Legends...

Bridger, Montana

Into autumn, into history, into the frames of movies I walk and everything is smoke riding on the tops of mountains. A week ago a black bear decided to attack a man sleeping in his tent past the point when he woke up screaming. Then the bear jumped up and down on the man imprisoned inside his tent. The bear wanted in to harvest the man, the man wanted out to preserve his life. Finally another camper with a baseball bat convinced the bear to run off.
I arrived in Bridger with the sun burnt into my face, deeper than bone. A couple of men gathered around me to say hello and ask if I saw the sight of the bear jumping in rage over his fresh wrap meal. I was in the next valley I explained, but word travels over these mountains fast. I tried to grin at the humor they found but it was weak with my mind placing my flesh, my bones under the same horrible force alone in some unknown camp.
Given a lemonade by one of the men on Main I lighten at news of a free park to camp in without once again preparing for bear...at least as much. The Crow res. is just to the east though the phone has yet to give me a human on the other end of the line. I consider Crow country. I consider winter coming soon with the same scale over my worn out map. Fire is all over the north and west; so much fire the Chamber of Com. tells me to head north until I'm touching Canada and then go south and west across toward Oregon as if I am driving a van. I lip the ice lemonade that is now more water than lemon and smell even in the heat the coming of fall, knowing neither man or beast can find reason in this smoke brought by wind. For now I walk north, talking to strangers while unconsciously pulling on my shirt tails that are still giving cooling moisture from the Yellowstone River I sat in miles ago. I am talking too much to myself these days, days of eating pan warmed flat bread on the riverbank, wondering which road I'll take..or which road will take me past fields of fat apples, and bears that lie like breathing grass, roads that bottleneck into walking suicide I find I shoot myself with over and over again.
Mornings are cool now. Stories, they are everywhere. Legends have lived here I tell myself. Legends of the fall.