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Good cold, bad cold

I’ve never actually measured it, but I think the change happens somewhere around 10 degrees above zero.

Somewhere above ten is the good cold. It braces you, calls out the frontier history in you, and challenges you. You respond by focusing in tighter on getting the fire going, because being sloppy and rushed about it will just keep you cold longer. You respond by loving your zero-degree sleeping bag even more.

In the good cold, I want to run out to meet it. The good cold fills me with the knowledge that this is real life, and I am beating it.

In the bad cold, things are a little different. In the bad cold, I just want to get inside, crank up my electric heat, and not even come near the windows because those will be too cold.

I’m not exactly sure where the boundary is, between good cold and bad cold.

But negative ten degrees is the bad cold. Of that, I’m pretty sure this morning.

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A wet forest just above freezing

20130929_143307On my way home from Lincoln yesterday, the pull of the forest overpowered me as I went over the top of MacDonald Pass. I turned in to the Continental Divide Trailhead, pulled my bow out of the truck, donned all the warm weather gear I had, and wandered in to spend some time in the creation.

Razor-sharp wind whipped across the mountaintop, and cut through my thin gloves quickly. Slush and snow covered the trail from the parking area forward, making careful attention to my footing a necessity.

Before I even reached the forest, I glanced up from picking the least-slick spot to put my foot and saw a brown shape moving against the trees. Like lightning my head came up. I lifted my bow as the animal came into view.

Big!

That’s no muley, I thought. That’s a… cow. Not a cow elk, a bovine. Boooo!

Snow covered the ground in the forest, but the treeline stopped the wind. drops of melting snow fell from every tree in the 38-degree weather. Several trees brought low by wind blocked the trail, and made picking my way forward a very slow, wet endeavor.

Eventually I found a stump to sit on and see if any deer came by. None did, but the forest made up for their absence. The song of distant wind beyond the trees beat the sound of tires on a highway, hands down. Trees creaked, ice-cold snowmelt dripped, and God loved me.

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The good kind of tired

Last weekend I paid my first visit to the Bob Marshall Wilderness. I didn’t go much more than a mile or two over the border, but the beauty of it still struck me.

The area was largely burnt out; my friends and I were near the end of our trek before we saw any living trees. One thinks of dead, burned forests as ugly. One is wrong. A haunting, desolate beauty whispered all around us.

We found huge moose tracks about the size of a human hand. The maker of the print no doubt rested along the river we walked past, but we never caught a glimpse. Just the hint of what we might find someday turned a disappointing hunting trip into a memory.

 

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Anticipating the forest

Tomorrow I go into the woods with two friends, hunting elk.

There’s a strange desire curve that goes with hunting. In the time before I go, it fills my whole mind and makes it hard to think of anything else. I picture the fleeting glimpse of an elk, not even the whole animal. In my minds eye I simply see the rippling muscle behind his shoulder, and try to pick out one specific hair on which to put my sight. I see it over and over, in a hundred different ways. I lay awake thinking of how hard it will be to pack him out after I get him. I worry about how much it will cost to get him stuffed and mounted if I accidentally take a trophy animal. I worry about how to make room in my freezer for the meat.

All of this, of course, before the animal is even seen, let along arrowed, let alone dead.

Once I get to the camp, though, everything changes. Get a fire going, get a bit of red wine in a tin camping cup… and I think, “The elk can wait. It would be so hard to dress him, and cost so much to have him mounted…”

But then I push through, I walk out into the setting sun to scout, I wake up the next morning while it’s still black outside. And everything I fantasized about fades away. The reality of forest and mountain wipes out all the daydreams about trophy bulls. The delight of moving through the forest soundlessly fills me. The sounds of forest creatures going about their lives pulse with power and mystery.

I cannot explain it. I cannot point to anything in scripture that would tell me why it’s true. But in the mountains, much more than in the city, I can feel the closeness of an omnipotent being who speaks universes into existence. Forest mornings, it’s possible to get a sense of the raw, mind-numbing POWER of God.

This weekend, I know I will be content to sit in the presence of the Father and enjoy the fact that he permits me to watch him work. If he lets me take part, and help steward his creation by taking game, so much the better.