Fire On The Mountain

Crouch, Idaho

These have been the most captivating miles of natural silence, hundreds of years of life towering over me in ponderosa pine; the Salmon River to the Payette River giving some semblance of conversation and cadence. Another voice. These have been also some of the hardest miles. After leaving Stanley it was 45 miles until I saw a house, a handful and then I was winding through the paths of fires gone by, and light swollowing forest. It had been over a week until I spoke to another person. Nobody stops on these roads. Everything is post season. In an hour maybe three cars go by; a logging truck, and a couple of hunters with their quads bouncing truck beds. Most of the smiles have been packed up and boxed away until next year. I have never been so deep in forest, in bear, in the knowing that no net should catch me if I fall. As the sound of water is mine so is all the uncertainity of a lone ship on a evergreen sea. Days are becoming shorter and travels in these canyons hold sunrise off till after 1 pm. (I checked) I have walked long mornings with the still paralyzed fingers of a frozen dawn bent around walking sticks, holding only because they remember holding more than not. Morning coffee waits until a few miles are behind me, my body remembering to warm. Food lasts half of the time summer rations stretch, and miles have fallen from twenty something to hiking just over 10 miles before sunset; dinner made on the shoulder of the road so bears won't bother my camp. It always seems that there are a few miles more before dark; a promise of a better camp. Days of climbing, days of decent soak my back with sweat and freeze my scalp. These have been lonely hollow miles without perscription except the consumption of more miles, and the constant twins called Hope and Memory. In my head I write to everyone I have ever known then let them fall away. Inner eyes already see the ocean and beam.

Last night I slept in a bone yard. A mountain lion has been making kills(8 miles of canyon east of town) from a saddle in a ponderosa pine perched above a deer run 20 yards from where I staked camp. Large cat tracks move all over the hillside, in and out of piles of more pink than white femurs and ribs, broken skulls and fragments. I was past tired. Past caring. I was past everything. Fire was set so I could watch the ominous tree become shadow black against the evening blue sky, cooking beans and Ramon noodles with my back to the river. Branches cracked and moved under weight I couldn't quite see until I could see nothing and the head lamp became a soft voice in a concert of darkness. No lion came down.
With all of my tree watching and then tying the remains of a food bundle into another pine I scald my food to the thin titanium pot. Leaving camp for the river I found the river was 40-60'down a sheer cliff. Carry water was down to a quart. I scrub with sticks and sand until my hands cramp. Sleep.
Morning came with all fingers hammered in cold. I decided to stow, java up and then march out. With all of the lion activity and new sign around the tent I was glad I released the saftey on the bear spray. I had read about the the father and daughter mauled by a grizzley. They had bear spray but couln't get the saftey off in their understandably freaked state. It cost the their scalps and nearly their lives. Half asleep I knew I might fumble with cold fingers and... I was glad I took off the saftey block until I shoved the canister into its sleave in the backpack and the canister fired directly into my throat, nose, and both eyes as I bent over my pack still drunk on sleep and cold. At first I thought, "This isn't so bad. They must prime the canisters with powder to keep the jet clean." Then the walls came down and all breath was lost. My eyes became welded shut. My throat bled mucus. Although my hands we already near frozen they were not cold to my face. They were not cold against the inferno building on my face. The river was far away and the climb down without eyes would be certain death. I would never make it. Dropping to my knees I found the last of the water in my 3 gallon tank. Less than a quart remained. Cupping my pathetic fingers with water to my face the water would not stop the fire; would not subdue the melting of my eyes and skin, the boiling of my lips. Sainity has left me. I blubber and feel the last of the water go through my fingers.
It was then that I remembered the fly cover from my tent that I had just removed and set aside. It was pounds heavier with hard morning ice and my night of frozen breath. Without eyes I searched for it. I pried open the vice of my lids to bleeding light and staggered in pain. My hands were screaming in the cold. There is no saving words for the joy I felt when my hands found the nylon sheet of ice. I melted patch after patch of nylon fabric against my eyes and lips, inhaled, and began again. The entire brown sheet was a dripping mass of melted ice before any sainity was mine. My hands were frozen stumps that moved retardedly past feeling, and still flames licked from under the surface of my face. My eye lids swelled to fill their sockets. My lips rolled out past the profile of my face with their own pulse. My face searched the tent fly for a patch of ice I may have missed then sank into the needles and fire.
Hours later at the Runaway Diner in Garden Valley I order soup to get some much needed vitimins into a body that has not seen a fruit or veg in 8 days. Leaning over the bowl to smell the heaven of white beans and sausage a plume of steam rises up to my face. The fire began again. I decide to let the soup cool as I squint out the window feeling my heart move in my lips.