Magdalena Mountain

by Robert Michael Pyle

  “Good luck. Okay. How can you—or I, or anyone—travel around, do interesting things in interesting places, and meet pretty people without falling for someone now and then? And if you do, how can you ever honestly bond with one person?”

  “Damned if I know,” Mead said. He’d often asked himself the same thing.

  “Some oracle!”

  “So, how about this? No possession, no jealousy. Sure, loneliness and disappointment from time to time, as with me when I got to Gothic. Too bad, so sad. But no end of the world. We’re young, for Christ’s sake; maybe we have no business bonding at this point in our lives anyway.” This was easier to say now than it was a few days ago.

  “That just sounds like the hippies and their free love, doesn’t it?”

  “Like, ‘love the one you’re with’? I guess so. But they’re just recycling the Beats on the subject, as they did the Bohemians before them . . . Rimbaud, Verlaine . . .”

  “Or Bo Diddley: ‘Who do you love?’ Well, maybe it makes sense for now. But when does one switch? And then, how does one become instantly monogamous?”

  “I’m not even going to try that one. Look at those stars! The Milky Way looks like the sandy bed of Conundrum Creek.”

  “Nice dodge, Mr. Delphi. Well, it should be a fine day for your trek out tomorrow. I’ll miss you, James Mead. You’ll probably meet some Nordic blonde ski-bunny chick getting out of the springs after breakfast, take up company with her on the way to Aspen, and move in together, and that’ll be the last we hear of you.” In the pale glimmer Noni’s face looked luminous. Streaks of risen dew on her brown cheeks might have been taken for tears.

  “That’s just silly,” he said. “Nordics aren’t even my type. I’ll be there with open arms when you get back to New Haven.”

  Hot springs ran down Noni’s face as she said, “About that, James.” She paused. Then, “I won’t be coming back to New Haven this fall. I’ve been offered a fellowship in Cambridge.”

  “Well—” James felt just as dumbstruck as when Noni had met him in Crested Butte with the news of her new friend, but he recovered well. “Oh, congratulations, Noni! Anyway, Harvard isn’t that far up the line from Yale—just a few hours.”

  “Not that Cambridge, James.”

  “Oh. Shit.” After a silence of a few bat-beats in the night, Mead hobbled out on a broken voice, “Well, it’s a super place. Remember to ask me for some contacts and the names of a few good pubs, like the Free Press . . .” His voice trailed off into the gurgling of the stream beyond their thin, thin wall.

  Nothing more to be said. James drew Noni down into the bag and pulled the tent fly tight. In their down nest, Noni’s body felt even warmer than the hot springs. Her softness beside him all but blotted out the sense of the rocks beneath their bed. He would long for the nearness later, just as he had during the previous days when he thought someone else was enjoying it. But he was damned if he wasn’t going to feel it fully now. He’d learned that much. He nestled his head between Noni’s breasts and went to sleep.

  For once, his dreams contained hints of neither Carson nor Magdalena, but just a long, rowdy snowball fight among naked people, including almost everyone he knew. “That’s crazy,” he mumbled in his half sleep. “How can you see someone naked in a dream when you never have in real life?”

  Noni muttered, “Conundrum,” and turned her warm bottom into the bowl of his belly. Then she dove back into her own dreams. They featured a troupe of Nordic blonds and blondes, nude, disporting together in a huge outdoor Jacuzzi. To her satisfaction, James was not among them. But she was.

  28

  After mating, Erebia seeks shelter from a brief shower beneath a handy parasol, the leaf of a Parry’s primrose. Its rose-pink petals glisten with raindrops as Erebia sits snug and dry, his wings folded tight. The urge to fly and seek a partner assuaged for now, he rests as his next spermatophore recharges the costly nutrient package it will bear along with sperms. When the rain lets up, he creeps down a fissure for the night. In the morning he will resume his up and down flights over the rocks, seeking to mate as many times as he can during his lifetime. If he manages to couple with a female already mated, his spermatophore will displace the other, so his genes will be the ones passed on. So there’s no giving up just because he has succeeded once.

