Riddle
My friend wore a rabbit’s foot on a ball-link chain strung through his side belt loop. He squeezed it in his sweaty palm and flipped down the smoky visor, making his face a formless shadow. From the neck up he looked robotish—like a rock’m sock’m boxer.
He sat astride a monstrous bike, a 650 cc Triumph Tiger, 300 feet from the base of a thirty degree incline leading to the wooden floor of the Riddle Bridge. His knuckles went white as he choked and twisted the throttle—2,000 RPMs—then flung open his left hand as if violently baptizing the air with water from his finger tips, letting loose his death grip on the clutch. The die was cast. In an instant he was at the point of no return.
The back wheel found traction after a dozen rotations and the front wheel levitated six inches, then more. The Triumph sped along at that precise angle which keeps the front wheel clawing the air, the rider having found a neutral sliver of space between ground’s attraction and backward momentum…and here he rode an acrobatic, barely in control, ride that looks so cool—a perfectly executed wheelie feels almost supernatural. For 200 feet he scooted along on the back wheel before the front one again found purchase and the journey began in earnest. He was a blur when he reached the top of the incline.
In moments…a moment…a snap…he would shake gravity and be airborne. At the point where the road angled down to merge with the bridge floor he had lift-off. The rider stayed on a straight line path into the sky, cutting through it like a dagger sent sailing by a giant cartoon magnet. The rear wheel spun frantically; knobby tires finding no resistance, only empty air. The high winy sound of the two-stroke engine screamed. His hand, as if transformed into an immovable metal cast, held the throttle open wide.
He had flung his bike off the ramp’s end and was climbing through space toward the overhead cross-beam of a rusted metal arbor arching above Riddle Bridge—that now ancient and creaking blend of rusted metal spanning the Gasconade River. The Riddle was old style, comprising scores of steel beams and thick cables, all woven together in a spider web of triangles—a brilliantly functional and artistic design not seen so much anymore. Today, the cunning and intricate steel montage has been replaced by a grey featureless concrete slab.
My friend and his too powerful (for this maneuver) motorcycle were riding through the empty haze of blue sky at a terrifying speed. His helmeted head was an onyx orb sparkling in the bright summer sun, his leather gloved hands’ defiant fists jabbing the air as they squeezed the bar grips in a futile attempt to guide the missile. Incredibly, he was on target…his trajectory looked perfect. “His goal?” you ask: it was to raise high enough to slap the steel beam at the apex of his flight path…very tricky, this move. He had to release his grip on the handlebar—both hands was the rule—raise his arms touchdown style, and make clear and unmistakable contact with the metal beam. Slap it—make it audible—then, lightning fast, find the handlebar grips again, straighten the front fork and prepare for a teeth jarring arrival on the bridge floor.
We watched without breathing. The bike with the black-stone headed rider was a comet. Contact...smack! We heard it; he hit the cross beam. He hit it hard and dead center…with his head. And it came off—his head…all of it. The bike and Ichabod Crane completed the flight, skidding and tumbling across the bridge’s rough wooden plank floor, coming to rest in the thickets along the road ditch at the far end of the bridge. The body, in repose with the bike, quivered.
But we gave scant notice to the bike and body. We were watching, catatonic, as the helmet—the head’s casket—bounced and rolled toward the edge of the bridge. It was going over. No. We could not let that happen. I snapped to reality (if you can call an urge to chase down a rolling head reality) and dove for the helmet. My fingertips barely brushed the smooth hard plastic before it left the bridge and fell like a cannon ball to its dark-water grave.
My hand flailed in the air as I reached to the limits of my grasp. I brought back—oh God—a hand covered with blood.
The three of us—four had begun this adventure—bowed, as if in prayer, across the cable railings as far as we could and watched in horror as the helmet turned over in the water, its dark, shiny face cover reflecting the sun. The sun’s revealing rays penetrated the visor’s cloudy tint to give us a last image of our friend’s eyes, opened as big as half-dollars. They looked alive still, pleading, as the gentle current of the eddy sucked them under.
♦ ♦ ♦
Epilog…what really happened
The helmet I had chased and dove for was quite empty.
The blood on my hands was a scratch from the jagged boards of the bridge’s floor.
The empty eyes were starbursts glinting on the helmet’s reflective surface…our mind’s eyes obligingly giving us the macabre image we were expecting.
The quivering body…which eventually attracted our attention…still had a head, firmly attached.
Our friend was stunned and rattled, but smiling.
It was the best motorcycle jump I have ever seen, before or since.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Buzzard Hunting
Buzzard Hunting
In the 1950s, I was very young and living in East Texas, in a house at the edge of a town that itself seemed on the edge of a human diorama. From my house I could walk out of a brown grass yard, across a road emitting perpetually swirling dust and light bending heat waves and step onto what seemed an endless prairie. I could walk a short distance further and my small white house with red trimmed windows along with the world outside of my imagination disappeared from my view and my consciousness. The small buttes became mountains in a desert wilderness and the burnt blue sky framed no known horizon—I had entered the chimerical world of a child. Pat and I came here to trap a big bird—to latch onto a bony leg just above a monstrous talon. To do this we had a simple plan.
Buzzards, turkey vultures, were always circling overhead above the rounded, barren buttes. Thousands of feet up they rode thermals on wings spanning six feet...pretty and graceful. It wasn’t until they landed and folded away their elegant wings that the small, slick red head, bowed neck, and suspicious searching gate belied their majesty.
I knew they circled the dead, so I devised a plan for attracting and catching one. My friend Pat and I would spirit away bottles of ketchup from our ice boxes (that’s what we called refrigerators) at home and walk into the prairie and up the side of a butte. We would find a sun baked sandstone boulder and lie across it with ketchup dripping from our heads and arms. The buzzards would assume we were dead and begin to circle, eventually they would spiral down. We knew if we were patient enough they would land and try to pick our bones. It is then we would lash out and catch one. What we would do next was not planned; luring the buzzard, bringing it close enough to grab its crooked neck just below its tiny noggin was my only objective—tricking the buzzard was the thing.
We lay for a long time, breathing with shallow breaths to minimize movement. At last, eight-year-old Pat, in his Texas hick manner of speaking, said, “this ain’t never gonna work, Billy.”
