The Wild Marsh

by Rick Bass

  Our mother died when I was thirty-three, when B.J. was seventeen. I feel that I'm often aware of a breath, a pulse, of her in me, encouraging me to help keep an eye on him, to help finish the job—to help her finish the job, the job that is never finished—and though I can feel that she doesn't care in the least whether we get this deer or not—what do such things matter, anymore, if they ever did?—I can feel also that she is looking down with pleasure at the sight or knowledge of two of her boys trailing that deer through the snowy wilderness on a Thanksgiving afternoon while the entire rest of the world, perhaps, sits at the table, at the feast: two of her boys threading their way through the nearly impenetrable wilderness, as unseen to the rest of the world, in that forest jungle, as she is now to us: but again, no less real, for the not seeing.

  What it is like, sometimes, is that the hunt becomes like a living thing itself, breathed into a brief life of its own there on the mountain, or in the forest, in the space between the hunter and the hunted. And that is what happens this day as we labor, to the best of our abilities, to stay up with the big deer just ahead of us—there is still no snow filling his casual, steady steps—this deer that is so clearly our physical and intellectual superior, on this mountain at least.

  We hang with him nonetheless, and the hunt, or the space within the hunt, shifts and changes.

  A young mountain lion slips in between us somehow, coming in from downwind—catching the scent of mule deer buck, and of the humans climbing right behind him.

  The tracks suddenly before us show where the lion has come in from the north and joined in the stalk, maneuvering itself into that compressed space just behind the deer, but just ahead of us: the new tracks' heat glistening in the pressed white snow. The lion belly wriggling under the low boughs of yew and cedar and hemlock, and with its big padded feet, and the litheness of its spring-steel muscle, surely as silent as any single strand or current of water within a larger river.

  For a while, the lion follows the deer directly, riding silently in that space between man and deer like an upturned leaf riding raft-like on that flowing river; but then the lion appears to make up its mind about something—as if having adjusted itself to the pace of both the pursued and the pursuers—and shifts its route out to the side, downwind, and lengthens its stride; and it seems clear to us, with the back knowledge of the tracks beneath us (as if we are reading time backwards, or even, briefly, as if time itself is moving backwards), that the lion is trying to capitalize on the deer's focus on us.

  The tracks are so fresh. We strain, listening for the possible sounds of struggle just ahead. A big deer, two men, and a lion are all jammed in together, all gathered within a fifty-yard sphere on this mountain, and none of them can see one another; and three of the four parties know of the existence of all the others, though it seems certain, by the deer's casual gait, that he does not yet know of the lion.

  The lion's tail twitching, perhaps, as it skulks along—being sure to stay ahead of us, whom it fears, and yet using us too as a sort of decoy or stalking horse.

  Seen from above, would it look like a parade? The great deer, with his huge crown of antlers like a king, and behind him, the lion, threading the same course, and behind the lion, the two men?

  And behind us, what? A single raven, perhaps, following silently, flying coal black and ragged through the falling snow?

  It's easy to see when time, or the river, fractures, like placid water stretching suddenly over a span of stony riffles. The great buck never panics, but he must have finally glimpsed or scented or heard or somehow sensed the lion, for he suddenly abandons his leisurely, wandering game of cat and mouse with us and begins ascending the mountain directly, climbing straight up the steep face not like a deer now but like a mountaineer. Not lunging or running, but climbing straight up and out, traveling up a mountain face so steep that no trees grow from it; climbing through waist-deep snow, belly-deep snow; and the tracks before us indicate that, once busted, the lion follows for but a short distance before abandoning the hunt, choosing instead to conserve its calories and to try again at a later time, once it has again gathered the element of surprise.

  B.J. and I, however, indulge in the luxury of not being bound by any such limitations—of being able to be ceaseless in the pursuit of our desires—and we continue on up the steep slope, warming now in our exertions, and with hearts hammering and breath coming hard: and again, I wonder what it would look like, wonder what it does look like, with the immense deer now staking out across the sheer mountain face, completely exposed to the world—up above timberline now—though still unseen.

