View From the Mountain

At around 1500 feet, having climbed up shelves, and around brush and cliffs, I could finally stop and catch my breath. The view had cleared. Earlier, I moved slowly through silent fog, which had burned away by late morning. Now, as I peered out from an opening of rock and open slope, the head of Swan Cove was visible. The upper meadows lay in the shadow of a fog bank and only the tops were visible like islands in the sky. This gave a sense of mystery to the island; a dream-like mood in soft passages. Meanwhile, the high tide had left a margin of yellow beach grass that curved around to a stream on the far side. Here, in summer, the salmon returned, while the bear wandered in search for food. Sometimes up here in the brush or along the shelves, bear also came and went. Being here, by myself, a solitary hunter and hiker, the reality of running into a bear was always a possibility, but I accepted this risk for coming up here. Still, my worry was not in the climb; rather the risk came after killing a deer and cleaning it in some cramped place with a limited view. So, after the deer was down and set up for gutting, the ravens would arrive, their wings sluicing the air with a familiar sound. They called other ravens which soon arrived. I cleaned the deer as fast as I could: fifteen minutes...knife gutting; cutting the deer's throat, opening the belly, and removing the organs...always on alert; the gun propped against a tree within reach. Then, after wards I tied a line to the deer, dragged it down around the cliffs, over dead fall, and onto each of the shelves before reaching the beach. By then, the tide had gone out. I waited. Soon, the skiff would be by to pick me up and bring the meat back to the cabin. And so it went each day, climbing and bushwhacking, hunting and enjoying the moments of solitude, in the far meadows or up on the steep slopes of the mountains.