of the canyon. There is an instant change in the forest and I am able tell immediately that the owners of this land keep horses. The forest floor is devoid of grass and thickly covered with a cushion of pine needles and the occasional horse dropping. Everything is closely cropped and groomed. I see a burst puffball forms a star pattern on the forest floor like a dying flower or a spent explosive on a forgotten battlefield.

Nuthatches and Chickadees twitter in the forest canopy, and one pecks half heartedly for insects now long gone from beneath the pine bark. I sit down beneath one of the orange ponderosas and try to imagine what it would be like to peck at a tree. I try to picture my face lengthened into a stiff beak which I would bang repeatedly and methodically against the pine bark. No hands. I couldn’t do it, even were I properly equipped. I would likely kill myself trying. But the tiny birds that call above my head are well adapted to the task. They possess and thin and delicate bone called the sclerotic ring, a tiny pale circle that cradles the birds’ eye and holds it in place with a intricate maze of tendons. When the bird is pecking at the pine bark, the ring is absorbing the shock and without the ring the bird’s eyes would explode against their orbits on the first or second peck.

The ponderosas’ dead lower limbs curl downward on the first 20 feet of trunk, rendered obsolete when the branches above them began to screen out the sunlight. I remember walking through the woods with my little brother when we were children, breaking off these lower limbs, jumping for the ones that were out of reach. We would use them for campfires, or building forts, hacking a kingdom out of the wild frontier of our backyard. No green grass or manicured gardens for us, we were content with rocky soil and tall vanilla-smelling trees. Still are, for that matter; although my brother is in Seattle and far out of fort-building range.

~

I walk in and out of ravines and notice that it is getting quite pleasant in the forest. Zeb is getting bored and has started to throw the stick around for himself. Suddenly, I see a helmeted head cruising above the hilltop and I assume it’s attached to a horseback rider. I duck down and grab Zeb who is crashing through the brush like a wounded animal. The rider slides out of sight without seeing us and we hop the fence that marks the property’s edge unnoticed.

I blink in the sunlight on the road, and there are several trash cans out for collection, each with their respective house number and color. Transmission Lines cross over head. Standing still, I can hear their faint buzzing like a disturbed hornets’ nest. Zeb and I veer right and walk in the cleared swath of land that runs beneath the lines; before long, we crest a hill. Looking West, the swath continues into the distance before vanishing over the ridge that hides the village of Hesperus. County Road 125 winds in and out of the trees parallel to the lines before vanishing as well; a steady climb, it makes a good bike ride.

I can see the LaPlata Mountains to the North, the nearest range of high mountains to my home, 20 miles away as the crow flies. I know them well. Silver Peak is in the center and can be seen from most areas of the county. I have climbed to its summit a few times, but recently it has become more difficult, as someone new has purchased the land at the trailhead and threatens hikers with a gun to stay off his property. Not that this fazes me; I have about as much regard for gun toting landowners as I do for fences. Nothing kills a wild place faster than boundary lines. Besides, there are always ways of trespassing undetected, especially in the mountains.

Silver and its neighboring peaks are actually the lowest in the range and hide the higher peaks behind them, including the highest, Mount Hesperus, the Northern Sacred Mountain of Dinetah, the ancient Navajo homeland. It is said to represent darkness and death, as north is the direction of evil. I, however, think it’s pretty.

Not much grows beneath the power lines and rotting stumps mark where trees had stood prior to the clearing of this open corridor. I pass a lone Juniper, blue-green and shaggy, covered in sea green berries that smell of gin. Awhile ago, I found out they are not berries at all, but tiny pine cones covered in a sticky wax. Most berries are female and, when mature, they burst open, spreading their seeds on the wind. The male cones, often on another tree, look like blue flowers and it is from them that the pollen clouds come in the spring, sparkling itchily into my sinuses.

Zeb sticks his nose into the hollow of every bush and frost heave, his snorting sending up tiny puffs of dust. There is more dried grass here and some stalks still have their seed heads. I pick one and roll it between my fingers, thinking of how the seed heads of grasses are actually miniscule arrangements of flowers, protected by two nesting covers called the lemma and palia. These ‘glumes’ surround the flower head which, when taken apart and magnified, unwind in a series of zig-zags, like an accordion of tiny florets.

~

I learned this in Systematic Botany, which my professor had been teaching for 35 years. I graduated the year that he retired and I was lucky to be in one of the last classes of his career. I learned to classify plants in the Linnaean sense, using a pair of dissection needles and a large scope to separate and count all of the parts of the flower: Androecium, Gynoecium, carpels, calyx, corolla, et al. The new style involves DNA analysis, and new techniques such as cladization and reclassification of many orders. It is far less involved, and distinctly separates the scientist from their organism of study… As science advances, it becomes increasingly less attached to the natural world. This has been a sobering realization for me and I found that, the more I buried myself in the numbers and graphs, the less I could hear the music that plays beneath the surface. There will always be a part of nature that can never be quantified, measured, or fully under-stood. It is in this way that things can still be truly wild.