  We follow the deer for the rest of the afternoon. We push hard, floundering in the deep snow, thinking always that just over the next ridge we will see him, even if only briefly; and we're all the more excited by the fact that he is out in the open now, passing across wide, steep-tilted parks and meadows. Still his tracks are new cut in the storm, still he is no more than a minute or two ahead of us; and we surge to rejoin him, to connect and coincide with him; to close the distance, like one river seeking perhaps the confluence of another.

  But the land, and time, will not yet have it.

  Our spirits lift at one point, when, nearing the top, the buck's ascent begins to flatten out, as if he is finally growing weary of climbing straight up—as we certainly are—and I find myself remembering all the many miles I chased him around on the mountain earlier in the day. How wonderful it would be if all that work ended up having some incremental effect of fatigue on him, which might result in B.J. and I being able to finally get up on him.

  He begins side-hilling, clearly tiring; but still, like a magician, he always keeps the perfect distance between us and him. The snow is coming down harder, so that he's granted extra protection beneath that cloak, and he heads around to the southern end of the mountain and then climbs up and over the final windy ridge and travels straight down the back side, back down into the dark timber of his home, as if trying now not just to escape but to break our spirit—we cannot help but think of how hard our climb back out will be, and with a Thanksgiving dinner engagement awaiting us, shortly after dark. But still we follow him, almost as if hypnotized now, betranced by some mesmerizing braid of falling snow, and our own desire, and the strange weave of the deer's daylong path.

  It's as if some obsession has come over us, to be following him down the back side like that—into the deeper timber, and into the darkness. Back on the ridge, he had done the same thing Travis's deer had done—had headed straight into a herd of other deer, trying to mix his tracks among theirs—and it was this last act that gave us increased confidence that he was wearying and that he might soon make a mistake, or we would never have continued on.

  We must have closed the distance considerably, over the course of our afternoon-long pursuit—thirty seconds behind him now?—because his tracks show where, for the first time all day, he has begun to run, bounding straight down the nearly vertical slope in the high-legged prance of his species: and we follow, like wolves, as quiet as we can, down a slope so steep that the snow barely even clings to it. To lower ourselves down it, we grip leafless alder and willow with our gloved hands, as if rappelling.

  Perhaps, in so doing, we call his bluff. There is only half an hour of light left, and a dim cold blue light, at that—but finally, he ceases in his descent and begins angling to the north and side-hilling his way slowly back up to the ridge.

  His tracks continue to pass through those of other deer—fresh tracks there too, even in the falling snow, so that we are tempted to follow those herd tracks—but his are so much larger than any of the others that it is easy to stay with him. To stay on message, as a businessperson might say.

  We are a long way from our truck.

  We're getting tired and sloppy, and losing our hunter's edge, I think, at a time when it should be growing sharper, with only a very few minutes left in the day. We're looking off into the dark canyon below, and at the snowy wild crags in the blue dista
nce, as night slides in over the wilderness. And it seems to us, in the way that the icy spots of snow are striking our face, and in our exhaustion, that we are somehow in a much wilder place than when we started out, and it is all the more beautiful for that extra or added wilderness. We stop and rest, looking out at the horizon, pausing to admire the sight of such country before the night takes it away.

  We can see where the buck has stopped to rest, also, and even where he must have sighted us, for his walking tracks will suddenly disappear, punctuated by long leaps, the only possible explanation for which, particularly given the state of his own fatigue, can be that he waited, looking back, to see finally in blue dusk the face or name of the thing that was following him, and glimpsed it, two upright creatures moving slowly through the dimness, and through the falling snow, only fifty yards behind...

  Walk and run, walk and run; we close the distance with our brute endurance, and he opens it back up again, stretches it farther once more. We never see him—only the places where, looking back, he has seen us—and finally, though it is not quite yet dark, it is time to head on back, so far are we from our truck, and home. It's been a great hunt, with every single minute of it filled with the possibility of making game— saturated with the possibility, and at times even the likelihood, of making game—and we have no regrets.

