There are miles and miles of four wheel drive roads, and then trails, some only game trails whose last human step may have been an Indian's moccasined foot, that lead into the back country and high mountain passes.
The trunk of the aspen was straight, tall, and the right diameter at the base: about five inches. James put his hand on the pure, white bark of the tree and looked up at the canopy of leaves rustling in a gentle breeze. The sound of the wind could be followed from west to east through the grove of aspens: really not separate entities but one common organism, interconnected through a shared root system. He could see dimly through the trunks across the wide valley, up near the tree line, small patches of yellow already beginning to emerge. The patch was an aspen grove like the one he was standing in, he realized, and through the shared root system, all the trees would begin to turn color at once. Later in the season, the mountain faces would become a quilt work of colors: orange, gold, green, red - each color the boundary of one organism.
He felt a slight twinge of regret before beginning, and thought of Robert Frost's poem. The head of the axe buried itself in the light wood with a thud. James' legs, halfway between the knees and ankles, disappeared in the undergrowth of a lush bed of ferns. He pushed and pulled on the handle of the axe, using leverage, and the tree gave up the metal with a squeaking protest. He swung again, with his legs apart, away from his body, but this time in a powerful arc that sheared though the tops of the ferns. He pulled the axe out again, feeling the muscles along the side of his back stretching and tensing.
He swung again and again. Though one tree would be felled, the organism would survive and, in time, replenish itself. With each burying thud of the axe, a shudder ran up along the trunk and a section of the canopy of spade-shaped leaves quivered. He bent over and pulled some of the ferns away so he could see the rough, V-shaped notch he was chopping. It was about half foot above the rich, black soil. The notch was large, and cut two-thirds of the way through the trunk, but the tree still stood. If a stray gust did not catch the aspen, this would be the direction in which it would fall. He walked a hundred and eighty degrees around the trunk and swung again, forming another notch, this one just above the first.
The head of the axe hit its mark one last time, and the spindly wood between the two notches began to crack and snap, reluctantly at first, then more rapidly. James looked up and saw a section of the leafy canopy breaking away, revealing blue sky above. The top of the tree accelerated slowly and then, gaining momentum, crashed through the branches of the trees that stood in its path. The trunk slammed into the ground, and James felt the tremor run up into his feet. The branches and leaves on the underside of the tree splintered and flew off in random directions under the impact of its fall.
It was silent again, then sparrows began chirping in alarm to one another from the tree tops. Felling the tree had been strenuous, and James took his shirt off and tossed it to rest on some ferns. He walked to the top of the tree and raising his axe high above his head, in one mighty swoop cut off the crown of branches and leaves that remained. He grasped the axe handle near the head and walking down the length of the trunk, gingerly and carefully trimmed away all the remaining branches. Bending over he picked up his shirt and wiped the sweat and pollen that had caked in a grainy coat on his face. He walked back to the place about a third of the way from the top where the trunk was about three inches thick, and lifting it to his waist, began pulling the tree through the underbrush. He hands were already rough and hard, but the mass of the trunk and the abrasiveness of the bark made the skin and flesh of his hands soft and pulpy again. He felt like he was slowly being assimilated into his environment.
He pulled hard, exhaling, working all the muscles of his body in unison: the fronts of his legs, his stomach, shoulders and arms. Even so, he was only able to move the trunk uphill a few inches at a time, leaving a dark furrow behind him through the ferns.
Once into the clearing, the underbrush gave way from shaded ferns to thick mountain grasses and flowers. Yellow dandelions dotted a large oval of open space: about twenty yards long and ten yards wide. The clearing was a relatively flat, open spot - it still had a slight pitch to it - about a hundred and fifty feet up the gently sloping west face of a mountain. It overlooked a large, wide valley. James had spent the last four months - sometimes for days at a time - camping out, exploring roads and trails and finally game trails in the mountains. It was a game trail that had eventually led him to this spot. It was a little bit higher than he would have liked, near eleven thousand feet, and therefore more exposed to the elements and sudden changes of weather than something at a lower elevation. But as soon as he had seen it he knew he had found his place, his own modern-day Walden. At the end of the valley to the north-east were a series of fourteen thousand foot peaks, majestic in their grandeur and enormity, and permanently capped in snow. The peaks formed a rounded end to the valley from which spilled vegetation and life that filled the green floor below.
At the edge of the clearing was a burned and charred tree-trunk, gnarled and twisted except for a blackened wedge that had been scorched out by lightning. He dragged the small end of the trunk up to the long, narrow V in the stump and rested it in its notch. He followed the furrowed trail left by the dragged trunk back into the woods and gathered up in loads all the trimmed branches, and carried them back to the campsite where he piled them under the dry, protective cover of a fir tree. Later, he would use them for firewood.
The pole, propped up in the burnt-out tree trunk was slender and close to thirty feet long. With a saw, James cut away the knubs and little stumps left where he had chopped away the branches until they were smooth and even with the surface of the tree.
