Our Ancestors Are Always Taking Care of Us
It was going to be a rough winter. The truck wasn't running good and he was worried that he might not have enough put by to make it through December. Why did he always need the most money when work was the hardest to come by? He wouldn't let himself get discouraged though. He was glad to still be alive. He couldn't think too much about his troubles. He had to pay attention to where he was going.
He still had to be careful with each step. This was steep country and his leg could still be unsteady. Sometimes it gave out without warning. The doctor had pronounced that it had healed as much as it was going to, but he knew that wasn't true. The previous winter a different doctor had pronounced that there was nothing to do but amputate. His life had been hanging by a thread and he had been too incapacitated to object.
Thankfully he had married a good woman. She had fought tooth and nail to stop the non-consensual surgery. She wasn't much for the outdoors or much of a cook, but she made up for it in spades in other ways. She loved him for the man he had been and the man he had become. She'd kept her nerve for two days as she drove him home from that Denver hospital through one of the worst blizzards in almost 18 years. She'd kept him in one piece.
When he finally came to in his own bed a few days later, he set about healing himself. He didn't know what to do. So he just started walking. For a long time he could only make it to the end of the driveway, then to the end of the block. It hurt like hell. Needles and razors sliced up his leg from the inside out, not just when he was walking, but for hours afterwards. The night when the clot finally broke up, he woke up, promptly vomited, then he passed out again from the pain. Now here he was almost a year later, making his way up the steep side of this mountain. He'd brought home an elk every year since he was twelve years old and he wasn't about to stop now.
He continued to pick and prod through the scrub oak and the chokecherries and the stubborn sagebrush that refused to yield ground to their bigger neighbors. Making a meandering path, he set his aim towards the bald patch of open ground. From there he could hike more directly to the outcropping of rocks that crowned the hill. But he was in no hurry to get there.
He nibbled on chokecherries and filled his pockets with acorns as he climbed; the tiny gambel-nuts were actually a little sweet, almost no tannins. He could see why the bears liked them so much. Drink water where the horses drink ... he thought to himself, splitting another acorn shell between his teeth and putting one foot steadily in front of the other.
The hilltop was covered in a wide arc of established oaks. They held the line there against an incursion of towering firs that had marched up the north slope in an attempt to take the high ground; around the time when his great-grandfather had first come into this country to sell mules to the army right after the war in the east.
The outcrop of rocks stood apart, however. No vegetation grew there. It was a low uplift of fine basalt that had stubbornly refused to weather down into gravelly sand like the rest of the slope. Instead it stood proud, fading to grey in the sun before acquiring a little dash of mottling from a few hearty lichens. But even the pride of this old stalwart was not immune to the effects of entropy. A rectangular slab had recently (at least geologically speaking) cleaved off and fallen flat onto it's face. This left a jet black seat and backrest perfectly sized for a man of his build and height.
He gently lowered himself down onto the dark stone and felt it radiate back to him some of the early autumn sunlight it had stored up. Immediately he could tell that this was a place from which a man could stand tall.
A commanding view of the valley opened up before him and he could see his old friend the Sleeping Giant dozing on the far horizon. He could see the rest of the drainage spread out below and had a clear sightline up and down a good stretch of the creek bottom and into the defoliating aspens that ran up the first several yards of the north face of the opposite slope. Anywhere the elk would move through as they migrated down from the high country was open to his vision.
He was done scouting for the season. This was the place. Now he could just enjoy the view and the birdsong and the gentle thermals feathering through his beard as they danced up the mountain to lift a red-tailed hawk into the heavens.
In the distance he could see the mountain where his grandfather had been buried in the explosion. He knew that the old company house he had been born in was no longer in the river bottom that lay in that shadow, but he still imagined it there anyways and thought of his mother who would go out and sit on the open prairie until a herd of antelope came by.
He thought of his father, who in his younger years used to bring down old bulls from the heights, and then give their antlers away to anyone who admired them because, he said, he could get more whenever he wanted. He thought of his grandmother who had taught him how to survive off of acorns and chokecherries and all of the other little gifts that are there for anyone who knows how to look.
Slowly he got back up to his feet. He dug a furrow in an arc across a short portion of the slope, suggesting a rough circle around the rest of the rocky slope and stubborn stone. He walked three times around the outcrop, outlining that circle, saying the names of his grandmothers and grandfathers and others who had passed on. The red-tailed hawk ascended in a slow gyre on the thermals above. He emptied the acorns from his pocket into the furrows and covered them up.
38 Years Later
It was going to be a rough winter. The truck wasn't running quite right and he knew he'd have bills in January that he might not have the money to pay. Why did he always need the most money when work was the hardest to come by? He couldn't help but be discouraged. He could always get by, but no matter how much he tried, it seemed like what he was doing didn't resemble anything he would describe as living. Sometimes he felt like he had nothing else to think about besides his troubles. He never seemed to be able to get control over the way that his life was going, which was to say not going anywhere.
He still had people to care for, though. His little daughter was one of the bright spots in his gloomy existence. It was for her that today he was headed up into the steep country on the other side of the valley. It never seemed like putting meat in the freezer made any difference these days, at least not financially, but he knew that if he didn't he would wish that he had. At the very least it was better than feeding his family pink slime, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and whatever else they were putting in the hamburger these days.
