It is time to run for the hills.
While walking through the woods the other day, scrambling over log and ledge and sniffing my way through brambles, I stumbled onto a dead coyote, frozen in the snow. It looked a perfect canine, lying on its side, resting in that deep sleep that prompted the flight response in my feet. But I resisted long enough to see that the coyote's mouth was open––as if he was panting in the big chill––and that his eyes were gone, perhaps plucked out by a recently-returned turkey vulture impatient for the big thaw.
So far this year I've only enjoyed a few weeks of frequent hiking, but I've already found three moose antlers, shed in the silence of winter and now evident, for the observant and eager, in the snowless wilds. It is my hobby not really to search for these gigantic reminders of the ineffable, but to bushwhack through large tracts of forest merely for the adventure. For one rarely finds anything of note on a path, even the less-travelled path of Robert Frost's idealized poem. Paths are fine for getting started, but it's the bushwhacker who finds the treasures of forest, fen and field. Bushwhacking is not about making one's own path, for that's impossible and even undesirable for the bushwhacker, for he (or she) rarely returns to travel the same way through the unpathed places of the the planet: there is no path left in the bushwhacker's wake (unless he or she traverses sensitive soils or tramples sensitive plants). Frost is probably right about finding what made "all the difference" for him along the less-travelled path; but it is the travelling through the uncharted and unknown that gives life its thrill. At least it thrills me.
One day I climbed a rather steep-sloped but small mountain and found, atop a boulder on the mountain's summit, a perfectly intact beaver's skull. I wondered about its provenance. Was this an overly-ambitious beaver kicked out of the colony (young beavers get booted out of their parents' colony after two to three years) intent on building something really great for himself, perhaps in an "I'll show them" huff and puff? Was he a dreamer with designs on building a summit lodge? Was he on a mission for help; was he out on a diplomatic mission to a foreign colony, perhaps to broker a trade deal or gnaw out a peace agreement? Was he on a religious pilgrimage, or was he a religious leader, even a mystic, the very object of legend and myth among those who remain close to stream and sticks? Did he see, from the muddied edge of his dam, a bush on fire that did not burn?
More likely he was a victim of a coyote attack, his bones scattered to the four corners of the world, his head carried to a boulder between hungry jaws. Maybe a fox stole the skull of a dead beaver killed by a tree it dropped on itself (this happens); perhaps even a raccoon or black bear carried the carcass summit-ward, the skeleton scattered elsewhere in the snipping and snarling of a coyote pack. Regardless of the skull's provenance, it is a story that begins in the murky depths of the forest, reaching back into the very beginnings of time. For something was wandering about the woods looking for food; finding the skull (and perhaps more), the creature climbed to the top of the hills, claws gripping granite and tearing at slippery moss. It set itself atop a boulder (nature's simple fortresses), and in the silence of the night feasted in the modesty of the wilderness. In its wake is all the power of the universe.
The beaver's story––whatever it may have been––carried to the summit of Ball Hill, was taken into the very depths of another creature, adding life through death. And that beaver's story––which is unknowable–– was nonetheless taken into my very depths: it is with me, shuffling in the darkness and passed along to you, like a shared meal or even the stuff of legends.
In every square inch of the unpathed earth, there are stories like this, billions of them. But there are few stories on life's well-trod paths, for any oft-used path, be it the trail up one's favorite mountain or the I-95 corridor, is marked by its lack of life beneath the foot: there is a contraceptive trampling of foot and smearing of macadam that marks life's most-frequented paths. Yes, there is the collision of forest and machine along any interstate in America, with roadkills ground to a reddened forgetfulness. But such stories seem predictable, with countless drivers wondering before the great crush, "What is that dang deer doing in the middle of the road?"; while countless dead animals must have wondered, "What is that machine doing in the middle of the woods, and why does it attack merely to leave me in the waning artificial light, my body twisted against a barrier?"
I have meandered here, wandering without any clear destination. But that's OK. It is how I find the things that make life more than a beaten path.
It is time to run for the hills indeed.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
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