“Yes it will. Now shut up, Pat,” I said. “Buzzards can see a mouse twitch its whiskers a mile away; they’ll see your lips move!” (Actually buzzards have unspectacular sight; it is their sense of smell that brings them to dinner…the putrid aroma of decaying flesh wafting along hot air currents is like to us an open window to a bakery.) Through squinted eyes and with great expectations we watched, ignoring trickling sweat and buzzing flies. One or two buzzards flew above us, passing by. No circle of birds ever formed. They were neither hungry nor fooled. In twenty minutes—a very long time to lay across hard rock in the blistering Texas sun—we gave up playing corpse, packed up our ketchup bottles and headed home. I assumed for a long time after that it was Pat talking or our impatience that foiled the hunt. In truth, I suppose it takes more than ketchup and an inert living body to fool a buzzard; very fortunate for us, I would learn later.
When I was a grown man, my Dad told me his buzzard story.
Dad grew up on a small farm in rural Texas in the 1930s. He had a neighbor that plowed rough dry ground with a three bottom plow and a mule. His neighbor was old (fifty maybe), rail thin, creased like an ancient desert Indian, and looked perpetually weary. He would plow long straight furrows in the hot sun for hours, then take a break and lie down in the shade of his mule, left hitched, for a short nap.
One day the neighbor must have been particularly done in because he fell into such a deep sleep he didn’t hear or sense the buzzard alight next to him. The mule did, and he danced in place nervously, only the weight of the plow preventing him from bolting. It would have been better if he had; then the old man may have awakened. But he didn’t. The old man slept like Rip Van Winkle as the buzzard strutted toward him. The sleeping man moved not at all…withered and dead he seemed through the buzzard’s beady eyes. The curious bird thought he caught the slightest delicious aroma of carrion. He sidled toward the sleeping farmer, growing more confident. Buzzards are not all that sharp, just macho. He hesitated only a moment before his neck sprang like a frog’s tongue after a hovering dragonfly. That quick he decided on eyeball for lunch. The old man stirred now, but not as fast as you might think. He awoke thinking he was in the throes of a headache from the sun now hitting his face when he saw, with one eye I suppose, the turkey vulture take flight with something dangling from its beak, glinting in the sun. The farmer’s boney hand went to the left side of his face to feel the blood stream at the same time that he closed his right eye to test the horrifying theory just dawning—that the buzzard had flown away with the left eye. It had.
This was, my Dad insisted, a true story. Man, I obviously didn’t know enough about buzzards to try hunting them that day long ago. What if one had landed on that sandstone next to me…would he have had my eye before I, his neck? Had we fooled them…there would be a story.
In the 1950s, I was very young and living in East Texas, in a house at the edge of a town that itself seemed on the edge of a human diorama. From my house I could walk out of a brown grass yard, across a road emitting perpetually swirling dust and light bending heat waves and step onto what seemed an endless prairie. I could walk a short distance further and my small white house with red trimmed windows along with the world outside of my imagination disappeared from my view and my consciousness. The small buttes became mountains in a desert wilderness and the burnt blue sky framed no known horizon—I had entered the chimerical world of a child. Pat and I came here to trap a big bird—to latch onto a bony leg just above a monstrous talon. To do this we had a simple plan.
Buzzards, turkey vultures, were always circling overhead above the rounded, barren buttes. Thousands of feet up they rode thermals on wings spanning six feet...pretty and graceful. It wasn’t until they landed and folded away their elegant wings that the small, slick red head, bowed neck, and suspicious searching gate belied their majesty.
I knew they circled the dead, so I devised a plan for attracting and catching one. My friend Pat and I would spirit away bottles of ketchup from our ice boxes (that’s what we called refrigerators) at home and walk into the prairie and up the side of a butte. We would find a sun baked sandstone boulder and lie across it with ketchup dripping from our heads and arms. The buzzards would assume we were dead and begin to circle, eventually they would spiral down. We knew if we were patient enough they would land and try to pick our bones. It is then we would lash out and catch one. What we would do next was not planned; luring the buzzard, bringing it close enough to grab its crooked neck just below its tiny noggin was my only objective—tricking the buzzard was the thing.
We lay for a long time, breathing with shallow breaths to minimize movement. At last, eight-year-old Pat, in his Texas hick manner of speaking, said, “this ain’t never gonna work, Billy.”
“Yes it will. Now shut up, Pat,” I said. “Buzzards can see a mouse twitch its whiskers a mile away; they’ll see your lips move!” (Actually buzzards have unspectacular sight; it is their sense of smell that brings them to dinner…the putrid aroma of decaying flesh wafting along hot air currents is like to us an open window to a bakery.) Through squinted eyes and with great expectations we watched, ignoring trickling sweat and buzzing flies. One or two buzzards flew above us, passing by. No circle of birds ever formed. They were neither hungry nor fooled. In twenty minutes—a very long time to lay across hard rock in the blistering Texas sun—we gave up playing corpse, packed up our ketchup bottles and headed home. I assumed for a long time after that it was Pat talking or our impatience that foiled the hunt. In truth, I suppose it takes more than ketchup and an inert living body to fool a buzzard; very fortunate for us, I would learn later.
When I was a grown man, my Dad told me his buzzard story.
Dad grew up on a small farm in rural Texas in the 1930s. He had a neighbor that plowed rough dry ground with a three bottom plow and a mule. His neighbor was old (fifty maybe), rail thin, creased like an ancient desert Indian, and looked perpetually weary. He would plow long straight furrows in the hot sun for hours, then take a break and lie down in the shade of his mule, left hitched, for a short nap.
One day the neighbor must have been particularly done in because he fell into such a deep sleep he didn’t hear or sense the buzzard alight next to him. The mule did, and he danced in place nervously, only the weight of the plow preventing him from bolting. It would have been better if he had; then the old man may have awakened. But he didn’t. The old man slept like Rip Van Winkle as the buzzard strutted toward him. The sleeping man moved not at all…withered and dead he seemed through the buzzard’s beady eyes. The curious bird thought he caught the slightest delicious aroma of carrion. He sidled toward the sleeping farmer, growing more confident. Buzzards are not all that sharp, just macho. He hesitated only a moment before his neck sprang like a frog’s tongue after a hovering dragonfly. That quick he decided on eyeball for lunch. The old man stirred now, but not as fast as you might think. He awoke thinking he was in the throes of a headache from the sun now hitting his face when he saw, with one eye I suppose, the turkey vulture take flight with something dangling from its beak, glinting in the sun. The farmer’s boney hand went to the left side of his face to feel the blood stream at the same time that he closed his right eye to test the horrifying theory just dawning—that the buzzard had flown away with the left eye. It had.
