How to use this Page

[Last installment of what I call a quasi-vision quest. Read first installment here and the previous one here.]

The dog and I have three choices for where to bed down for the night. The first niche rests on a ledge surrounded by four-foot boulders, facing southwest; it offers the widest view, and I judge it would be exhilarating at sunrise. Problem is, it's so well enclosed, my dream-bears could unexpectedly come upon us in the dark, through no fault of their own. The second is on the plateau, but affords only bare rock for sleeping space, since large red ants have colonized everywhere else. So we must take the third, on the face of the mt., that provides some safety from oscine or insect. There's space enough for the dog and a smaller for me to keep watch. I don't plan on sleeping; that's not what I'm here for. I take my last photo.

After securing Manchas's food high up a scrawny pine and my untouched crackers on a ledge, where neither can be reached by Mr. Bear, and as the sun caresses the crest of the western mountains, I light my second cig and wait. For what?

Not unlike the early Great Plains indigenes, to my rear I can see "Pike's" Peak, which is still visible all the way to the Kansas border. Unlike those first Americans, I wasn't drawn here by any belief or understanding of the Great Spirit embodied in that rocky mountain. I am very like campers and tourists who consider the area more suited for pitching tents and hill-climb racing. A crown on the eastern mountains gleams of urban lights of Colo. Springs. How far away have I really come?

But the dog and I are alone. We're so high up, no park noise reaches us, no electrical lighting, though throughout the night, jet engines and airliner's flashing lights high up will too often pass over. As the daylight leaves us, most of the birds cease their activity and communing. One last drink of water for both of us to toast the coming night.

After maybe an hour of starlight my mind ceases dwelling on daily concerns. I don't have to worry, plan or decide anything about the house, the job, the truck or the world I left behind, even though only for this night. So what then will I "think" about? The brain requires something to occupy itself and exist, no?

Some time later I realize how by myself I truly am, and not simply in the sense that no one sits beside me. More, I'm not in a room by myself, surrounded by my electronics, furniture, paper and constructed walls, enclad by my modern man-ness, there's little here of creations or possessions of artificial making. I have the small thin blanket, clothes and bare necessities. No tent or sleeping bag to enclose me; I won't even make a primitive man's fire to keep away my bears or relieve the night's chill when it comes--the closest I'll get to deprivation. I consider going totally bare skin, but am too civilized and don't want to shock Manchas.

So what's the deal about being alone out here? First, it's disorienting. The organic and inorganic that normally root you to society's concrete foundations are absent, and I miss them. Light waves of vertigo flow through me, as if I'm repeatedly on the verge of falling from lack of reference to hold onto. I keep righting myself and my mind grasps for reliable and familiar objects, purposes and goals, but they're not there. Right before the sensation threatens to reach an anxiety attack, it stops. It will flash back later, but only in minor, tolerable versions.

Now something else threatens: my heartbeat is the loudest thing about, no owl will hoot this night, no cougar will snarl here. Silence only seems to promise boredom. Will I not make it till dawn because I died of that? How unromantic. How, boring.

Manchas stirs, twirls and circles to find better footing. He lies down and attempts to hold onto the slope with his nails to keep from sliding. He does this a few times through the night, but will succeed in getting much more sleep than I.

I take a swallow of water. It tastes incredibly good, more refreshing than I can remember. We're down to a quart.

I peer into the darkness under the trees where the stars don't reach. I imagine primitive man doing the same, with his survival sometimes at stake if he fails to see something. I remove my glasses to see as he saw and wonder how my genetic line made it through those times. Seeing so poorly, my ancestor must have easily qualified as beer food. Yet, I'm here, so survival of the fittest must not be the whole story. Pure luck played some part.

After awhile of the darkness-peering I look to the heavens. I haven't googled what I saw and don't plan to. At the time I assume it is some optical imprint from staring at the darkness. Everywhere between the stars fills with a mosaic, that reminds me of Palenque inscriptions carved in the stone there, but these aren't Maya. Mine are abstract, without any characteristic design, lacking rational meaning. Their complexity, intricateness beg capturing, drawing onto paper that I have but won't use. Their beauty stays in my mind to this day. At some point they fade into the black of outer space. I assume I can make them appear again by repeating the process. I probably didn't have my vision, but I feel slightly exhilarated, anyway.

I expected the wind would kick up during the night but it stays light, hardly reaching us, down as we are below the crest. A couple of gnats and horseflies visit briefly, about all the wildlife that makes its presence known to us. This will not qualify for an episode of Wild Kingdom.

