by Patin, Eddie
When dawn broke over the mountain, I first saw the field in the sea of black. Then the darkness of the pines a hundred yard before me. Peering through my scope with just enough light to make it useful, I scanned the trees until I saw the first twitch of movement.
And then I saw orange.
Pulling away from the scope, I looked across the crisp gloom until I could make out a ghostly blaze-orange torso floating in the darkness of tree-trunks.
Then I saw another blotch of orange.
By the time the light had turned the dawn into morning, I could see hunters lined up all along the tree-line like ducks in a shooting gallery—each no doubt positive that they had a private spot of their own in the darkness before the morn.
I looked over to Jon, trying to determine whether or not he was sleeping in his little sniper nook, then saw his orange head swivel to look back at me. My gloved fingers fumbled for the radio attached to my lapel.
“Jon,” I said into the small speaker by my shoulder, my voice low and dead in the still air. “What do you see?”
His orange-vested body moved, and I could see the black spots that were his hands reaching for his radio.
“10-9—What?” his voice replied.
“There are ‘frickin hunters everywhere.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What do you want to do?” I said.
He paused. “Wanna move?” he said.
“Yeah.” I looked up the valley. Then down the valley. Toward the mountain. “We’re not going to get shit around here.”
“Copy,” he said. “I’ll be over in a ‘sec.”
“Copy,” I replied, then released the radio to fall back to its position on my clothes.
Propping my rifle up against the log, I sat up on my heels, stood my backpack up next to the gun, then stood. My legs were cramped, cold, and felt like they hadn’t moved in hours. Should have known, of course. We were probably just short of a mile away from the road. The elk were likely farther in. Especially with the bazillion other hunters having the same idea for a great, secluded position.
Once Jon made his way to me, his breath forming a living vapor in the crisp air, I had my pack back on. I shouldered the rifle, and we walked down the valley toward Mt. Everson.
The farther we went into the woods, the heavier the mist became, and we wondered if the cloud we were in would ever burn off as the day warmed up. I thought the hike would warm me up, but I was always just a step ahead of feeling chilled. We passed more rows of hunters, lined up along the tree-lines but too committed to their spots to move, but after an hour of moving up and down the sloping valleys, the grass whistling past our boots, we began to see men only sparsely, hidden at the top of a hill here, or in a corner-line of trees there.
After another hour, we were utterly alone.
The visibility wasn’t bad enough that we couldn’t get a good shot out to a hundred yards—maybe two, but the sky had been swallowed by a white murk, and the way we came, looking back down over the hills and valleys that we knew were lined with silent rifles, was retreating into a haze.
More than once, Jon had stopped to put a waypoint into his GPS.
I stopped once to pee, and marveled at how alien the environment seemed—frozen and silent, devoid of animal life.
When the miles-long valley ended, we looked up at the looming shadow of the mountain in the mist before us, and stalked into the darkness of the trees...
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“In Darkness of the Mountain’s Night”
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