  Of course, the same fate could befall his own germ cells, left with his first mate. Not for now, however. Since their parting on the morning after their union, she has been unreceptive to further courtship, raising her abdomen high and spreading her wings low whenever approached, until the frustrated males give up. Instead, she hops, flutters, and crawls from tuft of grass to sedge tussock to lump of stone. From time to time she taps a grass blade with her antennae, dips her body’s tip, and deposits a single egg on one surface or another, cementing it into place. More often than not, the chosen substrate is an overhang of rock, where the egg is inconspicuous but never very far from a succulent supply of grass.

  Large for a satyr’s egg, more the size of a swallowtail’s, the ovum resembles an oblong vase for a petit point flower. Ribbed and creamy white when laid, it turns tan and purplish brown and in a few hours ripens to silver-gray with a Prussian blue band around the dimple on top. Finally, before hatching, it goes putty-gray against the grayer granite and fading grass. About ten days after the egg is deposited, a thrip-size larva will eat its way out, consume the eggshell, and switch to tender grass. How many times Erebia’s offspring will molt before diving into the grassroots will depend upon how many days remain before the alpine herbage dries out between summer’s last breath and autumn’s first frost.

  Of all this, Erebia knows nothing. He has resumed his patrols, sometimes top to bottom and back, other times back and forth in a drunken glide path to the edges of the willow thickets and Boloria bogs below. A Clark’s nutcracker makes a halfhearted pass at the butterfly. Distracted by a checkerspot, it loses both in a classic fox-and-grapes act of indecision. The corvid settles for a fat rock spider instead, thus getting the distilled goodness of ten scree moths, two Magdalenas, four checkerspots, and a tortoiseshell, as well as various flies, caddis flies, and lacewings harvested over the orb weaver’s lifetime.

  Erebia hasn’t quite the same vigor as before. Shiny chitin is beginning to show through the sparser scales on the veins of his wings, especially the big, swollen vein at the base of the forewing that sets the satyrs apart from other lineages of butterflies. Still, but for the beak brand applied by the black swift, his wings are entire. Few shrubs grow on the rockslides to tear butterflies’ wings, and nights spent safe among the lockbox of the rocks mean no scratches or tears from branches blowing on the nighttime breeze.

  The most obvious sign of Erebia’s aging shows in his coloring; no longer truly black, but a rich coffee-bean brown, he has faded in the harsh ultraviolet rays of the alpine sky. Built and colored for the purpose of gathering sunbeams, those sable vanes nonetheless lose their luster in the performance of that very function.

  So Erebia is a little past his prime when he meets a fresh misfortune. During a late passage, he is taken by a sudden gust and carried over the ridge to the steep snowfield that gathers, then melts annually in the lap of the mountain’s other side—a mere ghost of the glacier that carved out this cirque. Only once before has he ventured here, all the way down the north-facing slope to the protalus rampart at its base, but that was a warm day, and he sailed right back up and over to his accustomed home range. Now, as he blows over the snow-bowl, the cold-blooded insect feels its chill. A stiff, sharp shaft of upwelling air clutches him, sucking him down onto the surface of the firn. There his body temperature rapidly drops toward the danger point.

  A watcher at the snowfield would notice the surface speckled and spotted with the bodies and wings of grasshoppers, butterflies, and other insects thus entrapped. This strange fallout proves a boon to foraging birds and entomologists. Rosy finches and water pipits alight in the middle of these refrigerated larders
for the cold cuts they contain. Ptarmigan, leaving off their accustomed willow buds for the high-protein opportunity, work the edges. Birds draw other birds to the bonanza. Helpless when the temperature of their flight muscles drops below a critical point, most insects become easy prey when so chilled—or simply freeze to death and become immured in the snowpack. Sometimes entire strata of this snow plankton have been preserved in glaciers, and famous among scientists are the places, such as Grasshopper Glacier in Montana, where the melting feet of these ice sheets give forth their insect lodes. The lesser museum of Magdalena Mountain is about to gain one more specimen.

  Instinctively, just before numbness sets in for good, Erebia lays his closed wings flat against the reflective surface of the snow. At just this time of day the sun shines directly onto the mountain’s far face, blinding birds, pikas, and passersby unless they shield their eyes. For a time, Erebia’s temperature flirts with the point of total shutdown. Then a calorie or two convects from that spread black beam catcher to his body and into his muscle fibers, the nodes of nerves. Heat gain begins to overcome loss by an immeasurable margin, but not too small for Erebia to feel and respond to. Slowly, slowly, he reclaims precious degrees. The snowfield struggled its best to drain the BTUs from his blood, but those elegantly evolved solar panels, the wings of an alpine, suck back at the sunbeams for all they are worth.