The near full moon is high up now. At least I can see Mr. Bear if he tries making it down the two narrow path to us. But I doubt we'll be entertained by that; it's too damn steep. Manchas rises, this time not just to find a better spot. He stares fixedly, to what looms above us, listening for something on the crest. It's nothing large or he would bark. Probably a chipmunk or such. He'll do this a couple more times tonight, again never barking. Just staring. Maybe wondering. He finds a new spot.

I can't find my own. I should have done more removing of smaller rocks to make a comfortable bed for the two of us. I take naps, but the mt. doesn't allow me more than some minutes of sleep. My shaking knees awake from what will be the last nap; they shake from the cold. They won't stop. I don my sweatshirt. It doesn't stop the knees. Then it's all my legs. I wrap them with the blanket. That doesn't work either.

I do the math. It averages fifteen degrees cooler here than the maybe fifty-five in the Springs. That means it's something like forty, maybe colder. No wonder I'm shaking. The Boy Scout motto pops into my head. Dummy me may be prepared for a vision, but not for the mt.'s cold. I could find some wood to build a fire, but it might take me out of what we climbed so high to find. Now to see if a little temperature deprivation will help find that vision.

Manchas of course isn't shaking. Curling up with him doesn't help me enough to make it worth tolerating his dog smell. He's my companion, comrade in this, but there's an olfactory limit to all friendships. The sweatshirt and blanket feel like they've lost their thickness. My shivering becomes uncontrollable. It's too dark, unsafe to go down to where it's undoubtedly warmer. After what feels like forever, I give up trying to control the uncontrollable and let the cold in.

My body is hallucinating. Not visually, not through any of the five senses. Some other way. Maybe it's early frostbite symptoms. Don't matter. I just shake. My body feels different. Disconnected. Sighing. Restful. And then the shaking stops.

But the feeling doesn't. Where the cold and the mt. took me and my body, I don't know. It stays on, in me. Now weeks later, it's still here. Another place I can be, put myself into. It's good. However long it lasts doesn't matter. I'm sure I could produce it again.

And it's more than just a physical feeling. I'm looking at many things as if I'm turned sideways, from an angle I think others might not see. I won't explain all of what I see from there, because it won't necessarily mean anything to anyone.

At sunrise I don't go atop the crest to check what Manchas had heard--no cause for spoiling the mystery, though no bear was definitely a disappointment. But I knew two things. In a sense, the mt. had physically beaten me. And I let that mentally beat myself. We were leaving, but both of us were taking some of the mt. with us. Manchas is a housedog, but every night now he's reluctant to go inside. I think he wants me to sleep on the patio with him. I don't know why I haven't yet.

On the other hand, the beating I, at least, took had its other side, as already described. I took that from the mt. when we went straight down its side instead of returning on the longer route. Several times we slid, fell, struck things, but managed to not break anything.

A couple we passed on the trail called us early risers. "We spent the night up there." They looked at us disbelievingly. That was fine.

I'd only gone twenty-four hours without food and wasn't really hungry, but stopped at the Hungry Bear in Woodlawn Park. I ate only half of the delicious breakfast and drank half of the juice. I'm usually a pig about a great meal but just wasn't hungry. Believe me when I say you've got to eat there--blitzes, pastries, home-style cooking like restaurants used to serve. Before our decline in the world.

We took Colo. 76 to avoid civilization for as long as possible. People warned me about delays because of flooding and "the fire." They didn't warn me about how I'd react to it. Miles of road and acres of black naked trees on both sides. You turn a curve thinking you've seen the last of it and there's another mountainside's worth of burned tree and almost bare ground.

My reaction disturbs me. I don't think of the homes burned, the family tragedies, the lost income, ugly devastation. I see Nature. Earth's life cycles. Equilibrium returned to imbalance. I can't find in myself compassion for the "loss" suffered here. What happened just seems right. That's the mt. in me talking.

I haven't told you everything of my quasi-vision quest because this piece is long enough as it is. Mine obviously differed from tatiana's; hers reads of the real and the believing. If you haven't yet, do check out her post for something further out than mine.

I end with sitting out on the patio a few days ago. A hawk flew over Manchas and I, coming to rest twenty feet up in one of my trees. He stayed for minutes, long enough for my wife Carmen to hear me and come out to see it, so I wasn't hallucinating. Hawk stayed longer than you might imagine. He was wonderful. I saw him again soaring another day. I can hope he'll decide to nest in that same tree. Who knows--maybe the mt. sent him to remind me.

Not that I can forget.

RudyG

[Third installment of what I call a quasi-vision quest. Read first installment here and the previous one here.]

