"Home Field Advantage"  (11  x 14 , oil) By Leon Parson

Wilderness
Memories

By M. R. James

Among my office clutter is a small, weighty, rectangular piece of gray-white petrified wood. It would make a good paperweight, I suppose, but I don't have it around for any such practical purpose. I keep it simply to remind me of a special place in my mind and heart, a wild and lonely place in the Wyoming high country where I once passed the better part of 10 days in search of elk. I keep it near to remind me of what I found there. Of the bull. And more.

First of all you must understand that just getting there is no easy matter. Unless, that is, you normally ride seven to eight hours daily - covering some 25 up and down, beautiful but brutal miles - on a regular basis. And unless you are on intimate terms with a western saddle that looks like leather but sits like concrete. And even as you ride, growing numb from the waist down, you think of the walking to come, mostly upslope, or so it will seem, over terrain that turns legs to lead and lungs to lumps of burning larch. Still, you can't wait. Such is heeding the siren call of a true wilderness. And you understand that getting there, being there, must never be easy.

If I were a better writer, I'd paint word pictures you could see as clearly as the images I carry in my mind. But all I can do is suggest the scent of pine and the sounds of water splashing headlong through cool shadows beside the horse trail. I can mention the dark, gangly moose gaping momentarily at the passing pack string before crashing away. And there's the constant creak of saddles, the occasional clack of steel shoes on trail rocks, causing brief sparks to jump and die. And the sturdy mules, straining uphill beneath balanced panniers in fits of rude flatulence, as the miles slowly fall away. Then, finally, there's the welcome sight of dirty-white wall tents standing against the darker backdrop of tall conifers. We are there. Imagine all this as best you can, and you'll come close enough to joining me.

Tim and I ride from camp each day in predawn blackness, thrusting the horses upward. A chill wind gnaws at our faces. An unseen limb occasionally reaches out to tug at a hat or a sleeve as we hunch blind in the cold saddles, wishing we were already on the high ridges. But soon enough we are, swinging stiffly down, loosening cinches, removing headstalls, snugging halter ropes, and leaving the patient horses behind us just as the first light of gray dawn washes stars from the eastern sky.

For a time we crouch huddled among the rocks above the timbered bowl, but the cold wind finds us anyway. We could move down into the dark trees below. But no, we agree, better to wait here. Shivering and listening for the bull we know is below us, somewhere. But with morning light there is only the song of coyotes, far enough away that their first wavering cries sound like a bugling elk. It, too, is a wild song, befitting this high and lonesome place. But it is the other music we seek. And at last we move down into the pines.

Walking warms us. We ease down slope, into the wind, and then upslope, and down again, and up. We make no particular effort to be quiet. Elk are noisy animals themselves, and we simply cow-call when a limb snaps beneath our boots - lugged soles or a loosened rock chatters away behind us, our reassuring chirps an all's-well signal to any wild ears marking our passing.

We rest for a time at midday, rummaging in our packs for sandwiches and snacks, sipping cool water from our canteens, and stretching out to doze in the warming sunshine like contented mountain cats. We glass feeding bighorns on the stark cliffs above us. We whisper-talk of them and the great bears and, of course, the elk that lie and die up here, mostly away from man and his influences. Such is the magic, the beauty, and the way of true wilderness.

Wilderness Bull - The author rode horseback over 25 miles into the wilderness south of Yellowstone Park to bowhunt Wyoming elk. His trophy class herd bull was arrowed at 12 yards after being bugled into easy bow range.

Moving on at last, we work the shady benches and rocky draws, crossing old burns where cinquefoil and lupine and foxglove now grow amid the clutter of charred skeleton trees. As evening nears, we set up by a snow-fed stream beside a grassy park that lies among a cluster of antler-slashed pines with broken limbs and weeping, sticky-wet trunks. Our occasional bugles echo and fade unanswered until, finally, in fast-fading light, we walk away and trudge up the high ridge to reclaim our horses, once again in full dark. Tomorrow we will repeat the ride and the day.

Perhaps what I liked best of all in the wilderness was the sense of timelessness I felt there. It was everywhere you looked. And listened. It was there in the ringing silence of a star-flected night. It was there in the wind whispers that stirred pines and caused aspen leaves to dance shimmering in sunshine so sharp sometimes it hurt your eyes. It was there in the high, rocky peaks with their shaded pockets of eternal snow beneath a sky bigger and deeper and bluer than any you've seen. It was there in the cloud shadows moving silently across timbered ridge and grassy park. It was there in the cold, sweet snowmelt that gurgled among creekbed rocks, past the gray piece of petrified wood I saw in the streamside moss and slipped into my pack as a souvenir of this time and place. And it certainly was there in the knowledge that you were breathing new air and walking faint trails more familiar to hoof and moccasin than to Vibram boot soles. It's exhilarating stuff.

One morning, just after a surprise late-summer snowfall, a bull's sudden challenge came to us even before the echoes of our own bugling faded. He was close, upset at our presence or our impudence or both. I had time only to drop to one knee, fumble an arrow from my bow quiver, and snap its fluorescent nock into place with unsteady fingers. But the bull never came.

We later found his nearby tracks easily enough. We could see where he'd walked toward us and then stood listening for a time before turning away and moving on down slope. He'd obviously had other elk business on his mind this day and was satisfied to let us off with a stern warning. My heart was still thudding as we walked away with only the memory of his screaming challenge and pants wet from the knees down after crouching in the heavy snow. At the moment, that was enough.