When he had finished, he reached in his day-pack lying on the ground and extracted an open-faced plane: a flat piece of metal ground down to a blade on one edge, with a wooden handle on each end. Straddling the tree, and starting at the top, he drew the blade toward him, carefully, with neither too great nor too small an angle, and peeled away the bark in strips. He hunched close to the surface, pulling down with both arms evenly, so as not to mar the surface of the wood. He continued this way, lifting and rolling the trunk so he could reach all the way around, until he had worked his way to the bottom. He ran his hand along the length, checking for rough spots and splinters until it was completely smooth and finely crafted. There was a light coating of sap under the bark, and he smelled the faint, subtle odor of aspen on his hand.
Holding the axe half-way up the handle, he chopped at the base of the pole until it was sharp and pointed like a stake and would rest securely in the ground. Then he lifted the pole with his arms and felt for the center, the point of equilibrium at which it would balance. When he found it, he hoisted it on his sunburned shoulder - the pole was too valuable to drag now - and carried it across the clearing. He set it on some rocks that kept it propped off the ground to dry. Every several days, he would have to come and turn it to keep it from warping. It would age from its rich, bright, cream color to a deep, weathered gray.
The next day he would come back with his axe and fashion another pole until he had done it sixteen times more.
* * *
He bought some canvas and spread it out in the living room of his apartment,
covering the floor and furniture like a great sail, much to the bemusement of the people he shared the apartment with. Slowly, as he cut and stitched, a large semi-circle came into being.
* * *
Once the poles had dried, and the canvas had been completed, he pitched the tipi with the help of a friend. It had a small flap for a doorway, which pointed in the traditional direction: to the east. He packed most of his belongings into a storage unit, except for a few essentials he would need to live in the tipi, and a stack of books.
* * *
At night, sometimes, he would lie back on the grass outside the tipi and look up at the high, domed canopy of stars, edged by the rough fringe of leaves that surrounded the clearing. That night, though, at twilight, he had watched flashing violet clouds ascend the valley. As they distantly approached, they reverberated thunder back and forth between two opposing mountain faces. By the time the clouds reached the tipi at its higher altitude, the clouds had become a mist that silently enveloped and obscured all edges in a diffused white embrace.
He awoke the next morning at the first sign of light. It had been cold during the night and he had pulled his sleeping bag up over his head. He fumbled with the drawstring, swaying almost imperceptibly in his hammock, until he had enlarged the small, circular ventilation opening. He turned stiffly from his side and put his face to the opening, where he instantly felt the cold on his skin. Pulling his face back into the sleeping bag, he fell back asleep until the warming sun had risen over the spiny, primeval vertebrae of the peaks to the east.
Later, he slowly rose to consciousness once again to the distant tapping of a woodpecker and pulled the hood of the sleeping bag down. His breath froze in the air, and he looked up at the high, Gothic ceiling of the tipi. The sun shone directly on the canvas, which radiated a golden light that filled and colored the interior space of the tipi and everything in it, including himself. He followed with his eyes the regularly spaced poles up to their apex, eighteen feet high, and saw a small patch of brilliant blue sky. It was dry inside, he had closed the smoke flaps the night before by wielding two long poles, staking them firmly in the ground. James took a deep breath and rubbed his face. He pulled his jacket on quickly, sitting up in the hammock. Then he swung his legs down, put his feet in his cold boots and stomped them a few times for warmth. Crouching down, he reached out and pulled the flap open. A light, powdery dusting of snow had fallen in the night. Outside, flakes fell crystalline in the early morning light, blowing off trees. They swirled gracefully in the open space of the clearing, and glittered like diamonds in a brilliant, flashing dance around the tipi.
James rested absolutely still, holding the flap open, and blinked in the intense light. He opened his eyes again, and then he saw it, not fifteen feet away. A doe, it large ears standing straight up, twisting and turning to focus on sound, stood alert with watchful eyes. He had spotted many deer in the spring and fall when they migrated to different elevations with the changing temperatures. But even now, in mid-summer, they had to adapt to the weather and descend in their variable environment in search of food. James ran his eyes over the torso in profile of the deer. Normally, it would have been almost perfectly camouflaged but now stood out in stark contrast to the white background. They both remained still, each examining the other, then the doe bent her columnar neck and nudged the snow from the undergrowth. Finding no food, she turned and loped casually away.
James stepped through the flap and squinting his eyes, reached out and stretched. He searched the peaks in the east, which looked like great waves in a stormy sea of rock. Each day he discovered new, silent crevices and contours in the mountain panorama. He raised his sun-burned face to the sky and it was warmed, but the rest of him began to shake with the cold. He blew into his hands and then ducked under the fir tree to select wood from his cache.
First he dropped some of the aspen bark peelings, which had curled into tight shavings while drying, into the base of the outside fire pit. They would produce a lot of smoke but would burn hot and quickly. Then some of the smaller branches which he cracked in his hands to the right size, then some of the larger branches and deadwood logs he had chopped with his axe. They made a nice little pyramid. He held a match with his fingertips and reached deep into the center. Bending over close to the ground he blew until the flames licked upwards. Already, the sun was warming the air. The snow began to cascade from the branches in silent clumps.
