Tumalo Mountain Morning
The packed snow squeaked beneath my snowshoes as I left my car and made my way across the parking lot to the place where I would step off the trail, and head uphill. Soon the parking lot would be filled with the sights and two-stroke smells of snowmobiles off-loading and heading out. But I would be oblivious to them. Once in the woods, outside sounds are quickly muffled.
As I stepped off the track, the squeaking sound was soon replaced with a nearly imperceptible whoosh of powder being displaced with each step. Forty yards in, this was the only sound, other than my breath.
The sky overhead was a study in pastel blues – translucent Caribbean to the east; fading to azure to the west. I could see the sun kissing the icy treetops, but since my route began on the southwest slope of the mountain, I would be in the shade for at least the first hour of my walk.
After a few minutes, I looked back to get my bearings. Across the highway, I could see the chairlifts on Mount Bachelor begin to move; not holding any stylishly-clad butts for another hour or so – just cycling through so the operator could flip the seats down, and brush off the night’s accumulation of snow and ice. The Sno-cats were on their last run; working their way down the mountain, leaving wide corduroy paths—ego-snow—which would lend the first skiers of the day a false sense of competence, before accumulating moguls and warming temperatures dashed those delusions.
I could see each breath I exhaled, little puffy clouds of water vapor, crystalizing suspended in front of me. The sense of aloneness was so profound, so welcome. After two days of lift lines and rapid descents, a morning of measured steps, and silence was the elixir I needed. An airliner passing above left puffy contrails in its wake, as it silently traversed the sky. I paused for a moment to consider where it was heading, and the lives of the people on board, six miles high, traveling at nearly the speed of the silence we shared.
The sun began to work its way down the nearby trees, slowly melting the ice that coated each branch, and hung from them in icicles. Every so often a chunk of ice would break off and hit with a thud against a branch below, before falling silently into the snow. As I continued, this percussion became more frequent – becoming like a percolator. Finally, it was almost constant – like a thousand Chilean rainsticks. It was other-worldly. I looked around, and realized there was nobody else; the concert was just for me. Then, as rapidly than it had built to its crescendo, the sounds became less and less frequent – more random, then finally not there at all.
About the time the concert ended, I heard what sounded like a gunshot. I spun to look in the direction of the sound, and saw powder still suspended from where a branch had broken off and fallen into the snow. The tree stood within a grove of dead trees – many so desiccated that the water which nightly freezes is about all that holds that branch to the trunk. Finally, when the ice thaws, the branch gives way, to the tune of a broken-bat single, and is no more. The branch opposite looked like the left arm from an ancient crucifix.
This thin forest of standing dead trees stood like ancient ghost-sentries – manning their posts in death as in life; the vanguard frontier our the losing battle against climate change; vicariously atoning for mankind’s sins against nature; bravely facing our longer, hotter summers, and decreasing precipitation; finally falling to those most relentless six-legged horsemen of the apocalypse – the pine bark beetles.
As I stepped off the track, the squeaking sound was soon replaced with a nearly imperceptible whoosh of powder being displaced with each step. Forty yards in, this was the only sound, other than my breath.
The sky overhead was a study in pastel blues – translucent Caribbean to the east; fading to azure to the west. I could see the sun kissing the icy treetops, but since my route began on the southwest slope of the mountain, I would be in the shade for at least the first hour of my walk.
After a few minutes, I looked back to get my bearings. Across the highway, I could see the chairlifts on Mount Bachelor begin to move; not holding any stylishly-clad butts for another hour or so – just cycling through so the operator could flip the seats down, and brush off the night’s accumulation of snow and ice. The Sno-cats were on their last run; working their way down the mountain, leaving wide corduroy paths—ego-snow—which would lend the first skiers of the day a false sense of competence, before accumulating moguls and warming temperatures dashed those delusions.
I could see each breath I exhaled, little puffy clouds of water vapor, crystalizing suspended in front of me. The sense of aloneness was so profound, so welcome. After two days of lift lines and rapid descents, a morning of measured steps, and silence was the elixir I needed. An airliner passing above left puffy contrails in its wake, as it silently traversed the sky. I paused for a moment to consider where it was heading, and the lives of the people on board, six miles high, traveling at nearly the speed of the silence we shared.
The sun began to work its way down the nearby trees, slowly melting the ice that coated each branch, and hung from them in icicles. Every so often a chunk of ice would break off and hit with a thud against a branch below, before falling silently into the snow. As I continued, this percussion became more frequent – becoming like a percolator. Finally, it was almost constant – like a thousand Chilean rainsticks. It was other-worldly. I looked around, and realized there was nobody else; the concert was just for me. Then, as rapidly than it had built to its crescendo, the sounds became less and less frequent – more random, then finally not there at all.
About the time the concert ended, I heard what sounded like a gunshot. I spun to look in the direction of the sound, and saw powder still suspended from where a branch had broken off and fallen into the snow. The tree stood within a grove of dead trees – many so desiccated that the water which nightly freezes is about all that holds that branch to the trunk. Finally, when the ice thaws, the branch gives way, to the tune of a broken-bat single, and is no more. The branch opposite looked like the left arm from an ancient crucifix.
This thin forest of standing dead trees stood like ancient ghost-sentries – manning their posts in death as in life; the vanguard frontier our the losing battle against climate change; vicariously atoning for mankind’s sins against nature; bravely facing our longer, hotter summers, and decreasing precipitation; finally falling to those most relentless six-legged horsemen of the apocalypse – the pine bark beetles.
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