The wind woke me, roaring in the trees overhead and sending my backcountry permit slapping against my tent. I rolled over to write, hoping the wind would die down as morning warmed.
By 6:45 I was on the trail watching the sun light ease into the valley. Still short of breath on the ascent, I paused often, turning to face the immensity of space surrounding me. Ruby-crowned Kinglets flitted in the trees overhead, alpine sunflowers lifted their faces to the rising sun, a White-crowned sparrow flew across the path then sang from the top of an alpine willow. Waterfalls poured from under lingering snow banks, the roaring water audible over the wind.
I climbed higher. Conifers gave way to willow shrubs, and long-stemmed wildflowers to low, matted species. Moss campion bloomed atop its cushion of leaves, and Colorado columbine danced in rock crevices. American Pipits bobbed their way across the tundra in search of food.
I reached the bottom of a snowfield, rocks and gravel lined its margins: the snow too recently retreated to have allowed plants to emerge. My hiking poles dug in and slowly I worked up the slope, my feet less sure on the loose ground.
The saddle opened up above me, a gently rounded expanse of alpine buttercups nodding in the wind. Vegetation had erased the trail, marked now only by cairns, which rested on scattered boulders. I crossed the saddle and sat, lifting my binoculars. On the falling slope of Fairchild Mountain five bighorn ewes grazed. Three were gray, the color of the surrounding rock, only their white rumps and movement distinguished them. The other two were lighter, buff and beige. As I watched two lambs leaped from a higher outcrop and ran, stone to stone, to join their mothers. They tore around the group inciting play among the older sheep, who bucked and danced in return.
Behind the sheep hung the high peaks of the Rockies, still etched in snow. Snow that as it melted would run to the Pacific, the Atlantic. When I crossed the divide tomorrow, the rivers I followed would flow west.
Thanks for letting us go along on your hike. Up, up, up we go without a heavy pack while you carry the load and do the panting and rapid heart beat. I imagine the birds, flowers, wildlife, especially the frisking lambs as we keep alert. Joy, Mary
ReplyDeleteThe Continental Divide has always seemed to me as vital as the International Date Line, which I've never crossed, and you've reawakened that moment of first cresting it where the journey to two oceans begins! Thanks, Jeny, for your beautiful vision and for your translations of the power of nature into words.
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