Except for Manchas's taking a crap on the way back down to the trailhead, our descent's uneventful. I wonder how he managed to take one, since he'd barfed up a stomach-full earlier. At least whatever he might have gotten from the pump water hasn't plugged him up. I assume he's tougher than me and certainly don't want our adventure cut short because of my dog's possibly daintier constitution; friends might say I used him as an excuse.

Repeatedly, as we retraced our steps down the trail, in the back and sometimes the front of my mind is one thing: bears. I'd been told they and the rarer cougar had been sighted in the area, but some of that might have been tourist-luring hearsay. Yes, bears make it even into Denver suburbs, and every few years a cougar wanders down our I-70 greenbelt, but we're to blame for pushing them out of their native habitat, which is where Manchas and I now walk. So, they probably won't be mauling us cause they've left to go malling.

I don't know if others "suffer" similarly, if it's just "racial memory" homo sapiens carries that surfaces in our bear-dreams, but over the years bear dreams always disturb my sleep more than my falling-dreams, no matter I've never seen one outside a zoo or circus, the kinds of places I no longer frequent. In any event, as we enter a heavily canopied trail sector, I find myself looking into the forest depths for bear. During the remainder of the trip, I'll continue doing this.

Park literature and my readings swear that bears are not aggressive unless provoked or accompanied by cubs, I assure myself, so I only need worry about the latter case, right? But in fact what worries me is that I keep reassuring myself. Where's that come from? As a sapient--and a relatively emotionally stable one--I should be capable of setting worry aside, given I've at least read considerable amounts about bear. I'm not ignorant. However, my head fails to function accordingly.

When I'm not searching forest shadow for momma and baby bear, I scan for scat, even though I can't differentiate between bear, cougar or velociraptor poop, other than possibly by size. More "racial memory" from millions of years prior to evolving into the sapiens species? Or do bears from past dreams represent more than introspection about my emotions, my personality? These cute questions keep entering my head, keep pushing other thoughts aside, making me question whether I can guide my thinking toward revelations that will indeed lead to, if not a real vision, at least considerable relief from my muddled, too familiar ways of thinking. When I ask Manchas if he's afraid of bears, I realize I ask the ridiculous; bears normally fear and avoid his type.

On the other hand, cougars don't; Manchas's type is traditional cougar cuisine. They're known to lure a dog away from others to where they ambush them. A friend of mine from Boulder raises Australian cattle dogs, and earlier this year the rest of his hounds brought him all that was left of one a cougar had cornered: its rolling head came to a stop at his feet. This is why I keep Manchas leashed all our time here. Despite his high intelligence--for a dog--he would run off after a big cat, thinking nothing about the difference in size from our pet felines back home. And I don't want him winding up like my friend's dog. After all, it was Manchas's mom.

Blogger Alice left a comment on my first installment of this venture: "Make sure your location is known." I take her advice and write a note I leave on the truck floorboard concerning where we're headed. I can't help leaving a potential last joke, though not my best ever: "If anything happens to me, I assume the dog will drag back my remains."

As prepared as we can get, the two of us veer off the trail, making our way up. Passersby below, peer up, possibly wondering what the hell we're doing. I try not to think the same. Despite not being as steep as a direct climb, the hill's pitch promises to be a challenge. The backpack's relatively light, the heaviest contents, the quart and a half of water. Crackers don't weigh much. Manchas's food does, which reminds me of La Bloga readers who advised not to put him on restricted intake; they're not here to carry it. It's mostly soil underfoot here and pine needles galore, but navigable, nevertheless. At least for the first few hundred feet and first half hour. Until it steepens.

We're not quite alone yet. Chatter from the trail below fades, with an occasional barking dog or revving truck motor dimly reaching us. Manchas's paws point uphill, and he manages it easily. I have to switch to stepping diagonally to keep solid footing and not slide from loose soil and ground rock underfoot.

Perhaps an hour later we've got into a rhythm, if you want to call twenty-minute stretches of climb separated by five-minute rests a rhythm. Real climbers, nonsmokers and fit, young people could do it better, but we don't care because they're not here. Our hearts beat strong, or maybe are being beaten, and I nearly forget the bears. I do forget about the lower level of oxygen we're taking in.

Manchas's tongue hangs low enough to lap at the pine needles, so we stop for a drink; he wipes his up, I take a swallow, which will be my regular portion throughout. The word stamina pops into my head, something to get us to the top, I think. I assume the dog's got it, and I need to somehow magically find it in myself. It's there, it's what always gets me through my day, my job, larger home-maintenance I take on. I will not forget that word.

Another hour later our goal appears no closer than when we began. We've been in the midst of thin forest. My walking stick serves like someone stronger alongside to assist old me through trickier parts of the path. Actually, the paths I expected we'd follow never appear. Nothing large like deer have left markings about, at least that I can see. No matter we're only a few hundred feet from where thousands of tourists tread, the dog and I are the disturbers of nature here, the space between the pines untrammeled until we mar its pristineness.