First coffee from a pot he set in the coals once the fire had been going strongly. Then eggs and bacon sizzling in a pan over the fire. He had brought them from town the last time he had gone in. He found work through an employment agency quite easily, having had some experience as a carpenter. Usually they would send him out to help construct or remodel another of the palatial monstrosities that dotted the mountain faces surrounding town. He would work for three or four days, and make enough money to not have to return again for a couple of weeks from his tipi. He felt infinitely rich. The smoke rose in a fragrant, white pillar stretching skyward.
* * *
Little bubbles wriggled and rose from the shady bottom of the river bed. Further down, in the valley, the Indians used to call the river the River of Roaring Thunder, but up here, it was still a rushing stream that drained tarns and collected the sweat from a melting glacier. It felt like a secret place in the middle of a forest of firs and spruces. James stood with his bare feet in unlaced boots on a half-submerged granite boulder. It was speckled with green and rust colored moss, and the piney smells of the forest were gradually overcome by the smell of sulfur that was released when the bubbles burst on the surface of the water. He considered.
The small, sheltered cove that protected the submerged spring would be scalding hot. Further out, where the stream crashed noisily over smooth, algae covered stones, it would be icy, having been snow only a few hours before. He pulled his shirt over his head, kicked off his boots, slid out of his pants and testing the water with one foot, lowered himself carefully from the boulder. Reaching back to the rock for balance, he stepped tentatively until he felt a mixture of temperatures on his feet. He sat down.
Small waves gently lapped at his stomach. Below the surface, he felt varying sensations of hot and cold along his legs and back. Beyond his feet along the shore, blue flowers on narrow stalks leaned out and swayed sedately over the rushing river.
He reached to a stone nearby where he had strategically placed a bar of soap and began to wash. The water glistened in the sunlight and he felt the cool air on his shoulders. He noticed a bee pollinating a flower, silently, busily crawling over its surface. It continued its work oblivious of James as he washed.
He cupped warm water in his hands and, closing his eyes, poured it over himself. It warmed his cool shoulders. Then, to rinse the sulfur from his body, he grasped a boulder with one hand, and steadying himself with it, rolled into the clear, rushing waters. Fully submerged, with his eyes closed and isolated in darkness, the shock of cold crashed over his body, and he felt the muscles in his legs and along the bottoms of his feet contract. He sprung up to the surface, and swaying with the suddenness of his leap, limped over the slippery stones to shore.
He shivered in the clear air. Without drying, he quickly pulled his pants on and slid into his shirt, which stuck to his wet back and chest. The granite boulder was cold under his feet as he stepped into his boots, and water dripped from his hair down into his eyes. He turned and quickly disappeared into the forest. The fragrant bed of needles yielded softly underfoot, and arrows of light descended on the carpeted floor of the forest, creating mottled patterns of shadow. The conifers halted abruptly, and James was once more in a stand of open and airy aspens.
Once in the clearing, he disappeared into the tipi, and emerged a moment later with a blanket and Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" tucked under his arm. Without stopping, he turned and followed a game trail back into the forest. Finally the aspens halted in stark transition. James stopped and looked up the face of the mountain. A funneled chute, light green with young underbrush descended on an enormous field of rocks. They created frenzied lines in profile, deposited there in layers, winter after winter, by the crashing inertia of avalanches.
Around the perimeter of the rock garden was an aspen grove. The trees nearest the edge were bent and mangled and at bizarre angles - a testimony of the furthest extent of tons of hurtling ice and snow. But the grove provided shelter from the wind. The sun shone straight down, and the heat was reflected back up by the rocks.
James leaped up, hopscotching from rock to rock, and rebounding from boulder to boulder, landing sure-footedly until he stopped at the biggest one, exactly at the center of the field. He climbed to the flat top, smoothed down the blanket, and placed his book on another rock within easy reach.
The rock felt warm under his hand. He took off his shirt, pants, and shoes, which stuck to his wet body, and spread them out on an adjacent rock to dry. James laid back on the rock and closed his eyes.
The breeze blew far away down in the valley. He felt a drop of water running down from his chest, around his ribs, and onto his back. He opened his eyes and looked up at the bright, azure sky. Later, he would read his book for a while, then probably hike further up into the mountains, and perhaps see another deer, or an elk, beaver, raccoon, hawk, eagle, insects - maybe even a bear. Or perhaps not. Then, with the early passing
of the sun behind the staunch and abrupt peaks, he would light a fire and cook his dinner before burrowing into his sleeping-bag, not long after the final descent of darkness. Tomorrow, he would get up and begin again.
He inhaled deeply, his chest and stomach rising. He smelled the dry moss, the rich, lush smell of undergrowth and soil, and the faint scent of the aspen trees. In the distance, he heard the buzzing of an insect. He closed his eyes.