A September Encounter

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While it saddens me to say goodbye to friends who retire elsewhere, I understand their reasons for leaving Craig. I can be as grumpy as anybody about life in my small town: the absence of shoe stores, medical specialists and grandchildren, the presence of turkey buzzards and un-muffled pickup trucks, the irritation of mosquitoes, the length of our winters. But my husband and I are content here; we will remain.

We chose to retire in Craig in large part because nature here is unbridled, immediate, a powerful presence easily accessed.

A few years ago, I experienced the natural richness of our area as I walked one of the many trails that twine like tendrils of spaghetti behind the Sandrock Cliffs north of town. The unexpected encounter riveted my attention and saturated my senses; to this day, a glimpse of furtive movement, a September sun falling on my face or the spicy smell of sage deliver it to me again.

I shared the moment  with a Sue, a friend, and her companion Eddie, a small dog of dignity, on a Colorado morning filled with the promise of perfection. Eddie was the first to notice. Romping and sniffing back and forth in front of us, he sensed another presence and froze in place, as though turned into a pillar of salt for disobedience.

Sue and I, involved in a wandering conversation, eventually became aware of Eddie’s lack of movement and, concerned, scanned the path ahead looking for him. When we found him, his intense gaze directed ours. Twelve yards to our right, a statuesque silhouette stood on the crest of a yellowed hill backlit by a blue-white sky devoid of summer’s intense luster.

“It’s beautiful,” Sue breathed with the wonder and excitement she reserves for a pot shard found on a desert bluff, a summit view of mountain peaks marching into distant clouds or the Yampa River, ice-bound and lined by frosted trees on a foggy morning.

The three of us — a dog on high alert and two talkative women pulled out of ourselves by what we saw — stood as still as the shadowed elk: its muscles quieted; its head and antlers turned toward us; each point and branch of its symmetrical spread outlined by the unpolished sky.

Eddie quivered with an electric charge of awakened instinct, his ears, like teepees, standing tall. Sue and I stared in silence, wanting to observe completely, to secure forever this September moment of motionless splendor.

The elk, the most imposing member in our stare-down, tired of it first. Our presence no longer interested him, and he told us so with a stately exit, turning in a slow, four-quarter beat, moving at a regal pace: unfrightened, unhurried, unimpressed.

We watched; and when we could no longer see him, we  exclaimed about his size, his power, his control of the situation and our joy at having had a front-row seat for his dismissive performance.

We then turned back to the trail, and Eddie again ran in front, patrolling for tantalizing smells. But an ordinary walk had been transformed to the extraordinary by our encounter with a commanding wild animal. A few blocks from our homes.

And that’s why I love living in Craig.