by AULT, SANDI
I stopped in a patch of pines where a mottling of shade and sunlight fell on my face, and I winced with pain as my scraped skin stung. I remembered my rancher neighbor’s warning, and my spirit sank. I turned and walked back to the cabin, stepping gingerly on the right leg, feeling a pressure in my chest, as if tiny strands of silver barbwire were tightening around my heart.
In the shed out back, I found a length of heavy iron chain that the landlord had left on the property. Using a pair of channel locks, I worked to secure it to the solid stainless steel eyebolt that I had sunk six inches into the foundation of my cabin.
Nearly an hour later, Mountain returned, tired and happy, his tail wagging with the excitement of his adventure. I received him with a hug and I cried as I held him next to my chest. I took hold of his collar. “Oh, Mountain,” I wailed, my nose running, my chest heaving as I sobbed. I hooked the wolf to the heavy chain, blubbering as I did so. “I can’t trust you to run free anymore, buddy,” I bawled. “You don’t stay with me anymore when I let you run free. You don’t come to me when I call you.”
The wolf sat watching me, confused at my emotions. He was obviously happy to see me and had no understanding of the significance of this moment in his short life—this moment when I chose to take away his freedom, to constantly confine him in order to save his life.
22
Kerry’s Places
When Kerry pulled down my long drive in his Forest Service truck, I experienced a bizarre mix of emotions. I was overjoyed to see him, and had missed him while he’d been away at his training. It broke my heart to watch Mountain rise and strain at his heavy chain when he recognized Kerry’s truck. And I dreaded telling my lover about the events of the past few days.
Kerry got out of the truck, smiled, and opened his arms to me. I ran to him and he grabbed me and lifted me off my feet with a big hug. I cried out as I slid down the front of him and his hands rubbed across my bruised back. Kerry pulled his head back and looked at me. “What’s up? Are you hurt?”
“A lot has happened. I’ll tell you about it.” I reached with my lips and gave him a kiss, inhaling the scent of his skin and the slight hint of soap.
“What’s Mountain doing on that big chain?” He put his arm around me and we walked toward the wolf.
Mountain lunged against the thick iron links, raising up on his back legs, then dropping to all fours and racing back and forth at the limits of his restraint.
Kerry dropped into a squat and patted the wolf, rubbing his haunches and stroking his back. “What have you done now, Mountain?”
“He runs off,” I said. “He runs away, he disappears, and he doesn’t come back for hours. The man on the next place over said he was going to shoot him if he saw him on his land. He thinks Mountain killed his steer.”
“That’s just nonsense. Mountain didn’t kill that beef.”
“I know, but the rancher said he would shoot him if he saw him running loose. And I can’t trust Mountain anymore—he runs off every chance he gets now. He doesn’t come back when I call, he just bolts away after anything that interests him, and I can’t keep up.”
Kerry shook his head as he scratched Mountain’s ears. “You’ve done it this time, bud,” he said. “You’ve gone too far.”
We sat outside in the sunshine with Mountain and I gave Kerry a rundown of all that had happened in the past several days. He frowned as I talked, shaking his head back and forth. “I’m staying with you tonight,” he said. “I don’t want you to be alone out here. We’ll figure this out as we go along, but I don’t want you to be alone.” He jumped up and offered me a hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go for a ride.”
With Mountain in the backseat of the crew cab, and Kerry and I in the front, we set off in the green truck for an outing. Kerry drove west from my place, toward the forest lands he patrolled. He reached a hand across the front of the cab and squeezed mine. “I’m going to take you to some of my places,” he said, smiling.
