Bud Robert studied the fractures in the cliff above his camp after he heard the noise. A small slide of gravel and sand showered down a chute and came to rest near a bristlecone pine at the trail’s switch back. Probably a mountain goat, he thought to himself. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t sure how long he had to live anymore, but this place in the middle of a wilderness suited him like no other place and he no longer feared death. He poured water from his canteen into the small teapot and waited for it to boil. It was evening and trout were beginning to dimple the surface of the lake. He turned his back to the slide and considered fishing, but reclined against his Manny pack and fed a few more sticks into the fire and waited. The mules were hobbled and wandered slowly through the small meadow picking at the last of the grass. Setting up hunting camp was Bud Robert’s job. He hated guiding and the grousing of the wealthy hunters who came each year. Bud Robert would accept little help in setting up base camp, but the small Spike camps and the guiding he left to his two boys and his uncle Herman, who still liked to trail horses despite the accident that took his own son twenty years ago. Bud Robert’s back ached and his right knee was swollen. But this was no place to feel bad about anything. It was the fifty second year he had made it to his spot. His first trip was with his Grandfather Charlie at the age of eight. He remembered Charlie pointing to the trail above them while they sat around a fire and fried Bud Robert’s first Cutthroat trout in a pan with butter and he looked up to see his first glimpse of elk. The seven point bull had clambered down the trail and lifted his proud rack high, stared boldly at the two of them before melting magically and quietly into the thick stand of lodgepole pines at the head of the lake. It was fall and it was a memory out of the half light of a sunset that would determine the trajectory of the rest of his life. As a young boy, Bud Robert was too naïve about the world to know just yet, how wilderness had touched him in that instant, but, he guessed even then, that the rest of the world would never come close to matching the promise nor the intensity of that primordial moment. An evening breeze carried a chill from the arctic across the plains of Canada. He heard the faint calls of retreating geese too high to see with the naked eye. The Rocky Mountain Front that surrounded the camp to the east was his refuge and his home. The water began to boil and Bud Robert poured himself a cup of tea. He waited and listened and in the silence of this spot, he suddenly realized that he had not really listened to anything ever since Ruth had died. -Excerpt MERCY
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:56:27 +0000
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