This was, my Dad insisted, a true story. Man, I obviously didn’t know enough about buzzards to try hunting them that day long ago. What if one had landed on that sandstone next to me…would he have had my eye before I, his neck? Had we fooled them…there would be a story.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Alaska Journal, Excerpts
Please consider my feature—a trilogy—from the prospective of an adventurer without credentials; that is, an ordinary traveler in rather exotic areas of Alaska who, by ignorant design and cosmic happenstance, finds a land frightful and exhilarating. Through the eyes of a heretofore dayhiker and lazy river floater a solo float, by folding canoe, on a tortuous tributary to the Yukon through 120 miles of lonely wilderness becomes an odyssey…kayaking Kittiwake Bay and the cold milky Taiya River flanking the Chilkoot trail—in the company of Klondike miner’s ghosts—was transforming…nature’s play in Denali National Park—a tragedy featuring bear and lamb protagonists—was a too vivid reminder of the indifference of the natural realm.
Excerpts
1. Alaska Journal - Beaver Creek Float
…I was not prepared for two signature characteristics. First, the water is marrow chilling cold; colder than I could have imagined—borne of recent glacier and snow melt from high in the White Mountains. Uncomfortably chilled and fearing hypothermia, I began playing out survival plans in my mind should the river take me into herself (quite probable given the commoving waters I would face in the next 120 miles). Second, there are no long lazy eddies. Hard country does not give ground easily—even to torrents of water. To find the path of least resistance Beaver Creek had gouged its channel in serpentine fashion, often dividing and dividing again to get all its water through. This means acute bends where water sweeps in arcs as if forced through a flume—they call these sweepers—or it cascades over rock and gravel in wide, shallow falls—shoals. The shoals will not always float a boat, but look safe and familiar; the sweepers are deep and navigable, but they look so treacherous. The water swirls and breaks…the creek delights in flinging what it bears into the bank at the elbow of the bend: there lie downed willows, spruce, and aspens, their limbs reaching above and beneath the water, eager to clutch and hold fast to what the current brings them.
…it was just two river bends beyond this point that I was to rendezvous with the airplane that would take me from the White Mountains Wilderness. …Beaver Creek would soon enter flatlands at which point the stream will begin to braid wildly, taking many routes through the marshy tundra on its final approach to the Yukon River.
The Yukon Flats has a distant and romantic sound to it, but I can think of fewer more nightmarish fates for a wilderness traveler than to find themselves in a labyrinth of crawling streams that melt into a vast swampland (swamps always conjure images of unnamed creatures that move silently under dark thick water where only the most grotesque lie within the oozing too soft bottom). It is a forlorn place without landmark; with endless horizon and, from water level, no discernable way out. You float in deeper and deeper. There is no backtracking, no retracing; the channels have divided and broadened into lakes that then drain from many fingers cutting through spongy, sodden grassland. By the time awareness of your situation sinks in—that you are in an unsolvable maze—there is no chance of finding the path that brought you in. You will never say, “I remember this spot,” or, “this looks familiar—this is the way out I’m sure.” You simply drift until you die and join the lost spirits of the Flats…for it must be haunted. I’m sure of it.
Just a day before I began my Beaver Creek float I was told by a local (it was late at night, in a roadhouse—a place for drink, food, and lodging often found along wilderness roads far from towns) that once, while floating the Yukon, moving along its right bank, he spied what he thought was a bull moose swimming near mid-stream—he saw the unmistakable broad-rake antlers…but the head was wrong. Too flat, too rigid. This was nothing swimming, nothing alive. And yet it seemed to move along the current with purpose, as if it must carry on, must stay afloat and stay with the river. The man steered his small craft out into the downstream path of the dead antlers to investigate. It was…a coffin. The moose antlers affixed to what must be called its bow, like a clownish—in the weird, child scaring sense—masthead. The box was floating now with only about six inches of freeboard. It may have been an expensive sealer (mortician assuring the grieving buyer that the body within would never suffer (!) from cold water seeping in) but many miles in the milky white Yukon waters would give lie to what surely was a preposterous claim. The box’s inhabitant must now be well drenched. But perhaps that was his wish.
2. Alaska Journal - The Bear and The Lamb
It is late morning and I am off...a road trip…to Alaska…with only the most general itinerary. Mine will be a peripatetic journey. I will float rivers to the Yukon, trek mountain trails, stand on glaciers, and sleep on the ground in grizzly country, somewhere in Alaska.
I drive on, and on…it is weeks later now and I have just completed a float of Beaver Creek—a 130-mile solo canoe odyssey through the White Mountains, to a point just upstream from the Yukon Flats (where I felt the mist and mystery of the Yukon, but had not the nerve to enter). But that’s another story—first, Denali. My wife, Norma Jean, has flown in from Missouri to join me for this leg of my road trip.
You enter Denali National Park only one way—along the east-west Denali Park Road that almost apologetically cuts the narrowest line into the northeast quadrant of a six million acre wilderness. There is no mistaking the guiding philosophy for Denali—this preserve is not man’s kingdom; it belongs to wild animals, and whatever nonsentient plant and insect life the environment can construct. Man’s effect must be minimal. The dirt road runs as unobtrusively as possible 80 miles into the park. It lies lightly on flatlands of spruce and muskeg, and clings precariously to the steep sides of barren mountains. And these mountains gaze enviously southward at the mighty Alaska Range where Mounts McKinley (or, Denali, the High One), Foraker, and Hunter loom above all others; reaching so high that –ironically—they are often hard to see; clouds cover them most of the time, as if hiding royalty from the unworthy eyes of a lesser creation. Easy to see how mountains can beguile, so inviting they are when distance hides cliff and crevasse, and angel hair clouds give no hint of icy cold driving winds that rip you from the high ledges. Later, while passing through the village of Talkeetna, news came that the search for two women climbers lost on Mt Foraker (17,000 feet; climbing difficulty, extreme) had been called off—after two weeks they were presumed dead, victims of a relentless storm. Such a storm would look only like beckoning smoke signals from the banks of the Talkeetna River.