  Finally, just able, Erebia rights himself and begins to crawl. In a few labored minutes he reaches the edge of the snow, struggles onto warm granite, continues to a hot black patch of lichen, and lies flat again. In seconds his flight muscles reach the takeoff temperature, well above the ambient high for the day—and he takes flight. The first patch of campion he passes over draws him like a butterfly collector to beer, and he quaffs the sugar-rich nectar for minutes.

  Renewed, as the sun sinks to the ridgetop, Erebia follows another time-grooved pattern and flies to a shadowed cleft in the rockslide. Alighting on the rim of the rock, he fairly dives into the void that promises safety for the high montane night. He’ll never know how close he came to frozen death that day, but if he knows anything, it is how to pass a high-country sunset. He crawls down the fluted side of a rock chimney. At last, warm against the stone-walled haystack of a providential pika, Erebia sleeps his Stygian sleep, a black butterfly down a black hole in a black night. Thus ends the twelfth day of adult existence for one alpine resident of Magdalena Mountain.

  29

  Mary stepped from the dark, cool hollow of the monastery into the bright light of day. A pineborne breeze carried a conifer whiff and the sound of women’s voices. A raven call away, Oberon stepped into the Grove. Six or eight ponderosa pines, half as many lodgepoles, Douglas firs, and a couple of aspens circled a pink sand clearing, in the center of which stood a tall boulder, a megalith beside a single blue spruce.

  The others were already present, except for Attalus. Xerxes, Sylvanus, Abraxas the Baptist, Levi Samson, Ajax, Bacchus, Polyxenes, and a dozen others stood about talking quietly or perched on stones, each wearing the soft green robe that was the one visible sign of their order, worn only on certain occasions. Several had their robes hitched up above their knees or open at the chest to reveal T-shirts variously emblazoned.

  “Abraxas,” called Ajax, an ardent atheist, “I have noticed that Jesus has a lightning rod.” He nodded toward the tall statue jutting from a high rock. “Doesn’t this show a singular lack of faith on the part of the Catholics?”

  “Well said, Ajax. We Baptists would have felt no need for such a precaution. You, on the other hand, might be advised to get one yourself!” Laughter rolled around the group like a cat’s ball with a bell inside.

  “Gentlemen, lovers of nature and peacefulness,” Oberon began in the prescribed lingo. He presided as founder of the Grove. “Sylvanus, will you please give us a poem?” It was customary to begin the Forest Meeting with verse that spoke reverence for trees.

  “I think that I shall never see” having grown a little thin in the foliage, Sylvanus (reflecting his assumed name) had taken it upon himself to enlarge the Grove’s library of dendrophilic verse. Dickinson, Frost, Jeffers, Merwin, Snyder, all were read here.

  “Here is a poem,” he said, “you will not have heard. A friend found it on a plaque hanging on a tree in Agra, India, and sent it to me on a postcard. I would move to adopt it as our standard opening, but then it would become as common as Joyce Kilmer’s verse. Anyway . . .” Sylvanus’s introductions often went on longer than the poems themselves. This suited Oberon today, as he needed time to stall; just so it didn’t go on too long. He stroked his mica-flecked beard, thinking fast on his feet as Sylvanus spoke. “. . . So here it is: ‘The Prayer of the Tree’: ‘Man, I am the warmth of your home in cold winter night . . .’ ”

  After the poem, a grunt of approval escaped the Grove like an audible puff. It seemed that a general discussion of Indian and Nepalese de- and afforestation was about to break out, when Oberon spoke again.

  “Brothers, excuse me, I need to speak with some urgency. And I want to stop addressing you as ‘brothers’ or ‘gentlemen.’ I ask your consensus for the admission of women to the Forest Meeting today.”

  This came as no surprise. Xerxes said, “Oberon, you know we’re all in accord with that proposal. We’ve never wanted to exclude women.”

