It’s Wednesday morning, and I’m looking for a moose in the mountains of Colorado. Maybe a bear. A rattlesnake, a mountain lion, a lynx. So far I have seen two mule deer, a fox on the drive to Colorado from Kansas, a chipmunk, and a ton of aspen trees still hanging onto their spring green, but I’ve decided I want to see something exotic, something unavailable where I live in Lawrence.
We’re staying in a cabin we rented just above Cripple Creek, an old mining town turned now to casinos, a different kind of gold. Jenn’s brother and sister are here, and her sister’s husband and their two daughters, who remind me of my daughters at that age (13 and 8). We’ve escaped to the mountains for our first vacation in years, and in-between visits to Garden of the Gods and Royal Gorge, I’ve been slipping out onto the deck to scan the surrounding hillsides.
It’s cold this morning, and I still haven’t adjusted to the altitude. There are snow-capped peaks all around us, even in late-June, and the wind carries a hint of winter or the cold of higher climes—we can hear it breaking above the treeline while the clouds careen across the big mountain sky. I have a pair of cheap binoculars with me, and I stand on the deck in the wind and scan the surrounding hillsides.
On the mountain to the east aspen and old pine catch the morning sun. Farther down, where the sun doesn’t reach, there is darkness in the draws and valleys. There’s a clearing to the east as well, a low ravine that might have once been the start of a stream, but is now dry and choked with scrub brush. A narrow dirt road cuts through, but we’ve seen more mule deer on the road than cars. In the evening the sun will catch the other mountain arm, and I’ll scan the hillside with the sun on the opposite side.
To the south both mountaintops are bare—one has been mined extensively, and the other has a mansion atop it. Through the binoculars it looks smaller than the house we’ve rented, but it’s at least three times the size. So far I haven’t seen a light on at night or a car in the driveway, and I wonder why it’s there. Who owns it. Why, in such a magnificent place, it sits silent and empty all the time.
Moving farther west I look for bighorn sheep on the next ridge. This mountain is much closer, and through the binoculars I can see individual leaves on the trees. Narrow paths the sheep might clatter down.
Father west still I can see the beginning of the back range. Without the binoculars there’s only a faint smudge that might be a mountain, but with them it becomes a familiar friend. In the morning, with the sunlight turning the mountain to fire, it might be a symbol or a sign, but I don’t know what. At night, in the last daylight, I think I do, but night comes down before I can come to any conclusions.
The last range to the west looks red in the last light. Not quite the same color as Garden of the Gods, but close. Later I’ll look up what makes the rock red, what geological forces moved these mountains. I’ll read about the white men who found them, and the Native Americans who lived here for 10,000 years before white men came and put up ziplines and novelty shops that sell semi-precious gems.
For now I am just looking. There are a few clearings higher up the hill the house is on, and I scan them for game trails, for hook bushes, for droppings. At the Garden of the Gods visitor center there’s a game that helps you identify different animal droppings, among them moose and mountain lion, but I haven’t seen any poop yet except for the rabbit who leaves perfectly round turds in little piles next to the park bench outside.
When I finish scanning the hills behind the house, I go back to the east and start over. In the ravine I see what might be a wild turkey, but it doesn’t move for five minutes so I figure it’s only a trick of the eyes. The binoculars are hard to hold steady enough to see what’s out there over such vast distances. Hard to focus, hard to find a fixed point, hard to figure out what it is you’re looking at.
The truth is, I don’t know what I’m looking for. Ostensibly I am looking for moose or bear or bobcat, but the truth is I am just looking. Watching, waiting. Observing the landscape and wondering about my place in it. What I can do to preserve it. What I can do to make someone understand the importance of observing, of cataloguing the things we see and wondering what they mean, to us, and the world.
See, I’ve been thinking a lot about observing lately. Cataloguing. Taking stock. Next Monday, after vacation is over, I will go back home for a biopsy. A few weeks ago I went to the doctor after a month of stomach problems. The MRI found a tumor on my right kidney. If they had not been looking for it, they would not have found it, which now has me looking at everything I see, wondering if I’ve ever seen it before. If I’ll ever see it again.
What I like most about the mountains is that they’re different. Different trees, different weather, different outlook on life. I am unfamiliar with this landscape, which makes me want to observe it. Learn about it. There are ways of understanding the world, if only we look, and one thing I’ve learned over 20 years of writing essays is that if you aren’t looking, you won’t find anything—if you aren’t looking, you aren’t writing.
All the nature writers will tell you about the importance of observation. They’ll tell you it’s the looking itself that gives you perspective. Annie Dillard walked Tinker Creek. Barry Lopez followed rivers to their beginnings and endings. Gretel Erlich wrote about the solace of open spaces.
They were writing about themselves. Humanity. What it means to walk around on this good earth. They were writing about all the things we can understand if only we look.
It’s cold out here on the deck, but I’m looking anyway. When I finish looking I’ll go inside and try to write about what I’ve seen. So far there’s been no moose. No bear or bobcat, not even a coyote or cow. Maybe there won’t be anything but the wind and the big sky partially blocked by mountains, as if there are things we can’t see, but that, too, is an understanding. One of emptiness, or expectation, depending on how we look at it.
If there is no moose, if the thing I am waiting for does not show up, I might write about the looking itself: the way the sun looks crossing that clearing to the east in the evening. Or the way the red rocks turn different colors, depending on the sun. The way the chipmunk we saw sat up, as if it might speak to us, tell us something we didn’t know. I might write about what I can’t see inside of me, not even with careful observation—how it takes machines to do that, and learned men to try to heal it.
I might write about the empty houses here, and human greed. How the mountains push us together, or keep us apart. I might write, as I have done here, about the simple act of observing, how sometimes we can’t see everything. Not what is inside us, not what will be revealed in the future. I might tell you we write about what happens. Not what will happen, or what we want to happen, but what does happen, the things we have seen that can be shared in the hope the reader might learn something, which is an act of hope. I am hoping to keep looking. For more mountains. For a clean bill of health. I am hoping to see a moose, and to tell you all about it.
Thank you for sharing this with us so beautifully. We writers are the lookers, the re-lookers, the examiners searching, seeing.
Please know I’ll be beaming you good juju next Monday, Paul. (My sister was in a similar situation and hers was not cancerous.) Enjoy the rest of your vacation. I hope it’s filled with familiar laughter and extraordinary creatures.
Sounds like you're enjoying your time here in Colorado, Paul. What a beautiful post. Wishing you all the best on your biopsy on Monday. And I hope you see a moose too.