When you are on a Denali Park wilderness bus you join a team of wildlife spotters. Everyone on the bus joins the driver in constant surveillance of the countryside; mostly looking for one of these: grizzly bears, wolves, Dall sheep, moose, or caribou. They are called the big five and folks gage the success of their outing on how many of these are seen.
We climb onto Polychrome Pass (so named because of the many colors seen in the strata of the treeless mountains) and make our first roadside stop. NJ and I hike a short distance to the top of a knoll and begin scanning the mountain ridges. As if on cue, several Dall sheep appear on the crest of a ridge and form a procession along its narrow divide. They are easily visible with the naked eye; their every feature and movement can be seen through binoculars. Standing on a narrow ridge top they have a backdrop of only sky and clouds. They move along this highwire as gracefully as a troupe of ballerinas.
In our peripheral view we catch something else on the move below the sheep…a grizzly followed by three cubs. She looks immense, fat, and fluffy and the cubs trailing behind give the whole scene a children’s storybook look—a bear family outing. Their neighbors the sheep will surely nod hello as they pass. No. More likely Momma Bear is considering mutton for dinner. It doesn’t happen—this time.
We awaken early the next morning in the Teklanika Campground, having slept soundly in our pickup bed statehouse. After a breakfast of gorp and deer jerky we begin a trip to Wonder Lake, located in the marshlands of the Moose Creek Valley where the scenery is spectacular, but the price is a measure of your blood—mosquitoes abound. Later, before catching the last eastbound bus back to Teklanika, we will take a day hike along the Toklat River, walking among and disquieted by the mélange of beasts’ footprints—bear (the one’s with the claw marks of the griz), moose, marmot, caribou, wolf. It sets us in a frame of mind that will serve to accentuate the drama that awaits us.
†
The Bear and the Lamb
It’s a new day in the morning
Anything is possible; it’s all good
For a brief shining moment everything is wonderful
Knock on wood
- N-G D Band
We spotted the sheep first. It is not that difficult; they are not dependent upon natural camouflage for protection but rather seem to delight in being conspicuous. Their world-top sanctuary and their Flying Walenda balance have made them arrogant; I shared their confidence. Except for resourceful man who learned long ago to climb even higher and then rain arrows or bullets from above them, they were safe. No predator could reach their heights or would have nerve or device to move along rope thin ledges of sliding rock where the sheep walk as if on broad flatland pasture.
But I would be wrong. I would also come quickly to remembrance of the sometimes horror of the wild; only the soft edges of a distant view, and the unsophisticated eye that heretofore had seen only cartoon bears or the caged overfed cousins of the wild ones, could make a big headed, lumbering golden grizzly benign. The bear is not the Denali mascot.
We spotted the grizzly just seconds later, moving vertically straight up a steep mountain ridge on an intercept path with fifteen Dall sheep (the kind with the yellowish cornucopia horns) lounging about 200 feet from the summit. The bear seemed to be in no hurry but neither did he divert left or right, even for a few feet to lessen the incline—the shortest distance was a straight line.
The sheep were, for the longest time, unaware or unconcerned. We—12 passengers in a wilderness bus on a mountainside road far below—were as scornful of the bear’s intent as the Dall sheep must have been. Ha! We thought. Good luck, Mr. Grizzly, scaling to their heights. And should you find footing in the soft spongy grass of the highlands for a while, it will only be a tease. Soon you’ll hit scree—loose sliding rock that barely clings to slopes so steep even air falls from them, to become katabatic winds. But the sheep can dance on scree.
So, we were going to enjoy a show--bruin versus mountain sheep. He would threaten. If being scored by a ringside wildlife official he might even win a round or two on points for scaling a piece of mountain side so nimbly, and coming close enough to cause the sheep to scramble. And scramble they did. The bear would bisect the herd if they did not move. Almost lazily they came to all fours and trotted a hundred feet higher. Still the bear advanced; still he climbed arrow straight, as if a grotesque hairy mutant fly, paws sticking to the mountain side.
Now was our first moment of uncertainty. The brotherhood of smugness we shared with the sheep waned slightly, but still… We all remained confident that the sliding rubble of the scree would separate the true wind walkers from the pretender.
And so when the sheep skipped higher yet and then struck a horizontal route along some invisible ledge (perhaps the width of my palm, no more) in the slick rubble we all waited for the bear to brake, or—we hoped—try the ledge and tumble like a furry oak barrel down the side of the mountain.
Did I mention that the sheep herd comprised rams and ewes, and one lamb; a new born, probably only days old. Incredibly the bruin made the left hand turn onto the rocky ledge, if there even was one—a ledge, that is—without the slightest stumble. Then he was level with and about 200 feet behind the last in the procession—the lamb. The baby was trying hard to stay with the line of sheep, all now dashing along the rocky rim. From the bus, we humans were watching as a light brown (golden actually) blob chased a row of white figures. Those with binoculars shouted the play by play.
Grizzlies, I’m told, can run 35 mph. A baby sheep cannot. The lamb’s mother is some distance ahead of the lamb, keeping a gap to encourage it to follow more quickly, but Lamby falls behind. Mom doubles back to her baby…touches it, head to head, then turns and runs ahead again as if to say, “you have to keep up with me, Sweetie. Run.”
Lamby runs, but he just can’t run fast or long on piano stool legs. And lungs and heart are days old only. And what does he know of being prey to monsters with twenty claws and teeth made long, pointed, and curved by eons of selective evolution—nature’s gift to the flesh tearing carnivore (actually, omnivore—they like berries too). Who, what, would hurt a lamb, mockingbird of the mountains?
And so he ran, because Momma was too far away from him. But the danger behind him was not felt—yet.