I am a lover of Ecology, the science of connections. To me it is the closest science can get to understanding the music. When I think of the song I hear whenever I am surrounded by shattered stone and whispering trees, I envision a mighty orchestra with no instruments; just tier after tier of players, all holding hands and looking at the floor. From them the music comes in waves, singing in the spaces between them in a magnificent harmony. Some of these virtuosos live and breathe; they experience happiness and sorrow, hunger and satiety. Some of these players sit cold and immobile, in crags of granite whose fingers pierce the sky and cleave the clouds, changing the weather to suit their whims. Still others sigh and sway with the breeze, reaching ever skyward with each passing year. Whether the song comes from them, or the bonds between them, I cannot say. I simply have a vision of a silent auditorium, filled by musicians with linked hands, from whom flows the ever-changing music of the spheres.

~II~

I duck through another barbless fence and stumble on a dainty set of deer tracks. They come as no surprise as I see deer most days, usually as a pair of ears or upturned white tail out of the corner of my eye. The grass becomes shortened and I know that I am on horse property again. I tread carefully, Zeb not so much so, and climb another hill, needles and pinecones crunching underfoot.

There is a snag at the foot of the hill, an old ponderosa that died of natural causes but that has not yet toppled. It still defies gravity, even in death. Snags are wonderful home for many different birds, and they can also be a home for other things as well. My family had a large snag that was threatening to fall on the house and, upon cutting it down, hundreds of black beetles poured from the gaping trunk, clinking like quarters

Across the draw, between the tree trunks, I can see Silver Mountain looking icy in the distance. I climb toward the gap and look into the valley below. It is wide and grassy, with a creek cutting deeply into the valley floor. A small lake lies at the bottom surrounded by Cattails and Rushes. The lake harbors a great deal of waterfowl, both local and migratory and looking to its far edge, I remember a cool spring evening that I spent creeping along the muddy shoreline trying to get a closer look at a snowy egret that seemed to glow against the murky lakewater in the fading light. Zeb was there as well, and we finished up that walk watching the sun set behind the mountains.

The valley which we are descending is surrounded by more tall, stately Ponderosas and would have made an ideal campsite back in those distant, time-fogged years when this was still an open country, and the frontier line was creeping it’s way west. This kind of the forest and meadow environment is common here on the western slope, the fringes of the vast red deserts, of Utah and Arizona. God’s country. Abbey’s Country. My country. In the rabid race to get from desert to mountain these vast (or once vast) forests of sweet-smelling Ponderosa are often overlooked by most tourists and even locals

Colorado boasts some of the largest and most pristine swaths of Wilderness and National Forests in the state, but a careful study of the map will reveal that much of the land that is preserved in the these systems was unusable in the first place, either being too arid in the case of the desert, or too cold in the case of the mountains. The ideal place to live is these pine forests like the one swaying over my head right now.

Unfortunately, this also holds true for much of the wildife in the area that use the Ponderosa for winter refuge. This is observed most readily by driving down highway 550 any winter day and watching the herds of elk wending their way nervously around the sprawling ranch-houses and tightly clustered developments in the Animas River Valley.

~

Zeb and I walk down the frozen creek bed, deeply gouged into the valley floor, a classic example of overgrazing. Once the willows on the banks of a stream are eaten and/or trampled by cows, even the smallest rivulet can carve a respectable canyon in a few short years. Zeb runs ahead and snuffles wetly in the ooze on the lake shore in hopes of finding something to roll in. He returns somewhat wet, but thankfully not reeking. We continue along the shoreline, Zeb’s tail swishing back and forth like a flag. Grass pokes through the snow crust crunching under my feet, small holes ring each stalk where the sun warming the grass has melted the snow around it until every blade pokes from its own tunnel like a leaf-shaped tube worm. Scrub jays laugh gleefully at me from the branches over my head. There are still a few mullein stalks that have withstood the winter storms and stand stiffly at attention on the edges of lake.

I walk down to the edge of the lake and look over the water, glassy still this morning. There is a muskrat burrow on the far side, in the side of the dam. Muskrats are funny little animals, like miniature beavers, and I recall the last one I saw. It was a couple months ago in Grand Teton, the day was sunny and hot. I was kayaking lazily down the Snake River with a number of my coworkers. The water was crystal clear and you could see sunlight shafting all the way down into the muddy benthos. I glanced to my side as I drifted and spotted the muskrat; it was not moving, just floating along and you could see its leathery little legs hanging limply beneath it. I watched and it stirred as I drew alongside and paddled lazily away. Apparently it was doing just what I was, that is, enjoying another sunny day on the river.