  We pause one more time to look out at the mountains, as they sink beneath the darkness—it would take us a week, in these conditions, I think, to reach even the next mountain—and then we turn back toward home, no longer hunting but merely trudging through the deep snow, passing through a forest, and in my mind, there is a feeling like I have released the buck, as if, in my letting go, I have snipped some thread or leash that has connected us all day long.

  I have gotten what I needed; I have gotten what I came for.

  It's snowing harder. We pass out of a grove of dark lodgepole and into a small opening, and I look downslope and see in the dimness, nearly two hundred yards away, a doe mule deer peering out from behind a tree—she too is about to pass on into the same clearing—and then I see the buck just behind her.

  He is facing us, looking upslope, and has his head lowered, in the way that big mule deer bucks will sometimes do when evaluating something.

  Unthinkingly—as if with the echo or momentum of desire rather than the previous burning essence of it—I raise the rifle to put the scope on him. Even at this distance, I can tell he's big—that it's the deer we've been following—but I can't find him in my scope. I've forgotten to keep it clean in the fog and snow, and now I've got to lower it quickly and rub it clear with my sleeve.

  I do so, then lift the gun again, quickly—desire has now'resumed its path with mine, has reentered my steps—and even at this distance, he looks immense, and I squeeze the trigger.

  He is gone, vanished immediately. The doe that was standing next to him is still there, prancy now—she whirls and trots away—and the snow begins coming down harder, as if the sound of the rifle shot punctured some reserve or restraint, some previous withholding, and I watch and wait, wondering where the buck went.

  There is the chance that the bullet struck him and that he is poleaxed, sleeping already the sleep of eternity—but there is the chance too that I missed him cleanly. And there is the chance also, regrettable but ever present, that he is only wounded—perhaps fatally, perhaps not—and that if B.J. and I wait quietly he will lie down to rest, unpursued, and will die quietly in the falling snow.

  I don't have a clue.

  Under normal conditions, we'd sit down and wait. Rushing down there isn't going to change anything: if he's dead, he's dead.

  But if he's hurt, I want to know it. In this falling snow, we're not going to have the luxury of letting him lie down to die quietly. We'll have to stay with him, following him, and any spotted trail of blood he might leave, through the night, before the falling snow can obscure the blood sign of his path.

  As if we might be destined to follow him forever, like the wheeling revolutions of some one set of constellations, following eternally another set, across the autumn or winter skies, night after night, and with their distance never varying.

  We wait about five minutes to see if he might come back out into the opening—sometimes a startled or even slightly injured deer will retreat to the edge of the woods and then stand there for a long while, as if in a trance, before finally resuming whatever he had been doing before the shot, as if intent on completing his goals—and as we walk, I measure the distance, counting the paces.

  It is a hundred and seventy-five yards to the place where he was standing—farther than I'd realized. We examine his tracks—the doe ran north, while he turned and bounded down the mountain, to the west—and I can find not even a fleck of blood, or even any hair.

  Always, when a bullet exits a deer, it will cut hair on the way out. There'll almost always be a fine spray of blood, bright on the snow; but always, there is hair, long, hollow deer hair that always reminds me of larch or pine needles.

  There is no hair here, no blood, only air, space, snow, absence.

  I thought my aim was good; I had felt good about the shot.

  I examine the tracks more closely. They look awkward to me, in a way I can't explain: not the usual choreographed dance steps of whirl-and-bound alarm, but with something else, some indecision or confusion charted in the snow—or so it seems to me, or to my subconscious. Or perhaps only to my desire.

  We follow the tracks down the hill. Even though I saw nothing in the blink that followed my shot, I feel as if I should have hit this deer. That I did hit this deer.

  Out in the middle of the steep clearing, there is one lone bush, a large leafless willow, its limbs and branches stark against the snowy evening.

  "Look," B.J. says, pointing to the base of the tree, where there are more branches, wide branches beneath the other branches, and a dense, dark sleeping body that is being covered already with snow: vanishing already now except for the memory, our memory, of the hunt.

