Intermission

With just a sliver of moon rising in the east, 
I headed west, away from the Wind River Mountains, 
to a less visited and therefore exciting range—the Wyoming Mountains.  

Driving across the broad valley of upper tributaries to the Green River, I ascended the Piedmont up to the Wyoming Range.  Approaching distant woods, I looked forward to some forest therapy.   Here at about 6,000 feet, the lowland was tufted with grasses, herbs with deep roots, sage, miniature woody shrubs mingled with a few late wildflowers.  I say “lowland” because most of this part of Wyoming is above 7,000 feet.  

Hiking alone as I do, far into wilderness, has often brought concern from friends who fear for my safety.  Taking a fall, for example, could leave me injured and unable to return.  I have fallen twice on this trip, once in a swampy thicket, overhung by morning fog; I tripped over branches that snared unsuspecting feet in the dense brush.  And once, while descending a steep grade, I stepped on a patch of small rocks that looked stable but rolled out from under my boot like marbles.  Neither fall caused injury, but they caused me to think more about my feet and less about the beauty for which I came.  Such thoughts have slowed my progress.  If I were in a group, a fall could be just as serious, but seemingly less so because friends would be there, for all the good they could do.   

Aspen trees at high elevation are not the forest of tall, dignified, straight-trunked, white-barked citizens who produce brilliant yellows and oranges in October, as they are at lower elevations.  No, they are stunted, crooked, and dwarfed by hash conditions.  Yet they are not without beauty.  As though pruned and shaped for a purpose into fascinating individual shapes, each tree with personality, divergent from their low, conforming, yet sisterly forest.  They have the strength of old women, quivering light green leaves, blocking out the sun in dappled patterns of shade.  

Very little sound fills the air—an occasional bird chirp or thump of woodpecker, a slight gust of eerie wind, or scurry of squirrel.  As I sat on a rock contemplating the pleasure of silence, something hit me from behind on my left shoulder, I jumped up in shock, and immediately a squirrel bounced to a rock, then stopped on the trail by which I was sitting and stared to me.  He seemed dismayed to see a living stone from which he had taken a leap after using me as a springboard.  In Pasadena I have seen many squirrels, but never has one mistaken me for a stone on which to land for another jump to some quickly planned destination.  I know how these rock hops work from the many creeks I have crossed.  You think, not just about the rock you will jump to, but also the next three or four rock-hops.  This squirrel and I have much in common, and in the few seconds that our eyes met, we seemed to understand.  

They say August is the best month to be here because the bugs are less and the rivers easier to cross.  Open, treeless meadows on rolling land characterize this little-visited range.  I shared it with no one today.  Not that I mind meeting a kindred spirit, but today, as a performing artist, I only performed for a few birds and rodents.  I perform admiration, sometimes with exceptional excitement and compulsion.  The goal of such creative work is ever approachable yet unobtained.

Like the Wind River Mountains, this range displays large stones out of place, as though dropped from the sky by an invisible giant hand.  I bent my head back to look up at the wall of rock, imagining ice towering over me.  It was so incredibly massive the top was lost in the clouds of imagination.  Its sheer size made it seem closer than it was.  It was incredibly beautiful in the sunlight.  Its magnificence, its power. 

Mount McDougall

snow lingers in its shaded nooks

resting layers of rock  

 

Such a privilege seeing friends who have gone missing from my life since March.  They appear as ghosts—images on a screen, almost like dreams, like dancers projected onto a gauze curtain at Disneyland—a false reality.  And with me, not so much as the shadow of a lover.  I hope you are more fortunate.  I miss the companionship that made our species successful, the pleasure we used to thrive on, and by which we came to dominate the world.  A pleasure now sacrificed to fear of a virus and for our lives or other lives.  I came to Wyoming where that fear is much reduced, because the numbers say it should be and because of politics.  I came to the real, the felt, the companionship of trees, the Wyoming Range.  

Michael Angerman is making a map of nightly locations, as he has done for many of my trips.  Please see  Michael's Map