A LAND WITHOUT FACES
I walk amongst you, here in your city, a man from the wilderness, a man who has spent countless years in the solitude of the mountains, listening to the silence, to the wind, hearing the rivers and the birds. A man who has spent his nights watching the stars through unveiled skies, listening to the distant and mournful cry of the wolf, listening to the quite of the night.
I walk amongst you, in the midst of your mountains of concrete and steel, your trails of ash fault and cement, listening to the roar of your engines, the wail of the sirens, listening to the deafening pulse you seem not to hear.
I smell the exhaust, taste it in the back of my throat, feel it burn my nostrils as the poison enters my lungs, chocking me, starving me of the once fresh and clean air I breathed so deep and freely, air that was pure, free of the toxins that hang over your great city like a dark and ominous cloud.
I walk amongst you, in your great shopping centers and malls, walk amongst you and watch as I have watched the creatures of the wilds. Watching, learning, hidden from your view while still in plain sight. I have witnessed many wonders in the wilderness, many sights to be remembered in awe, sights however, that are rivaled by what I see whilst I am among you.
Tall, short, heavy and thin, people of most every nationality and culture from around the globe, caught in the hustle, the race of their fast paced lives. I watch, silently observe, as those around me push past each other with blank, expressionless faces. Brushing past each other without a fleeting thought or brief acknowledgement of those they encounter.
A life without faces.
Your world of haste begins with the buzzing of an electric alarm, rousting you from your tired, coma like state, a hand hit’s the snooze button while your groggy mind begs the clock for another 7 minutes of sleep. The coffee pot comes alive on the kitchen counter as it’s timer strikes home and it begins to puff and wheeze, filling the room with the familiar aroma of a new day’s beginning. With one eye open you watch the clock, hit the switch a moment before it again comes alive with the sound you’ve learned to despise. Feet into slippers, arms into bathrobe, staggering fuzzily into the bathroom to begin your morning rituals.
Tooth brush hanging from the corner of your mouth you turn the hot water on full in the shower, filling the room with steam as you return to the sink to cleanse your mouth of the mint flavored foam. A few quick adjustments to the water temperature before you climb into it’s steady flow, the sleep driven from you as fill your hand with shampoo. You scrub and rinse as an urgency builds within, climbing from the warmth of the water and into the softness of an inch thick towel.
Hand cream, face cream, tweezers and brush. Blow dryer, styling cream and rat tailed comb, with a whirl of frustration you leave the image of your face in the mirror, muttering to yourself about another bad hair day, silently concerned about the growing bags under your eyes, wondering why.
Back to your bedroom, casting aside your bathrobe as you reach into the closet, tugging free from it’s now swinging hanger an outfit to suit the day, a costume with which to hide your inner self from the world around you.
Down the hall to the kitchen with a hurried step, needing the injection of fresh roasted caffeine, the morning boost your body has been craving since the mist of the shower hit your skin. Before you reach for your favorite coffee mug, hidden on the top rack of the dishwasher, you touch the familiar power button on your laptop, your umbilical cord to the outside world. Filling your mug with strong black coffee, which is diluted with an inch of flavored cream, you hit the menu button on your Black Berry, checking your voicemails, searching the inbox of your text messages, trying desperately to catch up with another new day and all it brings into your already too busy world.
Gulping down your second cup of near white coffee like substance as you read your emails, chewing slowly on the cardboard tasting protein bar between swallows from your mug you quickly scan the world headlines on your laptop screen. Disheartened at the current status of world affairs you shut down the laptop, slipping it into the readymade slot in your carry bag, a bag stuffed with paper files, pens, USB cords and CD’s, the essence of your professional world.
Shrugging into your leather coat and matching gloves, into your favorite shoes as you slide your IPOD touch into your breast pocket, slipping the tiny earphones into place you shoulder your carry bag, thumbing through your bus passes as you close the locked door behind you.
Welcoming the cold winter air with a frown you hurry down the street to catch the approaching city bus, the first leg of your journey towards the office where you will spend your day far above the busy streets below. Another frowning bus driver, another packed and cramped bus ride to the city train station, a station filled with faceless bodies. Heads turn simultaneously as the next train approaches, people force themselves into line, knowing exactly where their chosen door will open when the button is pushed.
Standing, sitting, cramming into the cramped confines of the train you find yourself turning up the volume on your IPOD touch, drowning the sounds of the train and those within, secretly wishing you could some how stop the smell of the train from entering your nostrils. Again you watch as the Transit Police exit the train with an unwilling patron with no valid pass to produce, looking back to the word game you’re idly playing on your Black Berry, trying hard to pass the half hour you must be on the train.