But we saw. And now, dear God, we knew. The bear was not going to stumble, and Lamby would not outrun him. The distance between brown and white grew shorter and shorter; we tried to will it not to, but soon the inevitable capture could not be denied. It was as if we were watching a beast that was created to be a powerful but harmless giant—like an out of control cyborg in a science fiction movie—short circuit and become instantly evil, preying on the innocent. It was the metaphor come to life that so bothered us I think—the very symbol of innocence was being pursued by another of God’s creations. I know, this is what happens in the real world. But the lamb eats grass, rubs the belly of its pretty mommy, and breathes only clean mountain air; an altogether delightful and harmless creature. But the bear is hungry.
Then it happened. That which only minutes earlier none would have imagined; not when we were enthralled by the theatre of it all, talking easily and smiling over our good luck of being where we were at just the right time. Now we watched only because it isn’t in humans to divert their attention from such drama, even if it sickens us. The brown mass absorbed the white. Through field glasses—like those glued to my eyes—the capture was not so mild. The bear reached and snagged the lamb. To say he hugged him sounds absurdly euphemistic. But that is how it first seemed. The bear pressed the lamb to him, but it was to teeth glistening with hunger fed saliva, not his warm breast. This was a kill not an embrace. Mercifully, it was a quick kill.
Lamby’s mom, however, was not so soon at peace. She circled the bear and her disappearing baby, dipping her head, and pawing the ground frantically…will this make it stop? She could not fight the grizzly and the others—even the powerful and proud rams—would not. Man may have creeds that supplant self preservation at all costs, but among wilderness creatures, survival entreats the strongest.
She watched her baby devoured, and we watched her dance of mourning, and—because the distance was too great to actually hear—imagined her heart-broken bleat. The bear lingered over his small meal. The mom eventually walked in a drooping gate back to the herd, and we, witnesses to the mayhem that must play itself out somewhere every day in the wild, were speechless and somber, and outraged at the injustice and cruelty of it all. Nature, of course, and its unreasoning inhabitants, know nothing of such feelings. They know hunger and, sadly, fear. And, sadder still, they know, even if ever so briefly, grief.
This preserve, set aside by us so that animals can behave like, well, animals, is not a zoo that separates prey from predator. And it most certainly is not a post apocalyptic world where the child can lead the lion, and the wolf (or bear) naps with the lamb. Life lives on life. Soulless, instinct driven animals do their thing; and their habit is to kill and eat what is weaker…it matters not at all that the lamb is our personification of innocence; that it eats grass, walks among flowers, and kicks up its heels for the pure joy of living in the sunshine…at least for a brief shining moment everything was wonderful.
† Epilog
To punctuate our rediscovered sense of reality, just minutes after our bus pulled away from the scene of the lamb’s death we watched as a hawk swooped to the ground, grabbed a small ground squirrel in its talons and flew away. But a rodent’s death did not evoke the emotions we felt for the lamb. And the wolf buoyed our mood. We saw him canter from the thickets onto the road in front of us. He was healthy and bright-eyed; his ears were up. It was as if, to bond, all we need do is step from the bus, extend an open hand and say, “here boy.”
Unpublished Work © 2008 William M. Harris
3. Alaska Journal - Skagway
Whittier looks as if it had been beamed into place, so imprisoned is it by sea and mountains. In fact, were it not for the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel—a one lane (shared by car and train), 2.7 mile, arrow straight, hole through the mountains, there would be no way in by land vehicle. There is an unsettling but oddly alluring mystery about a town so disconnected.
My primary reason for going to Whittier was to kayak in an ocean. I will do this, but without chartering a ferry or attaching myself to a sea kayaking party I would have a difficult time reaching the more distant and exotic bays and fiords. But the bay extending west of Whittier—Kittiwake—was accessible and is one of the most scenic in the area. There are no glaciers, but I had seen many glaciers already. There are waterfalls, sheer cliffs, and a renowned rookery all within a five or six mile kayak trip. The bay itself is miles wide and many miles long, extending from the mouth of Shakespeare Creek, through Wells Passage, and into Prince William Sound. When the sea is calm, it is a most pleasurable small craft cruise.
…Players in epic events—like the Klondike Gold Rush—seem never to want to lose their place in history. They want desperately to be remembered…memorialized. And so, their spirits linger. On my second day in Skagway, I was their guest.
I know it pleased them that I visited the ghost town of Dyea (pronounced, Di ee’ and means, to pack) and walked the grounds, imagining a boomtown of over 10,000 souls. Dyea was built—and died—hurriedly on the high tide bank of Chilkoot Inlet. It was the supply town and jumping off point for the Klondike prospectors. At its height, 10,000 dreamers lived here, most simply enroute to the gold fields 600 miles farther north. The town was ephemeral, lasting only about two years before the railroad from Skagway mercifully killed the Chilkoot Trail overland pack business. Even at its peak, it was something of a façade. Businesses along its main street nested in ugly disorder behind fake store fronts—something like the disembarking gold seekers, whose exterior was the capable, self-assured seeker of fortune hiding what had to be a brooding dread of burdens and dark days between them and the remote chance of success. The dread was borne of premonitions planted and nurtured by reality. The land was brutal and many died or went mad moiling for gold. Still, I think, most of these men were of the nothing to lose, nothing ventured ilk…many refugees of the great depression of the 1890s; desperate.
Herman Ferry worked a river ferry on the Chilkoot Trail in 1898 and recorded this: “I can see down the canyon 5 miles, and every morning it is black with people. This is the most excitement the world ever knew.”
Often, however, the excitement was borne of terror…on April 3, 1898, a warm wind loosed snow on the mountain slopes along the Chilkoot. It was Palm Sunday when the whole mountain side gave up its snow and sent it crashing on the stampeders (what the
canyon trekkers were called) moving along the valley floor. Slide Cemetery holds its victims—some found frozen in running position, like-real life Terra Cotta Soldiers.
The Chilkoot Trail is now a major tourist attraction; thousands of backpackers hike the 33 mile-long trail from Dyea to Lake Bennett (Yukon River headwaters) every year, often riding the White Pass/Yukon Railroad back to Skagway. It is a great and memorable hike, but it is a well marked trail and, though strenuous, never really all that dangerous (bear encounters aside). Folklore, more than challenge, is its allure.