  He's heavy. It takes both of us to pull him into the woods, where I gut him quickly and peel the cape of his hide back to help cool him down. The bullet struck him in the neck, right where I was aiming, but his neck was so massive that it absorbed the bullet so that it never exited, which is why I never found any hair or blood.

  We tuck the deer in tight beneath a big lodgepole so that he won't be buried by snow overnight. I wrap one of my jackets around him so that lions and coyotes and lynx and wolverines will be less likely to fool with him—hopefully the bears are all sleeping, this late in the year—and I scrub my hands in the snow, wipe them on the green bough of a lodgepole, thank the mountain and the deer for one of the best hunts ever, thank B.J. for being part of it, and for helping with the tracking, and for spotting the big old deer, dead under that willow tree—and then, in the darkness, we start up the long slope to the ridge, and back down the mountain toward our truck.

  The next day, we will sleep in until eight o'clock, and then return to quarter and debone and pack out the heavy deer, both of us struggling beneath fully loaded packs, and each dragging a deer shoulder behind us like a sled—and the day after that, B.J. will return to Texas and I will begin butchering and wrapping the deer for the freezer; but that evening, even though we have many more chores ahead of us, the hunt feels wonderfully complete, almost magically so; and all the way down the mountain in the darkness, I keep exclaiming to B.J., "Man, what a wonderful hunt that was!" and, alternately, "I so love to get an animal on Thanksgiving!" until I'm sure he must wonder if perhaps I haven't turned into a bit of a simpleton, living so far out in the wilderness, to be made so euphoric by such a simple act, the taking of one animal.

  And except for the fact that he was there, he might think it so: that I was overreacting, with my pleasure. But he was there, and saw it, and felt it, and though he cannot know of the other 364 days, he knows of this one; and he understood, by the way I kept repeating it, that it wasn't just the one day I was grateful for
, in being presented with that deer at dusk on Thanksgiving, but instead, the whole year: the entire year that just passed by, and the whole year to come, as we eat on that deer. Everything.

  Here is what greeted us on our return to the warm, dry, well-lit house, ten minutes before dinner was to be served.

  A houseful of friends, already happy and smiling, laughing, joyful, even before the news of our wonderful hunt—Tim and Joanne, and Todd and Mollie—and the girls shrieking and playing, chasing each other around the house on roller skates, and all the mixing fragrances of our Thanksgiving meal.

  Someday when we are all dead and gone, not just this season's deer and elk, but this generation of mankind—someday soon enough, when we are all dust—these words will be all that is left from that evening, and for that reason, it seems important to me to put down the names of some of the dishes that night, to bear witness to some of the bounty, as I might also seek to celebrate the existence of a wild country—entire mountain ranges—no less imperiled than the foreshortened moments of our own lives, nonnegotiable against time.

  The mountains, the wilderness, should be beyond that. They should be marked and measured on another scale, if on any scale at all.

  The wilderness—unlike our own lives—should not be compromised, should never grow diminished: should be as immortal as we are mortal.

  Whipped Yukon potatoes, grilled salmon with fennel. Spice-rubbed organic free-range turkey with sage gravy, stuffed with garlic and leeks. A second free-range turkey, with a honey-lime-orange citrus glaze, and chipotle gravy. Venison backstrap, cooked rare on the grill. Southwest cornbread stuffing with corn and green chilies. Mango-cranberry chutney with Parker House rolls. Pear tarts with caramel sauce. Chocolate chess pie.

  Each day is another growth ring secreted by the shell of the nautilus, or the cambium of a tree, in each and every tree in the forest. These layers of beauty, so available to the residents of this incredible place—a new concentric ring accreting in our lives with each passing day, and each passing night—anchor us, and keep us so grounded at this one level, in this one life, that there are times when suddenly it seems like a magic trick, and that although we know there are other levels, and other lives beyond our own brief existence, the specific presence of beauty in this valley seems so durable as to achieve a kind of permanence beyond our own participation in that beauty.