Finally your stop has come, slipping your Black Berry into your pocket you ready yourself to be pushed out of the train door, caught in yet another human landslide of bodies without faces, bumped and grinded out the door you go, back into the crisp winter air with a frown.
The sidewalk is slippery under your flat soled leather shoes and you begrudgingly clamber your way down the snowy street to your towering office building, considering with every step the growing pile of files on your already full desk. With a nod of recognition the security guard acknowledges your familiar face with a glance over his half read newspaper, the only one to notice your existence since you left the comfort of your home.
Into the elevator, staring blankly at the climbing red numbers displayed over head, 37, your destination, the place you find yourself spending nearly half your life, the floor where the knot in your stomach originated, the tiny 12 x 16 office where you find yourself wishing you were not.
The same group looks away from the morning circle of conversation, their morning excuse for the procrastination they habitually show towards the start of each day, looking over their coffee cups at you with the same bleak, unsmiling faces you see every morning. Nothing seems to change. Caught in the rut of an adventure less life, caught in the rut of a life you once longed for, a life you trained and schooled for. Living in a land without faces.
Life in the wilderness, a life you may not understand, a life you most certainly will turn your nose up towards, a life you will state you could never live.
Imagine if you will, poking your head from beneath a mound of covers, quickly realizing the fire that once gave the tiny one room cabin its inner warmth has long since burned out, leaving your log dwelling as cold as the frosty wilderness beyond the door.
Frost rises from your breath as you lay preparing yourself for the inevitable flood of cold air that awaits you as you make a hasty exit from the warm depths of your bed. A quick rush across the room to the kindling pile, a huge handful of crumpled newspapers into the now cold fire box, the strike of a wooden match as it is artfully pitched into the awaiting pile of tinder and with staggering speed you hit the depths of your still warm bed to await the pleasant crackle and warmth of yet another morning’s fire.
Once the tiny fire has driven the cold from your cabin you feel it safe to again exit the depths of your handmade bed, shrugging into somewhat frosted clothes, half frozen boots and a coat that feels like it was constructed from cardboard you leave the confines of your tiny cabin, stepping into the sharp and frozen air of the rugged Canadian Wilderness.
Standing on the porch your gaze falls on the beautiful site of the snow covered mountains, now shinning under the pink light of a clear and cold morning’s sunrise. Frost has blanketed everything in sight, glittering in the new morning’s light. The nearby spring gurgles and dances under the clear coating of crystal like ice, the only sound you hear until you step down from the porch and the frozen snow crunches under the weight of your feet.
Following the tiny path you have shoveled to the main lodge, you find yourself once a again standing in total awe and admiration of the sights that fall before you. Snow covered peaks, spruce trees heavily laden with a burdens of frozen snow, bowing under their burdens as if to greet you in some mysterious and solemn way.
Shovel in hand you clear another snow drift off of the porch stairs, continuing to shovel around into the wood shed where, setting shovel aside, you load your arm with wood and head back to the kitchen door and into the lodge.
Stirring up a pile of hot embers in the massive hearth you soon have a blaze kindled that casts it’s smoky heat into the main room of the lodge, driving the cool breath of another winter’s morning from the room while leaving a thick smoky haze hanging in the rafters. Heaping another arm load of wood into the hearth you ensure the birth of another day’s fire and the consumption of another box load of wood.
The frozen axe handle in your hand burns your palm as you carry it across the yard towards the creek whilst two empty water buckets swing from the other hand. The cold weather freezes the water hole every night so it must be re-opened each morning before the buckets can be filled, two of the six buckets it will take to finish the day. Each swing of the axe sends a spray of sharp shards of ice and water into the air as it smashes open the water hole once again and soon the buckets are full of beautiful spring water.
With the water buckets in their place on the counter and a pot of coffee starting to pop and hiss on the propane stove the start of a new day is well under way. The lodge is starting to warm and the smell of the smoke is starting to fade all though it never really leaves after 40 years of soaking into the logs.
Broom in hand you sweep the debris away from the front of hearth, remnants from the morning’s fire, and continue to sweep the kitchen and great room while you wait for the coffee pot to rise to a boil. As most mornings, the sound of the coffee boiling over onto the stove top alerts you that you’re once again too late and you make a rush to reach the foaming pot and snatch it off the flames.
