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Thinking Like A Mountain
par
Yann Tiersen
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And of contempt for all the adversities of the world Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) Pays heed to that call To the deer it is a reminder of the way of all flesh To the pine a forecast of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow To the coyote a promise of gleanings to come To the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank To the hunter a challenge of fang against bullet Yet, behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears There lies a deeper meaning known only to the mountain itself Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf Those unable to deciper the hidden meaning know nevertheless that it is there For it is felt in all wolf country, and distinguishes that country from all other land It tingles in the spine of all who hear wolves by night Or who scan their tracks by day Even without sight or sound of wolf, it is implicit in a hundred small events The midnight whinny of a pack horse, the rattle of rolling rocks The bound of a fleeing deer, the way shadows lie under the spruces Only the ineducable tyro can fail to sense the presence or absence of wolves Or the fact that mountains have a secret opinion about them My own convinction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which A turbulent river elbowed its way We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail we realised our error It was a wolf A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows And all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the centre of an open flat At the foot of our rimrock In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf In a second we were pumping lead into the pack But with more excitement than accuracy How to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down And a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide-rocks We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes I realised then, and have known ever since That there was something new to me in those eyes Something known only to her and to the mountain I was young then, and full of trigger-itch I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer That no wolves would mean hunters' paradise But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf Nor the mountain agreed with such a view Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain And seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed First to anaemic desuetude and then to death I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears And forbidden Him all other exercise In the end the starved bones of the hoped for deer herd Dead of its own too much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage Or molder under the high-lined junipers I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves So does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer And perhaps with better cause For while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years A range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades So also with cows The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realise that he is taking over the wolf's job Of trimming the herd to fit the range He has not learned to think like a mountain Hence we have dustbbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison The statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars But it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking But too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum In wildness is the salvation of the world Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf Long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men
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