I look around me and I immediately know that I have reached the end of the trail, the place where the squiggly line I've been following up the bottom of the canyon abruptly stops. It doesn't take a GPS receiver or a map painstakingly compiled by cartographers armed with 21st century space-age technology to realize that my hike is over for the day. The increasingly frequent deadfalls of downed trees that I must skirt and the correspondingly diminishing evidence of human foot traffic makes that pretty obvious. It has been hours since I saw the last hikers (a young couple with heavy backpacks scurrying out ahead of the coming storm) and there are no recent human footprints at the stream crossings. I note several trails leading off through the oak thickets, but they lack design and by their random, chaotic nature it is very evident that they were not made by human feet nor ever intended for human use.
I take a seat on an old log dragged into position next to a campfire ring. A few sticks of neatly stacked firewood lie readily at hand, waiting patiently for the next visitor. Others have camped here, perhaps toasted marshmallows over flickering orange flames, laughed, drank beer, made love in tents pitched nearby. But those visions seem dim and far away today, and the ashes in the rock circle at my feet are many months cold; a week ago this place was under a foot of snow. It has been a long time since anyone slept here.
As I eat my sandwich, prepared many hours before in the migraine glare of fluorescent lights, I realize that this place is an outpost of sorts. Like the Roman frontier forts of two thousand years ago it is the last bastion of civilized presence, a kind of equilibrium point built where what is known balances precisely with the unknown wilderness beyond. Past this point lies terra incognita: the exclusive domain of wild animals, impossible terrain, and strange, brooding trees unaccustomed to human eyes. On the map it is a small place, less than a square mile compressed between tightly crowded contour lines. But here on the ground, reached only after much effort and sweat, it feels very large indeed.
The single mountain lion track, left very recently in the mud along the stream crossing just yards from where I sit, speaks volumes of the wildness of my temporary stopover. This is not a human place and the track is a sign left for those that might wish to enter.
I am not alone here.
A primordial chill creeps its way slowly up my spine and I revel in the momentary alarm klaxon of danger. It is a welcome visitor to my altogether too safe and sanitized modern existence. For a second some part of me considers retreating away from this place and its silent, lurking killer. But, no, I will stay. This is part of what I have come to experience. If the lion had really wanted to eat me it has already had ample opportunity to do so. It's probably lounging atop some rock ledge, regarding me with lazy half-closed eyes, hoping I'll just finish my lunch and leave it to its business of dozing and waiting for deer.
I stare into the dimness beyond the edge of the clearing. I can hear the rush of a waterfall off to my left, living water gurgling and splashing its way down the stream bed towards the desert below. Ponderosa and douglas fir trees sigh softly overhead, gray overcast sky looming darkly beyond towering rock walls. The rustling of last Fall's gambel oak leaves reveals the presence of wind spirits dancing and pirouetting amongst the forest detritous. Somewhere to my right I hear the staccato knocking of a Hairy Woodpecker pecking for insects in a fir snag. I smell damp earth and last year's moldy pine needles recently escaped from the clutches of Winter snows.
In a way it is a disconcerting and even frightening place, and not just because of the big cat sight unseen in the forest nearby. This is the place where Civilization stops and Wilderness begins. There are no tourists here, no old men herding noisy grandchildren, no women pampering chihuahua dogs, no bikes or ebullient college students sporting ipods and carrying too much (or too little) water. Cell phones don't work here (thank god!) and even if they did, turning one on and texting out Hey, dude guess where I am would be tantamount to sacrilege. This is the real deal and it is very hard to find around these parts. It's been shattered into a thousand tiny slivers by a hundred years of progress, and chased into inaccessible worthless side canyons and high, rugged mountains. You have to really work to find it, but if you look closely it's there, if only a shadow of its former self.
I briefly entertain the thought of continuing on past this final outpost, squirming my way through the slimy remnants of bracken ferns and thickets of locust and gambel oak to peer down into dark pools hidden between boulders as big as houses. But I've already gone too far - much farther than most - and there is a storm on the way. I've intruded enough. Reluctantly I finish my sandwich, pack away my gear, and start back towards my truck miles below. Looking back over my shoulder I silently thank the lion for allowing me a glimpse, however fleetingly, into that other, older world from which we have insulated ourselves and almost entirely forgotten.
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