A cup of cold water trickled into the top of the coffee pot to settle the grounds and there you have it, the best cup of mountain coffee a person can find anywhere within 50 miles.
Steaming cup of coffee in hand you head out onto the porch of the lodge to listen to the morning as you enjoy your hot black coffee. The calm, the distant silence, the gentle gurgle of the nearby creek, sounds of your world, the world you know by it’s sounds, by it’s smells and it’s wind.
There are no sirens here, no roar from busy streets nor thick hanging cloak of smog, there is only wilderness. Mountains cascading from North to South, river valleys and ancient Spruce swamps, rocky peaks and dark timbered ridges. This is a land without faces.
After your second cup of coffee is finished attention swings to your morning chores. Horses need hay and grain, fire wood needs replenishing and pathways need shoveling.
These, the morning rituals of a life in the wilderness.
The horses have grazed their way down the valley away from home during the night but they will certainly be on their way back, looking for some fresh hay and a pail of rolled oats. Using a hand drawn sleigh 12 small square bails, each weighing around 60 lbs have been made into 30 piles in a large circle around the meadow. Once the sleigh is put back in its place each hay pile is topped with a large scoop of rolled oats from a 50lb sack, a sack which is empty of it’s contents by the time the circle is completed. With barn swept clean and a new mineral block set out the morning feeding is done.
The firewood pile behind the lodge is a huge stack of log rounds that where cut over the summer months and hauled to camp in the back of an old 4x4 pick-up truck. The rounds need to be individually split into quarters with an axe before being carted to the cabins in the hand drawn sleigh so heavy coat is set aside, shirt sleeves rolled up to the forearms and splitting axe is taken in hand.
The rhythmic sound of the axe solidly smacking into the frozen rounds echoes through the frigid air of the valley and after an hours work the sleigh is ready to play it’s part. Each block of wood was cut at a length of 20 inches in order to ensure a proper fit in the wood stoves in each of the 8 cabins, the blocks cut for the hearth were cut at 30 inches and were piled in a separate pile
With a well stacked sleigh load of wood in tow you round the corner of the lodge to see the horses all standing at a pile of hay happy eating their morning’s break fast. A quick and accurate head count tells you that all 25 head of horses are present, all appearing to be happy and in excellent condition. What a wonderful sight to see the frosty backs of 25 solid mountain horses standing in the meadow, each a trusted friend and companion.
The sleigh is laden with wood cut for the hearth so once parked in front of the lodge steps it is relieved of its burden one arm load at a time. The warmth of the lodge is a pleasant change from the -18 degree temperature outside and you feel your cheeks turn flush in the heat. Eight hefty arm loads of wood are required to empty the sleigh into the waiting confines of the large wood box standing in the far corner of the great room. The box is built to hold two sleigh loads so with a quick exit your headed, sleigh in tow and cookie in hand, headed back to the wood pile for another load.
As you round the corner of the lodge some distant sound catches your ear and you stop in mid stride, head cocked to the side listening with a tuned sense. Again the sound breaks the valley’s calm, far to the North the mournful call of a timber wolf rises in the icy air, the wolves are back, back to reek havoc on the resident moose and deer for a few weeks.
Now you work with one ear tuned to the North, often pausing to listen to the valley, tracking the wolves’ approach by the sound of their eerie call.
The duties of the wood boxes took considerably longer due to frequent stops to listen to the wolves as they drew nearer, but none the less each box was topped up and there was extra split wood on hand.
The stove burner gives a woof as you lay a match to the gas and the coffee pot is set in place to re-heat, its long past due for another cookie or two from the jar too. With cookies in hand you quietly step out onto the porch of the lodge to listen to the valley. The calm silence of the frozen valley has an unsettled touch to it as you know full well you are not alone, you know that within a few hours the wolves will pass by the camp, pass by the horses.
Boiled coffee always seems to taste better on the second round and the cup in your hand is no exception, steam rising from it’s rim as you step back out onto the covered porch of the lodge, the cup warms your hand against the crisp air, its amazing how comforting the warmth of a cup of coffee can be when a person will let it be, it almost warms your soul.
The horses’ are all alert, heads and ears constantly turning to the sounds of the valley, they too know the wolves are coming and they will not stray far from the meadow on this day, staying close to the safety of the camp. It is the ears you watch while you sip on your coffee, the horse’s ears are an amazing thing and when a person is observant enough to notice a raised head and pointed ears, it is a sure sign of a nearby presence in the woods.