I still carry memories of the camp coming awake and going to sleep in darkness. Of the scratch of tent fly zippers, the clank of cast-iron lids, the rasp of matches, the hiss of Coleman lanterns. You burrow deeper in your warm bag, listening to the muffled muttering of your tentmate, waiting for the stove to chase away the worst of the chill before worming out of downy comfort into cold camouflage and stiff boots. The tiredness in your legs and feet reminds you of the miles already walked. But by the time you've quickly dressed and made your way to the cook tent you're ready, even eager. Again. After all, this could be the day. And if not today, tomorrow for sure. The bulls have to start bugling sometime.

Around the lamplit table, over eggs and sausage and griddle cakes and fresh-baked bread, cold juice and hot coffee, you talk of yesterday's almosts and today's maybes. Amid boasting and banter mingled wit the smells of breakfast and wood smoke, you begin another day. Meanwhile, the wranglers ride out to find the belled horses and, shouting and swearing, drive them back from the pasture through darkness to the corral. Soon ours are saddled and tied waiting, breath forming ghosts in yellow lantern light. We again grab packs and bugles and bows and begin another day. In darkness.

Our day ends in darkness, as well. Late. We return tired, the campfire glow a welcoming beacon winking at us through the pines. Supper is waiting, good grub the cooks have worked at. We wash hurriedly and eat hungrily, for the most part quieter than at breakfast, dutifully recounting who had seen and heard what. But the long day has dulled us, and soon we drift off to our tents and waiting cots. Snuggling in sleeping bats, hoping tomorrow will bring the bugling of bulls, we sleep until the sudden ripping of our tent zipper rouses us to renew the now-familiar routine.

And then comes the day, just before noon, when the bull answers our tentative bugling. He is at least two drainages away, but from where we sit among the jumble of boulders, his wavering, flutelike warning drifts to us through the crisp air as clear as the distant calling of cathedral bells. Above the timbered bowl, we stand for a moment, looking and listening across the green treetops before bugling again. When he answers, we nod and step off the ridge line, slip-sliding down the cliff face in ankle-deep loose dirt and stones.

We rock-hop a rushing stream and claw our way up into the timber, hurrying along a tracked game trail until the ground falls away to our left. We again plunge down slope, digging in our heels and riding small scree avalanches into the next basin. And then we fight our way upward again, sweat stinging our eyes, lungs aflame, until we reach the bench and stop, gasping, to look and listen.

I move ahead a dozen paces and kneel beside a deadfall. Tim bugles behind me. The bull answers just ahead. I pull an arrow free and snap it on the string. Tim bugles again, but when the bull answers he is moving away.

I jam the arrow back into the quiver even as I clamber to my feet. Another footrace. Sprinting among the pine trees, dodging low-hanging branches, and hurdling blowdowns. Down and across a sunny, boulder-strewn chute. Up into the cool trees beyond. Finding another deadfall hiding spot even as Tim bugles again.

This time the bull's scream is close. Indignant at being pushed, he is just ahead. Defiant. Angry. By the time I nock my arrow for the third time, I can hear brush breaking uphill to my left. Dark legs appear, moving. A heavy, ivory-tipped rack floats toward me, somehow disembodied. He is 30 yards away and closing.

God, I think, awestruck, the size, the beauty of him!

Still he moves toward me, head-on, as noiseless now as a tan shadow. Drifting down slope, passing behind a pine at 20 yards, he doesn't see me come to full draw, hear my thudding heart, sense me near. He only knows the rival bull is close, a threat to his cows waiting in the timber above. On he stalks. Closer. Closer.

Turn, I pray, please turn!

And at last, as if by my will alone, he does turn. Over my bow hand I watch the bull ghosting past, broadside, huge yet silent, striding, until my arrow's red and yellow fletching appears against his side, tight behind the shoulder, just where I willed it to fly.

He spins and crashes through a deadfall graveyard, down into the rocky chute. There he stands briefly in brilliant midday sunshine, the spreading crimson patch glistening. Then slowly he walks off into the shade beyond, perhaps wondering at the unseen bull that had somehow hooked and hurt him. When he is out of sight I walk weak-kneed to where his hooves tore the forest duff as my arrow buried itself deep into his lungs. It is but a dozen short steps. My hands are still trembling as Tim joins me. We sit together, whispering, waiting for the sharp steel to do its work.

I could speak of the short tracking job, the long hours of field dressing, skinning, packing, caping. Of the long ride out, the pack mules loaded with fresh, cool meat and the antlers of a wilderness monarch I'd met and can never forget. I dutifully record such things in my notebook, penciling times and dates and facts that over the years will fade like old photos. They're there to help others who later might read my words and try to imagine what it was like.

For me, though, there is no true way - or need - to capture on paper what in reality cannot be captured. Memories. I need only to glimpse the piece of petrified wood resting amid my office's eternal clutter to pause and relive the mystery of the Wyoming wilderness, to recall the hunt, the stalk, the shot, and so much more. And each time I see the wood-turned-stone, touch its waterworn smoothness, lift its surprising heft in my fingers, I dream of returning.

The elk are still up there. And the sheep. And the great bear. Along with a part of my soul I left to cry for those who will never walk a wilderness trail.

Note: This article is an excerpt from the new book, My Place by M. R. James, recently published by Stackpole Books and now available for sale throughout the United States and Canada.

The guide was Tim Doud, owner of Bliss Creek Outfitters, 326 Diamond Basin Road, Cody, WY 82414; (307) 527-6103.