He thought about his cousins who ate hamburgerkött and he thought about all the wild mustangs the BLM kept cooped up in tiny pens. He thought about how his family had first come into this country after the war in the east and pondered over all the things that had gone wrong since then.
He thought about when he was his daughter's age, and how every man had filled a tag for at least three animals every year with what seemed like minimal effort (and occasionally filled a freezer without a tag if there were layoffs going around). He thought about how most of the men his age, many of whom were better hunters than him, had to pour over statistics and draw odds and biologist reports, and hunt the hardest and highest country just to make sure they could bring out a single animal in the fall.
It was his brother who had got him interested in the bears. After hours of research, his brother had come to the conclusion that the animals were overpopulated, the tags were underpriced (on a price per pound basis), and the culinary merits of the meat was woefully underappreciated.
The price was right and it wasn't like he had anything better to do this week that could justify him staying home, so he'd decided to give it a try. He headed up to a drainage that he knew had plenty of forage. That was about the extent of his bear knowledge.
The first night he slept in the truck. Not because he wanted to, but because every pull out and camp site was a parking lot for foreign license plates. Anyone who could afford a bow was up there to just keep hammering until they got "their" bull. Never mind that most of the elk were still one county over and up high in their summer range.
The next day he woke up early (although waking up might not be the proper way to describe what he did, since he never really managed to get to sleep). He put on every bit of orange that he had and tried to look the least elky that he could before heading out to look for sign.
He was three hundred yards down the trail along the creek bottom before he realized that he had left his magazine in the truck where he had set it on the seat to make sure that he wasn't shuffling a loaded gun around the cab of the truck while he got ready. Safety first! That was OK with him though. The moment he got up here his suspicions that he didn't know the first thing about bear hunting had been confirmed. He had no hope of finding anything in the thick oakbrush that covered the hillside. This whole thing was going to turn out to be just another damn waste of money.
He sat down with his back to a tall creekside aspen crowned in gold. It was cold down here. Winter had already set up camp in this deep drainage. He opened up his little thermos and poured in a pouch of instant coffee to sip while he watched the sun wake up the hillside with rays of red and russet and burnt orange.
As he waited, wishing that he was up on the hilltop sitting in the sun, a dark shape ambled out of the oaks. Through his field glasses he observed a massive old boar, unconcerned and dark as midnight except for the salt and pepper of grey around his muzzle. He lingered on the margins to strip a chokecherry before making his way across a bald patch of open ground. Had he had bullets in his .270 he would have had ample opportunity for a good broadside shot. Instead the boar hiked directly over to a little copse of oak brush growing out of an outcropping of basalt, casually eating a meal of acorns, then making his way off into the occlusion of oaks that arced around the hilltop.
The hunter cursed his stupidity and considered crying, but instead he swiftly packed up his thermos, slung his empty rifle over his shoulder and set of at a good clip back up the creekside trail. That boar had been headed in the direction of the truck. If the hunter hurried maybe he could head him off at the pass.
The hunter headed out from the truck along a poorly maintained forest service road that was a direct climb to the top of the ridge. This time his rifle was loaded and he made sure he had three extra shells in his pocket, just in case. As he approached the ridge he slowed from walking to stalking.
He looked for sign and examined trees. He smelled the air and kept the wind at his face. He stopped every so often to listen to the forest. He thought about his grandfather who had taught him how to do all these things. The thing he did not do, however, was find the Old Boar.
His heart was full of hope, though as he rounded a hairpin curve in the trail and reached the last place where he had seen the bear that morning. He made his way to the outcropping of rocks and noticed that a rectangular slab had fallen off and formed a little chair that was perfectly sized for a man of his build and height. He pulled a few acorns off one of the low-growing oaks nearby and shelled one between his teeth as he took in the view.
He could see most of the landmarks of the valley. The Three Peaks, the Old Mine where one of his great-grandfathers was buried, the Sleeping Giant. He remembered the day that his grandpa had told him the names of every feature on the horizon. He couldn't remember all of them now, but he remembered the Sleeping Giant. He thought about his grandfather who had brought home an elk every year of his life except for the first twelve and the last two. Grandpa watch over me now, he thought. As he sat there he realized that this was a Good Place. This is the type of place the sheepherders that came to the valley from New Zealand would call a turangawaewae.
If he hadn't already had his eyes on the game trail below, he would have missed the other bear. It was a young cinnamon, maybe three years old. Full bodied but not that fat yet.
The hunter scrambled to get into a shooting position but no matter how he tried to stand or sit or crouch he couldn't get a stable base with the curve of this slope. Anxiety welled up in his gut and he could feel the tears coming on. He couldn't take it if he lost two good opportunities in one day. He needed that meat.
It was then that he noticed that the top of one of the oaks had died. The top of the old trunk was a symmetrical Y, perfectly framing the profile of the Sleeping Giant. He nestled the barrel of his Anduril .270 in the Y and looked down the scope just in time to see the broad side of the bear reaching up to harvest some acorns.
When the man got down to the game trail the bear was there waiting for him, curled up under a large oak. The man positioned the bear's head to face the east. He had to bring out the skull to show to the game warden, but he would still observe the proper formalities as best he could. He bowed his head and lifted up his heart to the sky. Thank you Grandfather, he thought. He looked up to see the grey-muzzled Old Boar looking back at him from the outcrop on the crown of the hill.
Thank you to Luke Miller for the photograph.