The frigid air, the blue sky and frost covered trees, the steam rising from the spring, those sights send your mind traveling backwards in time, back over the 30 years you have spent in the mountains living the life of a wilderness guide and back country horseman, back to some of the wrecks you saw on the trail……..
I walk amongst you, in the midst of your mountains of concrete and steel, your trails of ash fault and cement, listening to the roar of your engines, the wail of the sirens, listening to the deafening pulse you seem not to hear.
I smell the exhaust, taste it in the back of my throat, feel it burn my nostrils as the poison enters my lungs, chocking me, starving me of the once fresh and clean air I breathed so deep and freely, air that was pure, free of the toxins that hang over your great city like a dark and ominous cloud.
I walk amongst you, in your great shopping centers and malls, walk amongst you and watch as I have watched the creatures of the wilds. Watching, learning, hidden from your view while still in plain sight. I have witnessed many wonders in the wilderness, many sights to be remembered in awe, sights however, that are rivaled by what I see whilst I am among you.
Tall, short, heavy and thin, people of most every nationality and culture from around the globe, caught in the hustle, the race of their fast paced lives. I watch, silently observe, as those around me push past each other with blank, expressionless faces. Brushing past each other without a fleeting thought or brief acknowledgement of those they encounter.
A life without faces.
Your world of haste begins with the buzzing of an electric alarm, rousting you from your tired, coma like state, a hand hit’s the snooze button while your groggy mind begs the clock for another 7 minutes of sleep. The coffee pot comes alive on the kitchen counter as it’s timer strikes home and it begins to puff and wheeze, filling the room with the familiar aroma of a new day’s beginning. With one eye open you watch the clock, hit the switch a moment before it again comes alive with the sound you’ve learned to despise. Feet into slippers, arms into bathrobe, staggering fuzzily into the bathroom to begin your morning rituals.
Tooth brush hanging from the corner of your mouth you turn the hot water on full in the shower, filling the room with steam as you return to the sink to cleanse your mouth of the mint flavored foam. A few quick adjustments to the water temperature before you climb into it’s steady flow, the sleep driven from you as fill your hand with shampoo. You scrub and rinse as an urgency builds within, climbing from the warmth of the water and into the softness of an inch thick towel.
Hand cream, face cream, tweezers and brush. Blow dryer, styling cream and rat tailed comb, with a whirl of frustration you leave the image of your face in the mirror, muttering to yourself about another bad hair day, silently concerned about the growing bags under your eyes, wondering why.
Back to your bedroom, casting aside your bathrobe as you reach into the closet, tugging free from it’s now swinging hanger an outfit to suit the day, a costume with which to hide your inner self from the world around you.
Down the hall to the kitchen with a hurried step, needing the injection of fresh roasted caffeine, the morning boost your body has been craving since the mist of the shower hit your skin. Before you reach for your favorite coffee mug, hidden on the top rack of the dishwasher, you touch the familiar power button on your laptop, your umbilical cord to the outside world. Filling your mug with strong black coffee, which is diluted with an inch of flavored cream, you hit the menu button on your Black Berry, checking your voicemails, searching the inbox of your text messages, trying desperately to catch up with another new day and all it brings into your already too busy world.
Gulping down your second cup of near white coffee like substance as you read your emails, chewing slowly on the cardboard tasting protein bar between swallows from your mug you quickly scan the world headlines on your laptop screen. Disheartened at the current status of world affairs you shut down the laptop, slipping it into the readymade slot in your carry bag, a bag stuffed with paper files, pens, USB cords and CD’s, the essence of your professional world.
Shrugging into your leather coat and matching gloves, into your favorite shoes as you slide your IPOD touch into your breast pocket, slipping the tiny earphones into place you shoulder your carry bag, thumbing through your bus passes as you close the locked door behind you.
Welcoming the cold winter air with a frown you hurry down the street to catch the approaching city bus, the first leg of your journey towards the office where you will spend your day far above the busy streets below. Another frowning bus driver, another packed and cramped bus ride to the city train station, a station filled with faceless bodies. Heads turn simultaneously as the next train approaches, people force themselves into line, knowing exactly where their chosen door will open when the button is pushed.
Standing, sitting, cramming into the cramped confines of the train you find yourself turning up the volume on your IPOD touch, drowning the sounds of the train and those within, secretly wishing you could some how stop the smell of the train from entering your nostrils. Again you watch as the Transit Police exit the train with an unwilling patron with no valid pass to produce, looking back to the word game you’re idly playing on your Black Berry, trying hard to pass the half hour you must be on the train.