I could not leave the area without taking a kayak trip down the Taiya. I would fly downstream in a 39 pound, 9 foot kayak on the same river that the stampeders used as a frozen highway in the winter months. It took them 3 – 4 weeks to pack a ton of goods from Dyea to Lake Lindeman, 10 miles north of Chilkoot Pass.
My first full day in Skagway the winds were high and the sea rough; I could not kayak, so I climbed A B Mountain (non-inspiring moniker, but writ large every spring by snow filled ravines). …My only real anxious moments—except for the chill I got every time I step over bear scat (often in the middle of the trail and often fresh) or its paw print—were crossing patches of ice fields. The crusted snow is thick—10 feet – 15 feet—and water trickles or gushes from beneath it. My fear was breaking through the crust and the snow falling in over me. It could happen.
Excerpts
1. Alaska Journal - Beaver Creek Float
…I was not prepared for two signature characteristics. First, the water is marrow chilling cold; colder than I could have imagined—borne of recent glacier and snow melt from high in the White Mountains. Uncomfortably chilled and fearing hypothermia, I began playing out survival plans in my mind should the river take me into herself (quite probable given the commoving waters I would face in the next 120 miles). Second, there are no long lazy eddies. Hard country does not give ground easily—even to torrents of water. To find the path of least resistance Beaver Creek had gouged its channel in serpentine fashion, often dividing and dividing again to get all its water through. This means acute bends where water sweeps in arcs as if forced through a flume—they call these sweepers—or it cascades over rock and gravel in wide, shallow falls—shoals. The shoals will not always float a boat, but look safe and familiar; the sweepers are deep and navigable, but they look so treacherous. The water swirls and breaks…the creek delights in flinging what it bears into the bank at the elbow of the bend: there lie downed willows, spruce, and aspens, their limbs reaching above and beneath the water, eager to clutch and hold fast to what the current brings them.
…it was just two river bends beyond this point that I was to rendezvous with the airplane that would take me from the White Mountains Wilderness. …Beaver Creek would soon enter flatlands at which point the stream will begin to braid wildly, taking many routes through the marshy tundra on its final approach to the Yukon River.
The Yukon Flats has a distant and romantic sound to it, but I can think of fewer more nightmarish fates for a wilderness traveler than to find themselves in a labyrinth of crawling streams that melt into a vast swampland (swamps always conjure images of unnamed creatures that move silently under dark thick water where only the most grotesque lie within the oozing too soft bottom). It is a forlorn place without landmark; with endless horizon and, from water level, no discernable way out. You float in deeper and deeper. There is no backtracking, no retracing; the channels have divided and broadened into lakes that then drain from many fingers cutting through spongy, sodden grassland. By the time awareness of your situation sinks in—that you are in an unsolvable maze—there is no chance of finding the path that brought you in. You will never say, “I remember this spot,” or, “this looks familiar—this is the way out I’m sure.” You simply drift until you die and join the lost spirits of the Flats…for it must be haunted. I’m sure of it.
Just a day before I began my Beaver Creek float I was told by a local (it was late at night, in a roadhouse—a place for drink, food, and lodging often found along wilderness roads far from towns) that once, while floating the Yukon, moving along its right bank, he spied what he thought was a bull moose swimming near mid-stream—he saw the unmistakable broad-rake antlers…but the head was wrong. Too flat, too rigid. This was nothing swimming, nothing alive. And yet it seemed to move along the current with purpose, as if it must carry on, must stay afloat and stay with the river. The man steered his small craft out into the downstream path of the dead antlers to investigate. It was…a coffin. The moose antlers affixed to what must be called its bow, like a clownish—in the weird, child scaring sense—masthead. The box was floating now with only about six inches of freeboard. It may have been an expensive sealer (mortician assuring the grieving buyer that the body within would never suffer (!) from cold water seeping in) but many miles in the milky white Yukon waters would give lie to what surely was a preposterous claim. The box’s inhabitant must now be well drenched. But perhaps that was his wish.
2. Alaska Journal - The Bear and The Lamb
It is late morning and I am off...a road trip…to Alaska…with only the most general itinerary. Mine will be a peripatetic journey. I will float rivers to the Yukon, trek mountain trails, stand on glaciers, and sleep on the ground in grizzly country, somewhere in Alaska.
I drive on, and on…it is weeks later now and I have just completed a float of Beaver Creek—a 130-mile solo canoe odyssey through the White Mountains, to a point just upstream from the Yukon Flats (where I felt the mist and mystery of the Yukon, but had not the nerve to enter). But that’s another story—first, Denali. My wife, Norma Jean, has flown in from Missouri to join me for this leg of my road trip.
You enter Denali National Park only one way—along the east-west Denali Park Road that almost apologetically cuts the narrowest line into the northeast quadrant of a six million acre wilderness. There is no mistaking the guiding philosophy for Denali—this preserve is not man’s kingdom; it belongs to wild animals, and whatever nonsentient plant and insect life the environment can construct. Man’s effect must be minimal. The dirt road runs as unobtrusively as possible 80 miles into the park. It lies lightly on flatlands of spruce and muskeg, and clings precariously to the steep sides of barren mountains. And these mountains gaze enviously southward at the mighty Alaska Range where Mounts McKinley (or, Denali, the High One), Foraker, and Hunter loom above all others; reaching so high that –ironically—they are often hard to see; clouds cover them most of the time, as if hiding royalty from the unworthy eyes of a lesser creation. Easy to see how mountains can beguile, so inviting they are when distance hides cliff and crevasse, and angel hair clouds give no hint of icy cold driving winds that rip you from the high ledges. Later, while passing through the village of Talkeetna, news came that the search for two women climbers lost on Mt Foraker (17,000 feet; climbing difficulty, extreme) had been called off—after two weeks they were presumed dead, victims of a relentless storm. Such a storm would look only like beckoning smoke signals from the banks of the Talkeetna River.
When you are on a Denali Park wilderness bus you join a team of wildlife spotters. Everyone on the bus joins the driver in constant surveillance of the countryside; mostly looking for one of these: grizzly bears, wolves, Dall sheep, moose, or caribou. They are called the big five and folks gage the success of their outing on how many of these are seen.
