Cameron Scott

“This is the first, the wildest
and the wisest thing I know:
that the soul exists and is
built entirely out of attentiveness.”-Mary Oliver

Like many locals and visitors,
July and August are my preferred months for getting
chased off high alpine ridges in lightening and hail storms. And if it isn’t lightening,
a heavy rain won’t do, although early, mid, and late season snowstorms and cold
winds cutting through summer’s light layers will.

Besides the proliferation of mosquitoes, the rain can be quite brilliant, lowering the
number of visitors on July and August’s heavily trafficked trails, and sometimes in
its intermittency, shrouding the mountains in mist. It isn’t that I have an aversion
to foul weather, but am typically found with a fly rod in one hand and lingering fish
slime in the other, a camera full of scenic vistas, and the idea of getting struck by
an enormous electrical bolt after smaller home and construction mishaps, highly
unappealing.

While self perseverance for the sake of posting up Facebook photos has crossed
my mind before, usually the escape from lightning is an adrenaline pumping, wrong
drainage descent for shelter, made more fun by having a good friend or two along
for the adventure.

While getting chased around by the off-kilter cracks of lightening and rolling peals
of ions setting themselves straight often heightens the various occasions of
slogging through long valleys and lung busting climbs, I am often struck as much, if
not even more, by the sheer exhilaration of a ptarmigan or grouse exploding from
beneath my footsteps, or quieter moments like watching the evening sun rise up
the scarps and cliffs of a ridge line to the clatter of rock fall and the distant din of a
waterfall.

Hiking through the back country the startling changes of micro climates astounds:
Suddenly climbing up through a conifer forest, my hands become covered by pitch
as the aroma of last year’s needles and cones rise beneath my footsteps. Moving
into the open-aired lightness of a strand of aspens, the initials of past travelers
hauntingly scarred over, the paper thin clattering of leaves raises goose bumps on
the back of my neck. The spongy softness of green-lipped shores and banks of
tundra above tree line, the hollow rattles and thunks of unbalanced rocks as I cross
fields of scree, is like a broken song.

But, more than anything, it is the sparse power of the back country that attracts
me the most. And I’m not talking about just spending an hour on my knees after
wild strawberries or wandering aimlessly through patches of raspberries and
thimbleberries, not even picking glacier lillies for their melonish taste or plucking a
leaf or two of sorrel. It’s not the neck craning cliffs or majestic peaks, the rough
sandstone, limestone, the volcanic scoria, big white gleaming chunks of feldspar,
slabs of granite, and various thrusts and uplifts. Not even the numerous lakes and
tarns that sit at the bases of cirques and moraines or the way rain carries over
ridges, and sun slants through trees.

I’m talking about the awareness of it all. From my personal favorite (fishing the
bottoms of steep mountain valleys where fish mirror birds hovering in luminal
windows) to eating a late lunch on the giant roots of a sprawling tree. From dusks
spent climbing out of the steep cataracts, grabbing onto layers of dry grass with
pine needles slipping and snapping beneath each step. Stumbling backwards, and
digging into dirt with reel seat, knees, and wrists, the dust settling in a tangle of
scrub oak, rosehips, and dry leaves, followed by a bloody climb back to bench of
aspen and fir. One hundred feet of open air, the river below, calling.

My feeling is that the trails and roads that lead into the back country, the towns and
cities that sit within the edges of mountain ranges, are places of attentiveness and
awareness. While this is not always the case, there is an attentiveness and
awareness that exists in silence; living in the mountains is an attempt to penetrate
experience thoroughly, to its core.

Avalanche Lake

My thoughts are like the creek
I can see far up slope which tumbles
over the moraine’s lip

then disappears beneath boulders
only to emerge again
singing itself into the lake.

For a minute I search the fading light
in the direction of a pika’s shrill whistle
until I locate its large ears

as it materializes on a nearby boulder.
How much of ourselves do we recognize
in this alpine world. In the fire

which beckons through the trees,
or laughter which spreads above us
like the shelter of a tarp.

Today I thought about the way
each drop of rain unfolds
some new scent. And tonight

how in each breath we also unfold.
All of us, wandering out onto the log
which extends like a platform in the sky.

Sopris Sun, July 29th 2010, http://www.soprissun.com/Home/july-29-2010/e-edition