Finally your stop has come, slipping your Black Berry into your pocket you ready yourself to be pushed out of the train door, caught in yet another human landslide of bodies without faces, bumped and grinded out the door you go, back into the crisp winter air with a frown.
The sidewalk is slippery under your flat soled leather shoes and you begrudgingly clamber your way down the snowy street to your towering office building, considering with every step the growing pile of files on your already full desk. With a nod of recognition the security guard acknowledges your familiar face with a glance over his half read newspaper, the only one to notice your existence since you left the comfort of your home.
Into the elevator, staring blankly at the climbing red numbers displayed over head, 37, your destination, the place you find yourself spending nearly half your life, the floor where the knot in your stomach originated, the tiny 12 x 16 office where you find yourself wishing you were not.
The same group looks away from the morning circle of conversation, their morning excuse for the procrastination they habitually show towards the start of each day, looking over their coffee cups at you with the same bleak, unsmiling faces you see every morning. Nothing seems to change. Caught in the rut of an adventure less life, caught in the rut of a life you once longed for, a life you trained and schooled for. Living in a land without faces.
Life in the wilderness, a life you may not understand, a life you most certainly will turn your nose up towards, a life you will state you could never live.
Imagine if you will, poking your head from beneath a mound of covers, quickly realizing the fire that once gave the tiny one room cabin its inner warmth has long since burned out, leaving your log dwelling as cold as the frosty wilderness beyond the door.
Frost rises from your breath as you lay preparing yourself for the inevitable flood of cold air that awaits you as you make a hasty exit from the warm depths of your bed. A quick rush across the room to the kindling pile, a huge handful of crumpled newspapers into the now cold fire box, the strike of a wooden match as it is artfully pitched into the awaiting pile of tinder and with staggering speed you hit the depths of your still warm bed to await the pleasant crackle and warmth of yet another morning’s fire.
Once the tiny fire has driven the cold from your cabin you feel it safe to again exit the depths of your handmade bed, shrugging into somewhat frosted clothes, half frozen boots and a coat that feels like it was constructed from cardboard you leave the confines of your tiny cabin, stepping into the sharp and frozen air of the rugged Canadian Wilderness.
Standing on the porch your gaze falls on the beautiful site of the snow covered mountains, now shinning under the pink light of a clear and cold morning’s sunrise. Frost has blanketed everything in sight, glittering in the new morning’s light. The nearby spring gurgles and dances under the clear coating of crystal like ice, the only sound you hear until you step down from the porch and the frozen snow crunches under the weight of your feet.
Following the tiny path you have shoveled to the main lodge, you find yourself once a again standing in total awe and admiration of the sights that fall before you. Snow covered peaks, spruce trees heavily laden with a burdens of frozen snow, bowing under their burdens as if to greet you in some mysterious and solemn way.
Shovel in hand you clear another snow drift off of the porch stairs, continuing to shovel around into the wood shed where, setting shovel aside, you load your arm with wood and head back to the kitchen door and into the lodge.
Stirring up a pile of hot embers in the massive hearth you soon have a blaze kindled that casts it’s smoky heat into the main room of the lodge, driving the cool breath of another winter’s morning from the room while leaving a thick smoky haze hanging in the rafters. Heaping another arm load of wood into the hearth you ensure the birth of another day’s fire and the consumption of another box load of wood.
The frozen axe handle in your hand burns your palm as you carry it across the yard towards the creek whilst two empty water buckets swing from the other hand. The cold weather freezes the water hole every night so it must be re-opened each morning before the buckets can be filled, two of the six buckets it will take to finish the day. Each swing of the axe sends a spray of sharp shards of ice and water into the air as it smashes open the water hole once again and soon the buckets are full of beautiful spring water.
With the water buckets in their place on the counter and a pot of coffee starting to pop and hiss on the propane stove the start of a new day is well under way. The lodge is starting to warm and the smell of the smoke is starting to fade all though it never really leaves after 40 years of soaking into the logs.
Broom in hand you sweep the debris away from the front of hearth, remnants from the morning’s fire, and continue to sweep the kitchen and great room while you wait for the coffee pot to rise to a boil. As most mornings, the sound of the coffee boiling over onto the stove top alerts you that you’re once again too late and you make a rush to reach the foaming pot and snatch it off the flames.
A cup of cold water trickled into the top of the coffee pot to settle the grounds and there you have it, the best cup of mountain coffee a person can find anywhere within 50 miles.