But that time is past and that muskrat is probably fast asleep in its burrow by now, the winter snows have long since crashed over Jackson Hole like a breaking wave; and I am far from there, my adult life temporarily on hold as I drift in the limbo of my childhood home.

I hear a startled squawk and the rush of wings and look through the cattails I can see a cloud of disturbed blackbirds fluttering peevishly from a bunch of reeds from which a waving blue-grey tail protrudes. I call Zeb and he prances proudly over to me. I shake my head and give him a scratch between the ears.

We cross the marsh at the head of the lake and start up a hill on the other side, pausing to look at a cow skeleton so weathered that it has been reduced to a scattering of bone chips. I discovered it several years earlier and have returned to the spot periodically to see what became of the bones in their slow return to the earth.

~

Zeb and I crest the hill and I look around us. To the south, past the lake, the valley widens and merges with the headwaters of Wildcat Canyon. Cars race wildly down the road, tiny dots on a black ribbon in the distance. The horizon is the steady crest of Basin Mountain. It looks snowy on that northfacing slope but where Zeb and I stand, the sun is beginning to beat down and the morning is losing its chill.

Strangely enough, there is, in fact, a basin below Basin Mountain; it is called Ridges Basin, but will soon become “Lake Nighthorse” which is planned as a drinking water and agricultural reservoir, as well as a recreational mecca of the four corners. Not that it takes much water to excite us folks around these parts; we’ve been known to walk out of our houses and half drown from standing out in the rain, our faces turned skyward in bewilderment.

Ridges Basin was originally a large and unknown swath of prairie with waist high golden grasses covering several square miles. Around the central creek, cattail marshes flourished and were home to many species of waterfowl and migratory birds. It was ranched, for a time, by the Bodo family, one of the oldest in the region, and then donated to the Colorado Division of Wildlife as a refuge. For years, it was forgotten and rarely visited; although I had been there as a child with my family, for a picnic. It was a beautiful window into the region’s past.

As with many forgotten corners of the west, the basin was deemed useless because it was not being used. By us. Soon, after much protest, the ground was broken for “Lake Nighthorse” and the Bureau of Reclamation name of “Animas La Plata Project” was attached. Many cars sported “Stop ALP” bumper stickers for a number of years. Some still do.

I returned to Ridges Basin several years after the start of the project, again with my family, but this time it was to retrieve our horse which had escaped our land through a break in the fence. We located her standing right below the fledgling dam, staring at the monolithic edifice in puzzlement.

I look away from Basin Mountain and try not to think about it.

~III~

Zeb and I make our way down the other side of the hill, dormant but still aromatic bitterbrush crunching under my boots. There is more snow on this northern slope and I nearly lose my footing several times. We reach the bottom and walk out into the center of the large valley that leads upward from the tiny lake. There are still rushes around deep holes caused by cattle wallowing in the summer. Much of the edible grasses are still cropped short from the cows of summer, though there is still dried cheatgrass here and there. It was originally named by old timers who observed that the grass took over and out-competed the native grass and matured several months earlier than is typical, soon dying and becoming unpalatable. This “cheated” livestock out of their summer forage, thus the name. It is nearly impossible to get rid of, although burning the area (usually three times), seems to work alright. Sounds like an exorcism.

Another valley comes in from the east, and Zeb and I follow it; me noting more interesting grasses and Zeb snorting in Prairie Dog holes.I look at the ponderosas ringing the valley and drink in the quiet serenity of the clear morning. The mountains glow in the distance, shining and magnificent. I am sure that the eagles are diving for fish in the upper lake, coming to rest in the top of their pale snag on the shore and fluffing out their feathers to dry them in the sun.

There are a few sparse, dry clumps of blue grama grass here and there, their heads curled like huskies’ tails, and a grass so fine that it covers the still frosty ground like a creeping mist. Raised burrows of pocket gophers spiderweb through the meadow, made last winter beneath the snow, they remain like an exposed subway with the city gone.

Zeb and I step back onto the dirt road and continue down the lane, I take off my coat and let the pale winter sunshine warm my back. We are soon swallowed by the forest again and I listen to the sigh of the ponderosas while Zeb trots ahead. We are soon walking down the driveway; looking to my left I can see down the hill and across the canyon to where we had been just an hour before. A crisp wind brings the smell of woodsmoke which I can see curling from the chimney as the house comes into view. I am sure my parents are awake by now and, as I stride up the front steps to join them, I realize that being in limbo is not such a bad place to be. I scratch Zeb’s head and we go inside.

~

A postscript: Just a few short weeks later, I received a call from Big Bend National Park in south Texas, where I worked the rest of the winter.


-Charlie Kolb, Hesperus, Colorado