One other evidence of disruption is a cave-niche where fires charred three large rocks to warm the rare visitor. The soot makes me realize we've passed many blackened trees bare of leaves. Lightening, I finally realize. We're high up the type of terrain where Colorado's electrical storms leave loving evidence of their might. Might they while we're here? Right now it's cloudless above. Wind's constant, though never howling or rocking us.

In our third hour, a different word pops up: deprivation, though I don't know why. The climb hasn't been so demanding as to consider quitting. And I don't feel "deprived." So whence the thought? We don't deprive ourselves of rest; if anything, we stop more frequently and longer each time. I'm not tempted to crack open the crackers; going without food for even twenty-four hours is no biggie. Workaholics, of which I am one, do it often, simply out of negligence. Deprivation. Will have to think about that more.

We're high enough that we begin to see the tops of other mountains, even though the pinnacle of ours still lies distant. Breathtaking--at least when I can manage to draw one. Panoramic--though Manchas might be unimpressed. Solitude--turns out there are no cabins or homes visible from here. A great quiet--what I least expect--no sound of teeming wildlife, except for one or two small birds at a time.

I don't know if it's the fourth hour or what. Have no watch. Wife Carmen "made me" bring her cell, to keep her apprised of our safety. I'd tried it below, but no service. I'll use it at the top because she "made me" promise. She didn't realize how the out-of-touch factor heightens one's sense of . . . danger? Word doesn't fit. But something like that. Anyway, the phone likely can tell me the time, but I don't want to know; would mar the "primitiveness" of our walkabout.

Trees thin even more. Now they make their hold between large and larger rocks that increase in numbers, sometimes blocking our way. Ten feet, fifteen in size, they become obstructions that make travel harder and harder. Again, unexpected. Our pace slackens, sometimes having to backtrack to find better route.

Manchas's short four legs no longer rate superior to my longer two. And where before he helped pull me, I now lead, although it's futile to tow him. Eighty pounds of him don't come up easily, especially where a step of rock measures a couple of feet. He's starting to enjoy this less, I can see.

No hawks, though one soars in the distance, few flying insects, just some really big ants that I'll need to make sure don't nest under our spot come nightfall. Gotta keep away from ticks as well, for his sake.

Whatever time it is, however long we've gone, the boulders wear at my stamina. They're almost all we walk on and over; dirt, gravel and needles have become more dangerous, when we do cross them. Manchas likes this even less. A couple of times he resists following or jumps when I'm not ready, and I barely save myself from falling by ramming my forearms against or over a rock. Both are soon well scratched and painful, though not enough to matter. Pain is our word here. Muscles ache, head's throbbing somewhat. Maybe it's the altitude, too.

My brain's superior to his in finding passable trail. His vision seeks paths within a few feet in front of him. Mine peers further, anticipating, calculating, better planning which to take. We two have been this for tens of thousands of years. I do better at it; it's one reason I don't wear the leash.

Twice, Manchas gives me a "no" look, determined. He will not attempt to climb this rock or that path I'm trying to convince him is the best available. I'm tempted to give in to picking him up, but know he does too well at learning new routines. If I do it once, I'm dead; he will make me do it even when not required. Both times I'm forced to invent a totally different path or tweak one into finer and finer increments that he'll accept.

When we reach the edge of a rise that's drained us for I don't know how long, the relief from seeing there's only one mountain above us--ours--feels as if we've emerged from hours in a lightless cavern. We're beat. The top of our mt. is almost in sight, just a few more hundred feet. But the boulders in front of us will definitely not let Manchas pass. The two of us have come as far as we'll get, today or any day, unless I carry him, somehow. Fat chance.

There's service here, so I call the wife to let her know we're here, and exclude any negative information, like about my forearms. We probably have a couple of hours to prepare for nightfall.

The dog eats, wipes out the water I give him. A good swallow for me; the larger canteen's half empty. Maybe we don't have enough. But at least stamina's no longer required; we simply have to sit. Danger seems irrelevant; nothing about. Deprivation remains a possibility.

The crags we came for aren't visible unless we reach the top. That may have to wait for another time. Their majesty below almost frightened, and I admit relief at not having to learn if I can stand watch with them for an entire night. That might test more than a vision suddenly facing me.

We gaze, we stare, and breathe. The opposing mountain's nearly covered with pine. Essentially, we stand above tree line. It's too quiet to believe. Questing for a vision will start in a while, I suppose. For now, some rest, a smoke, a break.

RudyG