Deep in the section of Carson National Forest that was managed by the Tres Piedras Ranger District, an area flourished almost undiscovered, protected as a watershed, off-limits to all vehicles except those driven by the rangers who infrequently patrolled it. We unlocked a series of gates and closed them behind us as we drove up a two-lane dirt track and wound around the side of a mountain. The rumbling of the truck’s engine and the occasional call of a raven were the only sounds that broke the morning stillness, the rhythm of the truck’s tires as they navigated the dips and rises in the road reminiscent of a small seafaring craft easing over swells. Mountain fell asleep in the back, and I watched out the window as we went. Along the upslope side of the road, determined mounds of snow huddled blue-white under the shade of tall ponderosa pines, while the morning sun gilded the grasses, warming the air and surrounding us with saffron-colored light. At the last gate, I got out and used a key Kerry had handed me to unlock a padlock and chain, then swung back the long welded triangle of iron pipe that hung across the path. The tot-a-tt-tt-tot of a woodpecker echoed through the air. Two deer eyed me from a stretch of sunlit grass twenty yards away, then returned to grazing.
High at the top, the road circled a small, raised crown of granite, large enough to pitch a tent and make a dry camp on the summit’s highest point. In a swale in this outcropping, a ring of stones had been set for a campfire. As the truck slowed, Mountain woke and peered over the back of my seat and out the passenger-side window. Kerry parked the truck at the end of the track. We got out and walked to the eastern edge of the point, where we gazed across the sunlit thirty-mile-wide Taos Valley at the voluptuous blue Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the distance, crowned with their snow-white tops.
“Don’t you think it would be all right to let him run loose here?” Kerry asked, watching Mountain strain against the long lead and bridle as he nosed along the ground, pulling me from rock to tree.
“I don’t know. I don’t think he would get too far from me here because he doesn’t know where he is. But at home, that’s another story. At some point, though, I have to get him used to this. It’s his life now. It’s our life now.” I bit my lip. My chest felt as if we’d parked the truck on it.
“I hate it that you have to do this. And it’s especially sad that you have to keep him chained up when you live out on a big stretch of land like you do.”
“What else can I do? The neighbor said he would shoot him. Mountain ran off for hours the other night. He could have run all the way to the highway in that amount of time and gotten hit by a car. I—”
“Shhhhh,” Kerry said, moving close to me and tipping his head to one side to look into my face. He brushed a strand of hair back from my eyes. “It’s all right, babe. We just have to do the best we can.” He knelt down and patted his thigh. “Come here, Mountain,” he said.
The wolf looked up from sniffing a clump of grass and then trotted over to Kerry.
“You stay here with us,” Kerry said, reaching to unsnap the bridle. “If you run off, that’s it, okay?”
Mountain heard the snap of the plastic keeper and shook off the nylon webbing. He bolted back to the clump of grass, delighted to have his freedom back.
“But—”
“It’s okay,” Kerry said. “It’s like you said, he’ll stay close to us here because he doesn’t know where he is. At your place, he’s probably just trying to expand his territory. Maybe the coyotes are trying to move in on him, and he’s out marking his boundaries. He’s growing up. That’s what the big boys do in the wolf world.”
I shook my head and blew out a breath. “I can’t have him running off, Kerry. And that rancher warned me.”
Kerry took my hand and started walking. “I bet he’ll stay right with us here. I think it’s at home that he’s having a turf war with those coyotes. Come here.” He led me to the round rise of elephant-back granite.
I looked down at the blackened circle of stones and the stack of small limbs next to it. Someone had gathered these sticks from the forest
floor and left them in place, ready for the next fire. I could smell the carbon residue on the rocks. “Who uses this campfire ring, if this area is off-limits?” I asked.
“I do.”
I grinned. “You come up here by yourself and build a campfire?”
“Sometimes. I think that campfire ring has been here since the first ranger worked this district. They may even have climbed up here to spot forest fires back then. If I look out that way”—he pointed—“I can almost see your place.”
I imagined my boyfriend sitting here under the stars with only a flickering fire to keep him company, and it made me think of my days riding range. I had spent a thousand nights like that, and those times were some of my happiest memories.
“Come on, I have more to show you,” Kerry said, heading back to the truck. “Come on, Mountain!” he called, slapping his thigh again.