We climb onto Polychrome Pass (so named because of the many colors seen in the strata of the treeless mountains) and make our first roadside stop. NJ and I hike a short distance to the top of a knoll and begin scanning the mountain ridges. As if on cue, several Dall sheep appear on the crest of a ridge and form a procession along its narrow divide. They are easily visible with the naked eye; their every feature and movement can be seen through binoculars. Standing on a narrow ridge top they have a backdrop of only sky and clouds. They move along this highwire as gracefully as a troupe of ballerinas.
In our peripheral view we catch something else on the move below the sheep…a grizzly followed by three cubs. She looks immense, fat, and fluffy and the cubs trailing behind give the whole scene a children’s storybook look—a bear family outing. Their neighbors the sheep will surely nod hello as they pass. No. More likely Momma Bear is considering mutton for dinner. It doesn’t happen—this time.
We awaken early the next morning in the Teklanika Campground, having slept soundly in our pickup bed statehouse. After a breakfast of gorp and deer jerky we begin a trip to Wonder Lake, located in the marshlands of the Moose Creek Valley where the scenery is spectacular, but the price is a measure of your blood—mosquitoes abound. Later, before catching the last eastbound bus back to Teklanika, we will take a day hike along the Toklat River, walking among and disquieted by the mélange of beasts’ footprints—bear (the one’s with the claw marks of the griz), moose, marmot, caribou, wolf. It sets us in a frame of mind that will serve to accentuate the drama that awaits us.
†
The Bear and the Lamb
It’s a new day in the morning
Anything is possible; it’s all good
For a brief shining moment everything is wonderful
Knock on wood
- N-G D Band
We spotted the sheep first. It is not that difficult; they are not dependent upon natural camouflage for protection but rather seem to delight in being conspicuous. Their world-top sanctuary and their Flying Walenda balance have made them arrogant; I shared their confidence. Except for resourceful man who learned long ago to climb even higher and then rain arrows or bullets from above them, they were safe. No predator could reach their heights or would have nerve or device to move along rope thin ledges of sliding rock where the sheep walk as if on broad flatland pasture.
But I would be wrong. I would also come quickly to remembrance of the sometimes horror of the wild; only the soft edges of a distant view, and the unsophisticated eye that heretofore had seen only cartoon bears or the caged overfed cousins of the wild ones, could make a big headed, lumbering golden grizzly benign. The bear is not the Denali mascot.
We spotted the grizzly just seconds later, moving vertically straight up a steep mountain ridge on an intercept path with fifteen Dall sheep (the kind with the yellowish cornucopia horns) lounging about 200 feet from the summit. The bear seemed to be in no hurry but neither did he divert left or right, even for a few feet to lessen the incline—the shortest distance was a straight line.
The sheep were, for the longest time, unaware or unconcerned. We—12 passengers in a wilderness bus on a mountainside road far below—were as scornful of the bear’s intent as the Dall sheep must have been. Ha! We thought. Good luck, Mr. Grizzly, scaling to their heights. And should you find footing in the soft spongy grass of the highlands for a while, it will only be a tease. Soon you’ll hit scree—loose sliding rock that barely clings to slopes so steep even air falls from them, to become katabatic winds. But the sheep can dance on scree.
So, we were going to enjoy a show--bruin versus mountain sheep. He would threaten. If being scored by a ringside wildlife official he might even win a round or two on points for scaling a piece of mountain side so nimbly, and coming close enough to cause the sheep to scramble. And scramble they did. The bear would bisect the herd if they did not move. Almost lazily they came to all fours and trotted a hundred feet higher. Still the bear advanced; still he climbed arrow straight, as if a grotesque hairy mutant fly, paws sticking to the mountain side.
Now was our first moment of uncertainty. The brotherhood of smugness we shared with the sheep waned slightly, but still… We all remained confident that the sliding rubble of the scree would separate the true wind walkers from the pretender.
And so when the sheep skipped higher yet and then struck a horizontal route along some invisible ledge (perhaps the width of my palm, no more) in the slick rubble we all waited for the bear to brake, or—we hoped—try the ledge and tumble like a furry oak barrel down the side of the mountain.
Did I mention that the sheep herd comprised rams and ewes, and one lamb; a new born, probably only days old. Incredibly the bruin made the left hand turn onto the rocky ledge, if there even was one—a ledge, that is—without the slightest stumble. Then he was level with and about 200 feet behind the last in the procession—the lamb. The baby was trying hard to stay with the line of sheep, all now dashing along the rocky rim. From the bus, we humans were watching as a light brown (golden actually) blob chased a row of white figures. Those with binoculars shouted the play by play.
Grizzlies, I’m told, can run 35 mph. A baby sheep cannot. The lamb’s mother is some distance ahead of the lamb, keeping a gap to encourage it to follow more quickly, but Lamby falls behind. Mom doubles back to her baby…touches it, head to head, then turns and runs ahead again as if to say, “you have to keep up with me, Sweetie. Run.”
Lamby runs, but he just can’t run fast or long on piano stool legs. And lungs and heart are days old only. And what does he know of being prey to monsters with twenty claws and teeth made long, pointed, and curved by eons of selective evolution—nature’s gift to the flesh tearing carnivore (actually, omnivore—they like berries too). Who, what, would hurt a lamb, mockingbird of the mountains?
And so he ran, because Momma was too far away from him. But the danger behind him was not felt—yet.
But we saw. And now, dear God, we knew. The bear was not going to stumble, and Lamby would not outrun him. The distance between brown and white grew shorter and shorter; we tried to will it not to, but soon the inevitable capture could not be denied. It was as if we were watching a beast that was created to be a powerful but harmless giant—like an out of control cyborg in a science fiction movie—short circuit and become instantly evil, preying on the innocent. It was the metaphor come to life that so bothered us I think—the very symbol of innocence was being pursued by another of God’s creations. I know, this is what happens in the real world. But the lamb eats grass, rubs the belly of its pretty mommy, and breathes only clean mountain air; an altogether delightful and harmless creature. But the bear is hungry.
