Mountain Stories

Mountain stories that are told the most seem to be infused with high danger, risk, or tragedy, and mine are no different. I am embarrassed to say how many times I have described the drama of finding fresh grizzly clawmarks 71/2 feet up a spruce next to a pond, less than a mile from my wilderness camp. Then I lower my voice when I explain how at 3:30 am the next night I had to scare something off that had entered my campsite, and what it felt like after tying my dogs to a tree, to discover it was still watching from the woods: "heavy rambling footsteps went off into the dark, down a ridge, flushing a grouse, sending rocks flying with each stride.", is how I describe that episode just before a June dawn a few years ago.

And while its true that stories of danger and drama are good for the telling, the ones that mean the most to me are pretty much the opposite. I rarely tell of the calm times in the mountains, of silence and beauty, like the mornings high on an alpine ridge, holding my warm coffee and watching the sun rise from the lowlands, casting rose then golden light on the peaks behind me.

Words on a page don't do to well when trying to tell this other kind of mountain story. Try to visualize though, the afternoon when I entered a high mountain cirque after two hard days of backpacking. As I got my first view of a location where the continental divine formed a half circle, with Lonesome Lake in the center, a pair of hawks appeared, drifting on the wind currents just above the spruce, in front of the lake basin and the snow-covered mountains.

Episodes like this of mountain beauty seem to get imprinted into ones soul.

They are hard stories to tell though, because to understand you had to be there. Even so two people side by side may not have identical impressions, which does not lessen the mystery and beauty. It just means that some things are too personal to be easily shared, only making them the more rich, the more sacred.

And so I will continue to hold those special moments in the mountains within, in silence. Instead I will describe the grizzly track I found that was so fresh you could see wrinkles in the footpad, or crossing the top of the rock slide above a 1000 foot crevice.

And on my mountain treks my prayer is to use my head and minimize danger, to not take chances only for the sake of a good story. Because only in safety will I retain the health to enjoy many years of the second kind of mountain story, the ones where I get a glimpse of the divinity in a mountain day.


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(below is the same story with an altered closing)


Mountain stories that are told the most seem to be infused with high danger, risk, or tragedy, and mine are no different. I am embarrassed to say how many times I have described the drama of finding fresh grizzly clawmarks 71/2 feet up a spruce next to a pond, less than a mile from my wilderness camp. Then I lower my voice when I explain how at 3:30 am the next night I had to scare something off that had entered my campsite, and what it felt like after tying my dogs to a tree, to discover it was still watching from the woods: "heavy rambling footsteps went off into the dark, down a ridge, flushing a grouse, sending rocks flying with each stride.", is how I describe that episode just before a June dawn a few years ago.

And while its true that stories of danger and drama are good for the telling, the ones that mean the most to me are pretty much the opposite. I rarely tell of the calm times in the mountains, of silence and beauty, like the mornings high on an alpine ridge, holding my warm coffee and watching the sun rise from the lowlands, casting rose then golden light on the peaks behind me.

Words on a page don't do to well when trying to tell this other kind of mountain story. Try to visualize though, the afternoon when I entered a high mountain cirque after two hard days of backpacking. As I got my first view of a location where the continental divine formed a half circle, with Lonesome Lake in the center, a pair of hawks appeared, drifting on the wind currents just above the spruce, in front of the lake basin and the snow-covered mountains.

Episodes of mountain beauty like that seem to get imprinted into ones soul.

There is one thing that is true, for those of us who love mountains. Being in them causes us to have a life rich in stories – either adventurous ones like finding a grizzly track so fresh you can see wrinkles in the footpad, or more serene ones, like the peace in a spruce fir forest at dusk as shadows overtake the trees, when you get a glimpse of the divinity in a mountain day.