The wolf looked up, and bounded toward us with delight, eager for the next adventure.
For our first leg of this journey, we had wound up the exterior of a tall peak at the eastern limit of the ranger district. But in the interior, surrounded by four mountains, lay a wild, unspoiled valley. Here was the protected watershed that the Forest Service had deemed off-limits to hunters, to motorized vehicles and bicycles, and even to horses and mules. That left only hike-in backpackers and fishermen, who also had to get there on foot. Not many did. The result was a pristine place flush with fish and game and almost completely devoid of the dominance of man.
Kerry drove us back in along a low ledge that bordered a rushing stream. At a bend in its course, vertical walls of sheer granite rose behind it, and the banks were lined with granite boulders as big as my house. We got out and climbed in among the rocks along white-capped waters and roaring rapids as the ground rose upward, the deluge of water thundering in our ears. More than once, Kerry took my hand to help me climb, and the scrapes on the backs of my legs stung as my skin stretched over flexed muscle. After a time we reached an impasse, where the riverbank and the cliff face met. Mountain, who had been working his way carefully over the rocks just ahead of us, looked at me for direction. Kerry pointed across the surging head-waters to a waterfall, streaming silver-white down the sheer wall of granite, the water foaming into a halo of glistening spray at the bottom. A luminous rainbow shimmered in the air.
We hiked back along the river, downstream. The banks widened, and a grove of aspen congregated on one side, the bare, gray-white limbs like upturned arms supplicating for spring. Kerry pointed out a series of caves in the rock shelf along one side, and the impressions in the ground made by a mother bear and two cubs when they slept and fished along the river during the late autumn. I was delighted to be invited into Kerry’s private world, and—as always—I was enchanted by his obvious love and affection for the land.
He stopped walking, boots on a rock on the bank. “Come here,” he said, holding out a hand.
I looked at him, his handsome face framed by a Forest Service hat. He was grinning at me, one side of his mouth just the slightest bit higher than the other, a feature I found immensely attractive. His eyes fixed on mine, and I felt a spark of sexual energy arc between us. I stepped forward and took his hand.
“Close your eyes,” he said. “Let me lead you.”
I did as I was told, placing one foot cautiously in front of the other as he led me along, coaching me to watch out for a branch here and a depression in the ground there.
“Stop for a second here, don’t open your eyes,” he said, tenderly grasping my shoulder with one hand. “Now turn just slightly to the left.”
I followed his directions.
“Okay, lean forward . . . just a few inches. There, that’s far enough. Now, what do you smell?”
I inhaled deeply. “Pine sap. And something else.”
“Take another deep breath,” he said.
I drew in air, filling my lungs. “It’s sweet,” I said. “Sweet and a little nutty, all at the same time.”
“To me, it smells like vanilla. Open your eyes.”
Inches in front of my face stood an old-growth ponderosa pine, easily three feet in diameter. I pressed my nose right to the bark and inhaled again, and this time I swooned as the smell of vanilla filled my nostrils. “I never knew these trees smelled like vanilla,” I said, looking at my lover with delight.
“All ponderosas do,” he said, “to some degree. But this old tree here is probably the oldest, and the best-smelling one here.”
I smiled and shook my head, amazed at this new discovery. “I love that you taught me that,” I said. And I also loved that he went around sniffing trees to learn about them.
“I love the way you smell, too,” he said, “especially when I come by your cabin at night and climb into bed with you. You always smell warm and sweet.”
23
This Land Is Your Land
On the way back from our outing, Kerry and I decided to go to visit Tecolote. “I’ll bet you money she’s waiting for us when we get there,” I said. “She always is.”
“How do you figure she does that? I mean, we didn’t know we were going there until a minute ago. How could she be expecting us?”
“I don’t know, but she always is. It never fails.”
“Maybe she has a lookout down in the village.”
I giggled at this. “And what? He sends a carrier pigeon? She doesn’t have a phone!”
He laughed, too. “A raven, maybe. A trained messenger raven.”
