December sun rises slow. Weight shifting in obsidian underbrush activates irrational ideas. Mountain lion, or something less lethal? There is no light at the bottom of this confluence. No water flowing over stone to break the silence. In the dark, rocks look ready to move. Beyond fear is a land of abundance that I will never know the tenth part of. I am alone in the mourning.
Pink light seeps over the canyon rim, percolating at a honeyed pace outside time. Memory has already gone to seed. The oak trees remember the days of flame, spinning out acorns in blankets like prayers for rain. Doves cry too soon in sycamore that can’t let go of leaves. Red tails circle high above buckwheat in its deepest burgundy now. Beneath the rarefied sky, a patchy sanguine cloak fit for mourning.
With light comes sound. There’s a covey in the tall chamise. The flutter of an approaching inflection point at the end of the barrel. Am I here for the right reasons? The tension between the need for community and wild solitude. Wildness might be what is required. I break the silence in three. Lives and feathers in the weeds. I offer my elegy and continue with the mourning.
Love a place this much and it’s bound to break your heart. Can hikers and bikers in high performance fluorescence see this in the way I move? Understanding stops at the camouflage and shotgun, judgments already made. Like the lovers drawn to the idea of the hunter but not the burs, blood, and dust. Swipe right or walk in the moonlight? Choices must be made, and everybody’s gotta eat someway. There’s plenty else to fill the mourning.
Day breaks and there’s no shade in the sagebrush, no air that tastes the same. There’s no hungry time here. The original stewards knew this when they settled. The eternal sun beats. Odyssean, invoking the bliss of the lotus eaters ready to forget that the world still burns outside. Hotel California, Neverland, places few seem able to leave. Today, the Casino is the tallest man-made structure for miles, still small against the ridgeline. Lost souls and stolen land we must remember in our mourning.
Is it in our nature to take? Loggers won their case, fiction of the ‘land of many uses’ remains. We don’t have enough woods here in this thirsty place. Shame the incense cedar and sugar pine should be pulped and pressed, pulverized and planed. Maybe the old gods will wash the roads away to keep us like cattle from the cliff. Do the hawks look down at us like the vultures, seeking the easy meal? We’ve all got our bones to pick and fights deeper than our mourning.
It’s not us that does the walking, but the land that molds the feet. In this dry paradise, the consumer becomes consumed by the practice of patience, the promise of spring. Swimming’s good, fishing will get better. Mourning will pass and give way to good and golden things. There’s always more to give, space beyond the pain. Against fire and flood, feet planted firm in American dirt, lips parted we offer the wind our hymns for the end of days,
The grass dried up and flames foretold
Black it turned green, then green to gold
All that’s worth the hoping and the praying for
Needs a little heat to help it grow.
—
Conner Smith is a hunter, writer, and environmental scientist in no particular order. Raised in the foothills of Appalachia, he has walked the public lands and dove the waters of California for enough time to call this place home. He is currently giving back to his home as a steward of state waters, spearfishing and hunting to fill the well and put food on the table.