Then it happened. That which only minutes earlier none would have imagined; not when we were enthralled by the theatre of it all, talking easily and smiling over our good luck of being where we were at just the right time. Now we watched only because it isn’t in humans to divert their attention from such drama, even if it sickens us. The brown mass absorbed the white. Through field glasses—like those glued to my eyes—the capture was not so mild. The bear reached and snagged the lamb. To say he hugged him sounds absurdly euphemistic. But that is how it first seemed. The bear pressed the lamb to him, but it was to teeth glistening with hunger fed saliva, not his warm breast. This was a kill not an embrace. Mercifully, it was a quick kill.
Lamby’s mom, however, was not so soon at peace. She circled the bear and her disappearing baby, dipping her head, and pawing the ground frantically…will this make it stop? She could not fight the grizzly and the others—even the powerful and proud rams—would not. Man may have creeds that supplant self preservation at all costs, but among wilderness creatures, survival entreats the strongest.
She watched her baby devoured, and we watched her dance of mourning, and—because the distance was too great to actually hear—imagined her heart-broken bleat. The bear lingered over his small meal. The mom eventually walked in a drooping gate back to the herd, and we, witnesses to the mayhem that must play itself out somewhere every day in the wild, were speechless and somber, and outraged at the injustice and cruelty of it all. Nature, of course, and its unreasoning inhabitants, know nothing of such feelings. They know hunger and, sadly, fear. And, sadder still, they know, even if ever so briefly, grief.
This preserve, set aside by us so that animals can behave like, well, animals, is not a zoo that separates prey from predator. And it most certainly is not a post apocalyptic world where the child can lead the lion, and the wolf (or bear) naps with the lamb. Life lives on life. Soulless, instinct driven animals do their thing; and their habit is to kill and eat what is weaker…it matters not at all that the lamb is our personification of innocence; that it eats grass, walks among flowers, and kicks up its heels for the pure joy of living in the sunshine…at least for a brief shining moment everything was wonderful.
† Epilog
To punctuate our rediscovered sense of reality, just minutes after our bus pulled away from the scene of the lamb’s death we watched as a hawk swooped to the ground, grabbed a small ground squirrel in its talons and flew away. But a rodent’s death did not evoke the emotions we felt for the lamb. And the wolf buoyed our mood. We saw him canter from the thickets onto the road in front of us. He was healthy and bright-eyed; his ears were up. It was as if, to bond, all we need do is step from the bus, extend an open hand and say, “here boy.”
Unpublished Work © 2008 William M. Harris
3. Alaska Journal - Skagway
Whittier looks as if it had been beamed into place, so imprisoned is it by sea and mountains. In fact, were it not for the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel—a one lane (shared by car and train), 2.7 mile, arrow straight, hole through the mountains, there would be no way in by land vehicle. There is an unsettling but oddly alluring mystery about a town so disconnected.
My primary reason for going to Whittier was to kayak in an ocean. I will do this, but without chartering a ferry or attaching myself to a sea kayaking party I would have a difficult time reaching the more distant and exotic bays and fiords. But the bay extending west of Whittier—Kittiwake—was accessible and is one of the most scenic in the area. There are no glaciers, but I had seen many glaciers already. There are waterfalls, sheer cliffs, and a renowned rookery all within a five or six mile kayak trip. The bay itself is miles wide and many miles long, extending from the mouth of Shakespeare Creek, through Wells Passage, and into Prince William Sound. When the sea is calm, it is a most pleasurable small craft cruise.
…Players in epic events—like the Klondike Gold Rush—seem never to want to lose their place in history. They want desperately to be remembered…memorialized. And so, their spirits linger. On my second day in Skagway, I was their guest.
I know it pleased them that I visited the ghost town of Dyea (pronounced, Di ee’ and means, to pack) and walked the grounds, imagining a boomtown of over 10,000 souls. Dyea was built—and died—hurriedly on the high tide bank of Chilkoot Inlet. It was the supply town and jumping off point for the Klondike prospectors. At its height, 10,000 dreamers lived here, most simply enroute to the gold fields 600 miles farther north. The town was ephemeral, lasting only about two years before the railroad from Skagway mercifully killed the Chilkoot Trail overland pack business. Even at its peak, it was something of a façade. Businesses along its main street nested in ugly disorder behind fake store fronts—something like the disembarking gold seekers, whose exterior was the capable, self-assured seeker of fortune hiding what had to be a brooding dread of burdens and dark days between them and the remote chance of success. The dread was borne of premonitions planted and nurtured by reality. The land was brutal and many died or went mad moiling for gold. Still, I think, most of these men were of the nothing to lose, nothing ventured ilk…many refugees of the great depression of the 1890s; desperate.
Herman Ferry worked a river ferry on the Chilkoot Trail in 1898 and recorded this: “I can see down the canyon 5 miles, and every morning it is black with people. This is the most excitement the world ever knew.”
Often, however, the excitement was borne of terror…on April 3, 1898, a warm wind loosed snow on the mountain slopes along the Chilkoot. It was Palm Sunday when the whole mountain side gave up its snow and sent it crashing on the stampeders (what the
canyon trekkers were called) moving along the valley floor. Slide Cemetery holds its victims—some found frozen in running position, like-real life Terra Cotta Soldiers.
The Chilkoot Trail is now a major tourist attraction; thousands of backpackers hike the 33 mile-long trail from Dyea to Lake Bennett (Yukon River headwaters) every year, often riding the White Pass/Yukon Railroad back to Skagway. It is a great and memorable hike, but it is a well marked trail and, though strenuous, never really all that dangerous (bear encounters aside). Folklore, more than challenge, is its allure.
I could not leave the area without taking a kayak trip down the Taiya. I would fly downstream in a 39 pound, 9 foot kayak on the same river that the stampeders used as a frozen highway in the winter months. It took them 3 – 4 weeks to pack a ton of goods from Dyea to Lake Lindeman, 10 miles north of Chilkoot Pass.
My first full day in Skagway the winds were high and the sea rough; I could not kayak, so I climbed A B Mountain (non-inspiring moniker, but writ large every spring by snow filled ravines). …My only real anxious moments—except for the chill I got every time I step over bear scat (often in the middle of the trail and often fresh) or its paw print—were crossing patches of ice fields. The crusted snow is thick—10 feet – 15 feet—and water trickles or gushes from beneath it. My fear was breaking through the crust and the snow falling in over me. It could happen.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)