“An owl would be more like it,” I said, and we both laughed.
Sure enough, Esperanza de Tecolote was standing on the portal looking expectantly in our direction as we came around the bend on the goat path that led to her place. The bruja held a large hand-woven basket by the handle, and before we had even finished our greetings, she handed it to Kerry and asked him to gather kindling for her. Kerry took Mountain up the slope with him while Esperanza and I went inside to make tea. “We will fix a little something for those boys,” she said, wiping off the table with the corner of her apron. I noticed a pot of beans with epazote bubbling in a pot over her fire.
Tecolote picked three dried chiles off a ristra hanging from a viga in her ceiling. She set a round, cast-iron griddle right into the coals on one side of her cook fire and tossed the chiles onto the top of it, picking them up with her fingers and turning them as they heated. The skins softened as they warmed, and the rich smell of the roasting peppers filled the casita. Esperanza put the hot chiles into a bowl and covered them with boiling water from the cast-iron kettle that always hung from a hook over her hearth. She blanketed the bowl with a big piece of sackcloth that looked to be the same material from which her dress was made.
Next, the bruja made masa, adding a little water from the kettle to a mix of ground corn, lime, and a walnut-sized lump of goat butter. When she’d gotten the dough to the right consistency, she set the bowl on the table in front of me. “You make the tortillas, Mirasol,” she said, “and I will cook them.”
I got up to wash my hands in a pan of warm water near the fire that Tecolote also used to wash dishes, then rolled balls of masa out onto a stoneware plate and pressed them with the back of a cast-iron skillet until they were round and flat. Each time I finished one, Tecolote plucked it up and threw it on the griddle, never using any kind of utensil, picking up the tortillas with her bare fingers to turn them in the hot pan. Each one was then placed between layers of a sackcloth which had been folded over many times to make enough pockets to keep a dozen tortillas warm and separated so they would not stick together.
“You are having a nice day with that boy of yours,” Esperanza said as we worked.
“Yes. I am having a very nice day with Kerry. And with Mountain. You know, Kerry loves the land so much. Today, when he showed me some of his favorite places, I realized that his love for the earth is as deep as mine.”
“You are like los indios in that way, Mirasol.”
I smiled. “I am like the Indians in a lot of ways, I thin
k.”
“Sí, but you know there is something about this place over here. The peoples are very different, one from the other. When the Spanish came here, you know, los indios already lived here. They were happy here, and they believed that they belonged to this land. On the other hand, los conquistadores, they wanted to conquer this place, they believed that the land belonged to them. Maybe it has changed a little now, but that was the difference then, you see, and that is what has caused all the trouble for hundreds and hundreds of years.
“But you,” she said as she crushed the softened chiles against the side of the bowl with a wooden spoon, their dark red flesh dissolving into the hot water, “you do not believe that the land belongs to you. You believe that you belong to the land.” She poured the chile paste into the beans and stirred the mixture.
I gave a small smile. Tecolote knew me well, better than I would have thought.
“Those boys are coming in now,” she said.
Seconds later, I heard Kerry’s boots on the wood planks of the portal , and Mountain ran in the door, waving his tail with excitement.
Tecolote fished a bone from the beans and set it in a tin pie plate to cool. She cooed to Mountain about it, speaking to him in Spanish, and the wolf sat at attention, fixed on her every word, a long strand of drool dripping from a corner of his mouth. When the bone had stopped steaming, she held it up above the wolf’s head, pointed to her eyes with two fingers, and held his gaze. Tecolote waved the two fingers and said an incantation over the bone: “This gives you the strength to run, but you must not run until it is time.”
As she handed the bone to the wolf, I muttered, “My thoughts, exactly.”
Esperanza hobbled to the hearth and used a large gourd ladle to scoop the beans into bowls. “Un grito a tiempo saca un cimarrón del monte.”
“What?” I asked.
She put a bowl of beans in front of me. “It is an old saying over here.”