NATURE’S SANCTUARY
excerpt from And So I Write

In the fall the mountains await the onslaught of winter.

As I hike over the pumice ground, deer walk gently swallowed up by autumn’s brown foliage of the forest. Fawn-colored grass mingles with wilting swamp cabbage with their thistles hardened to thorny husks. Rays of sun shower through pine boughs, and aspens quake as their yellow leaves flutter to the ground. The sparkle of sunlight caresses and kisses the shallow river. Even now with the water flow ebbing, the air is misty with the spray from the waterfall. Below an assortment of sharp, angular, and polished rocks lie in scattered disarray like soldiers tossed upon a battlefield.

Wind stirs the fretful grass. The throb of life has power even in silence. Shadows highlight the river’s bend revealing caves and rocky fissures. Pines, springing from every wedge of soil, are the guardians to all creatures. Their thick boughs are givers of shade, warmth, food, and protection.

And yet some cannot be safe from humans.

Riders head toward the far mountains. From each saddle, a rifle butt juts. It’s the deer killers’ time of year. Upon the horses’s backs sit gray-haired men with stubbled chins, set jaws, and lined faces, seeking an ancient passage of manhood. They slouch and hold onto saddle horns as they venture forth to hunt the deer, to chat at the evening’s fire and brag about their kill. For this rite, they kill a deer for a trophy on their walls.

When the blood-letting is finished, the trophies are carted out, slung over the rumps of horses. The grace of the deer has vanished and part of nature has been lost.
Yet, the sanctuary of the wilderness returns with winter’s blanket, and frost heals the ground and the cycle of life continues. And once again some will feel the euphoria in hushed reverence, taste the pure water, smell the scent of pine, and marvel at the waterfall’s white foam against the azure sky.

Here, here, here. It is all here for those in search of nature’s sanctuary.