Steaming cup of coffee in hand you head out onto the porch of the lodge to listen to the morning as you enjoy your hot black coffee. The calm, the distant silence, the gentle gurgle of the nearby creek, sounds of your world, the world you know by it’s sounds, by it’s smells and it’s wind.
There are no sirens here, no roar from busy streets nor thick hanging cloak of smog, there is only wilderness. Mountains cascading from North to South, river valleys and ancient Spruce swamps, rocky peaks and dark timbered ridges. This is a land without faces.
After your second cup of coffee is finished attention swings to your morning chores. Horses need hay and grain, fire wood needs replenishing and pathways need shoveling.
These, the morning rituals of a life in the wilderness.
The horses have grazed their way down the valley away from home during the night but they will certainly be on their way back, looking for some fresh hay and a pail of rolled oats. Using a hand drawn sleigh 12 small square bails, each weighing around 60 lbs have been made into 30 piles in a large circle around the meadow. Once the sleigh is put back in its place each hay pile is topped with a large scoop of rolled oats from a 50lb sack, a sack which is empty of it’s contents by the time the circle is completed. With barn swept clean and a new mineral block set out the morning feeding is done.
The firewood pile behind the lodge is a huge stack of log rounds that where cut over the summer months and hauled to camp in the back of an old 4x4 pick-up truck. The rounds need to be individually split into quarters with an axe before being carted to the cabins in the hand drawn sleigh so heavy coat is set aside, shirt sleeves rolled up to the forearms and splitting axe is taken in hand.
The rhythmic sound of the axe solidly smacking into the frozen rounds echoes through the frigid air of the valley and after an hours work the sleigh is ready to play it’s part. Each block of wood was cut at a length of 20 inches in order to ensure a proper fit in the wood stoves in each of the 8 cabins, the blocks cut for the hearth were cut at 30 inches and were piled in a separate pile
With a well stacked sleigh load of wood in tow you round the corner of the lodge to see the horses all standing at a pile of hay happy eating their morning’s break fast. A quick and accurate head count tells you that all 25 head of horses are present, all appearing to be happy and in excellent condition. What a wonderful sight to see the frosty backs of 25 solid mountain horses standing in the meadow, each a trusted friend and companion.
The sleigh is laden with wood cut for the hearth so once parked in front of the lodge steps it is relieved of its burden one arm load at a time. The warmth of the lodge is a pleasant change from the -18 degree temperature outside and you feel your cheeks turn flush in the heat. Eight hefty arm loads of wood are required to empty the sleigh into the waiting confines of the large wood box standing in the far corner of the great room. The box is built to hold two sleigh loads so with a quick exit your headed, sleigh in tow and cookie in hand, headed back to the wood pile for another load.
As you round the corner of the lodge some distant sound catches your ear and you stop in mid stride, head cocked to the side listening with a tuned sense. Again the sound breaks the valley’s calm, far to the North the mournful call of a timber wolf rises in the icy air, the wolves are back, back to reek havoc on the resident moose and deer for a few weeks.
Now you work with one ear tuned to the North, often pausing to listen to the valley, tracking the wolves’ approach by the sound of their eerie call.
The duties of the wood boxes took considerably longer due to frequent stops to listen to the wolves as they drew nearer, but none the less each box was topped up and there was extra split wood on hand.
The stove burner gives a woof as you lay a match to the gas and the coffee pot is set in place to re-heat, its long past due for another cookie or two from the jar too. With cookies in hand you quietly step out onto the porch of the lodge to listen to the valley. The calm silence of the frozen valley has an unsettled touch to it as you know full well you are not alone, you know that within a few hours the wolves will pass by the camp, pass by the horses.
Boiled coffee always seems to taste better on the second round and the cup in your hand is no exception, steam rising from it’s rim as you step back out onto the covered porch of the lodge, the cup warms your hand against the crisp air, its amazing how comforting the warmth of a cup of coffee can be when a person will let it be, it almost warms your soul.
The horses’ are all alert, heads and ears constantly turning to the sounds of the valley, they too know the wolves are coming and they will not stray far from the meadow on this day, staying close to the safety of the camp. It is the ears you watch while you sip on your coffee, the horse’s ears are an amazing thing and when a person is observant enough to notice a raised head and pointed ears, it is a sure sign of a nearby presence in the woods.
The frigid air, the blue sky and frost covered trees, the steam rising from the spring, those sights send your mind traveling backwards in time, back over the 30 years you have spent in the mountains living the life of a wilderness guide and back country horseman, back to some of the wrecks you saw on the trail……..
