Desecrators of the Realm
Walking on the property Longs Peak to the right up ahead the saddle of the mountain with the big rock formation we called “Jocko’s Rock” (always chagrined that it wasn’t called that on the topographical map), a fall day on the logging road through the first meadow where the elk herd often gathered. No one around, very quiet except the animals but that was just part of the environment you barely noticed since their sounds were everywhere. Elk, deer, bobcats, raccoons, porcupines, crows, ravens, owls, bees, chipmunks, all creatures great and small (in acknowledgment of James Herriot, whose book of that title had been made into a BBC television series we watched religiously) making all their sundry snorts, sneezes, clicks, chompings and scratchings. But on another audio level, maybe because the human ear can’t pick up all that, so for me there was the profound silence and stillness of a waning fall day in the Rocky Mountains.
Now one very crucial rule about the 300 acres behind the house was that under no circumstances whatsoever was hunting allowed. Deer and Elk hunting were big around there, but this was neutral territory a veritable zoo without walls and no guns. Well, actually there was one exception. Fred Carpenter the caretaker of the property hunted deer once a year because it was his right having lived there and watched over that parcel of alpine paradise for thirty years. He knew that land better than anyone and had cared for it, protected it, and most of all knew and, excuse the cliché but in this case it’s true, had a deep respect for all its animal inhabitants. Hunting the way it used to be, for a purpose, with a mythic ineffable understanding between hunter and hunted, an eternal honorable sad but necessary struggle of life and death. Like Orion and the wild beasts or Faulkner’s The Bear, not some phony guides and high-powered rifles with gizmos attached utter bullshit a lot of these “hunters” practice. A man, alone, with a 30-06 going up to the mountain, tracking, over every hill and down every gulley, knowing (and loving) his prey. One buck, seven pointer, Fred looking straight into that buck’s eyes I’m sorry old friend I have to do this, one shot, true, and the buck fell.
Fred gutted, skinned, bled it out and butchered the buck, the only one for the whole year, and put the meat in his freezer and always gave us some. Which was really good meat, a little tough but that was venison from a deer that had run, jumped, cavorted, mated and lived a full life. Fred Carpenter was a good man. So this one day I’m walking up the road probably picking long grass to put between my teeth, looking down at the ground daydreaming about whatever ten year old boys daydream about when I felt something was off, a minute disequilibrium in the cosmos, and looked up where not fifty yards away two men wearing orange hunting vests and Elmer Fudd hats were standing. With rifles, facing away from me toward the ridge. I was rooted to the spot, just completely in shock, because this was a transgression beyond imagining on that protected, loved land. It wasn’t just a little incursion; they were standing out there in plan sight not too far from our house blatantly invading sacred territory. I remember worrying the most that they were going to see me, and that something bad was going to happen if they did. Seconds ticked by as I stood still as a statue, their indecipherable voices murmuring upsetting the balance but they didn’t turn around and finally after what seemed like eons I uprooted myself and first stealthily walking backwards then turning ran back to the house at unimaginable speed. Burst through the front door, panting, my mom was on the phone I jumped up and down spastically squirming spitting “Hunters, there’s two hunters!” At first, being a mother and inured to my panic she told me to shush she was on the phone but I kept at it, please, please, get off the phone you have to come, hunters! Finally, again, after what seemed like forever, she told the person that something was up I was agitated she got off the phone. “Hunters? On the property?” “Yes! Up in the meadow!” and with that we were out the door together running up the road, me faster but her not trailing too far behind, because she was more adamant about the hunting ban than anybody, even Fred.
Rushing past the first fence up the rocky wheel ruts and around a slight corner to where I had been and – nothing. Nobody. No men in orange vests with rifles. An empty meadow. Trying to get our breath I said there there that’s where they were, pointing emphatically. But it was just the grass and pine trees, quiet and serene. To her credit she didn’t doubt me and we searched for a while but there was zero trace of these two phantoms I’d most surely seen with my own two eyes. It was like they were aliens or something, beamed up to the ship in the few minutes between the time I’d seen them and now. No trace. Like the Bermuda Triangle. I’m sure my mother placated me and said you know we don’t allow any hunting and we’ll catch anybody that tries, but it disappointed me so much not to be able to catch them red handed, those spectral desecrators of the realm.