  “Except Attalus!” came two or three voices.

  “I second that,” said Sylvanus, short, stout, in his robe very much the Friar Tuck figure. “Bring them on, I say!”

  “Now, quickly—do we have a consensus to admit women to this assembly and, in principle, to our order?” No discussion was necessary, no “nays” were recorded. Mary, Annie, and Catherine stepped into the Grove.

  After happy words of welcome, Mary asked Oberon on the QT, “But what kept Attalus from destroying the consensus?”

  Just then the monastery carillon rang two. “Why, I think Attalus will be with us directly,” Oberon answered. “He was absent when I announced that the Forest Meeting would be moved up half an hour due to the shortening of the days. Too bad.”

  “Oberon! And you say you have no power here!” Annie whispered.

  “A mere parliamentary maneuver,” he hushed back.

  Annie smirked, and a few monks chortled, feeling a little too clever. Oberon knew the main battle lay ahead, but at least Mary and Catherine could now speak for themselves.

  Just then Attalus appeared, a chilly shadow falling out of the forest into the sunlit glade. “Oberon!” he raged. “What are these women doing here?” He uttered the word as some would say snakes or cockroaches.

  “They are our guests, Attalus. You were late, and we agreed to admit them.”

  “Late! It’s just past two sharp, how was there time—”

  “The time was moved up, with the sun. You were absent for the announcement.”

  “You’ve tricked me!”

  “Then call it quid pro quo for your betrayal of Mary.”

  “Never mind that. They cannot remain. You know I have to approve—”

  “Then be still for now. You’ll have a chance to have your say and to exercise your veto if you so decide. But you’ll have to wait your turn. There are other items on the agenda first, and these sisters are here and will remain for now.” Not a few of those present were half hoping Attalus’s apoplexy might translate into something more serious. He sputtered, flapped like a big brown bat, and eventually settled in the shade.

  “We have three items of business to discuss,” Oberon continued. “In the following order. First, the presence of Jesus Christ on our ‘property,’ if you will excuse that term. Second, our proper response to the mountain pine beetles here. And third, whether we shall invite the women’s encampment at Rocky Flats to winter under our overlarge roof and, if that works out, perhaps to merge with our order.” A sound such as suffocating toads might make issued from Attalus’s shadow. Oberon hoped that if he handled the other tedious matters first, Attalus might be worn down
by the time they got to the women.

  “As to the statue of Jesus—” Oberon turned and swept his hand in its direction, for there was nowhere in the precincts of the Grove from which it could not be seen. “The church included it in the deed, therefore it is ours, like it or not. Do we want to keep an image from one particular religion, and such a prominent one as this, on land devoted to pantheistic ecumenism? Maybe the chief proponent and opponent among us will be good enough to state their cases. Ajax first, please.”

  “As you say, Oberon, the Grove is the habitat of Pan and all the rest. To permit a monumental symbol of one cult to dominate the place is tantamount to promoting the worship of Jehovah and Jesus Christ. I say remove the effigy, lightning rod and all, and leave it on the doorstep of the Lutherans down the road. Or better yet, trade it for beetle-killed cordwood.” Murmurs of “Right on!” and “Blasphemy!” rumbled around the wood.

  “Oh, boy,” muttered Oberon, “this’ll be fun.” Then, “Now Abraxas, please.”

  “Thank you, Oberon. As he is an avowed atheist, Brother Ajax’s position is of course biased. But consider that Jesus spoke to all men as the Prince of Peace—surely apt for all of us, especially in these times. It’s not his fault that wars have been fought—”

  “Are being fought,” said someone.

  “—in his name. Let us keep his benign presence as a clear sign that we are on his side, in that way if not in an ecclesiastical context. You don’t have to accept him as your personal savior to admire his teachings.”

  Ajax was listening.

  “Besides, the statue has diplomatic value in a largely Christian neighborhood. We rely on the goodwill of our neighbors to be able to function. As you know, some of the fundamentalists around here already confound our Pan with the Beast (the oldest frame-up in the book), and we’d best not reinforce the rumor that we’re Satanists. Animists are bad enough in their minds. We might as well hang a big 666 on our mailbox as pull down that statue, which would surely be seen as thumbing our noses at local churches.”