Going to the Sun

by Jean Craighead George

  A wisp of wool at eye level caught his attention and he examined it. It was not globby like the fur that was shed in summer, but glistening and bright with guard hairs—winter fur—Old Gore’s. He had not gone around this boulder onto the open slope at all, but up it. He was on his way to the top. Marcus scrambled upwards.

  He glanced up. Old Gore glided up a crevasse a hundred feet ahead. Hanging on to the rock with one hand, Marcus lifted his rifle with the other and sighted in on the goat. His foot slipped. He dug in and sighted once more. But the goat was gone.

  Marcus climbed to the top of the rock mass and looked down. Valleys and rivers and mountains spread out below him. He glanced up. Two hundred more feet and he would be at the top of the Jaw. Old Gore must be there. Now Marcus knew what to do. The goat had to come down; he never slept up in that windy lookout. He came down to shelter every night of his life and he would do so tonight. Marcus must station himself along his descent trail. He would wait. It was that simple. He would lie in wait and pick him off as he came down the Jaw for shelter and food.

  Tired, almost exhausted, Marcus pulled himself slowly around the limestone monoliths to Old Gore’s trail to the peak. He was glad to stop on a flat slab along his route and lean against a boulder. He could smell the monarch behind the massive limestone monocline that was the peak. He placed his gun on his knees and waited.

  He licked his cracked lips and spat blood. Marcus felt secure. He had twenty feet between himself and the bend that the goat must round. He could shoot before Old Gore could charge.

  Seconds passed, then minutes. Marcus’s breath came fast. An hour passed. Why didn’t the goat come? He could still smell him behind the wall. What was he doing? Night was approaching; the four-o’clock feeding hour had come and gone.

  The long hunt began to wear on Marcus. His left leg twitched and his back trembled. He reached into his pack, took out candy and nuts, and ate ravenously. The sugar coursed through his body and in a few minutes he felt his strength come back. His senses quickened. He decided to try to steal up on Old Gore, silently, so as not to drive him down the other side, where rocks and shelters abounded.

  He staggered to his feet, pressed his back to the cliff and stole up the trail to the monocline. With a lunge he grabbed it, chinned to the top and aimed down. The goat was not there.

  He slid back to his rock slab in disgust. A wind stirred, gusted and screamed. Marcus pulled up the collar of his jacket and crept into the shelter of the boulder. Before his eyes the cold air clouded, turned into snow and pelted the mountain top. The mist darkened, the blizzard thickened, and through the storm he heard the footsteps of Old Gore coming down the mountain within a few feet of him, but Marcus could not see to aim.

  “Old Jaw, old Jaw!” he yelled in frustration. “Why are you protecting the Evil Hunter?”

  Marcus took off his backpack, got out his tent and stretched it between two rocks. Crawling beneath it, he took out his small gas stove, melted snow, dissolved soup and cheese together and ate. The snow piled up around him. Darkness fell and he unrolled his sleeping bag and crawled into it.

  “Ha,” he said to the Jaw. “Conspire against me with snowstorms, will you? Well, I’ll win yet. I have food and shelter and I know where Old Gore goes at dawn. I’ll be there to meet him.” Exhausted, Marcus slept.

  Long before the sun came up the wind shrieked across the top of the mountain and awoke the hunter. He inched down the snowy trail and glanced toward Chalet Glacier, but all hope of seeing the black smoke signal was dead. A day had passed. He gave a primal sob. Melissa had lost.

  Now he knew what he must do—kill Old Gore and release Will to the sun. Then he would climb into the mountains and live by his gun until he grew so old he would forget. Melissa should not have gone to the Chalet. He knew it when she left him. He knew then she could not convince her father.

  Marcus came to the chimney. It was glassy with ice. Fearlessly he slid down it, walked the ancient goat trail and looked out at Small Glacier. Here Old Gore came each morning on his way to Melissa’s Meadow for food. He would be there to meet him. Marcus crashed through the stinging wind, cursed the Jaw. His summer’s work would mean something after all. He’d outwit and kill the great white goat.

  He stopped at a steep precipice Small Glacier had cut into the stone. He looked back. The peak of the Jaw was a Pleistocene ice block. Marcus reeled. He growled like an animal as he thought back to the beginning of time when man first picked up a club and made war on the beasts. Some ancient Kulick ancestor had won the battle for life and now he must. The hunting line was being tested.

  The sun came up suddenly, sparked on the snow and shattered light everywhere. Marcus shielded his eyes. He bent over. There in the snow lay the goat’s tracks. Huge, platter-sized, belonging to only one animal—Old Gore. They went over the precipice and down the wall.

  Marcus put down his rifle and crawled to the edge on his hands and knees. Old Gore had jumped from the top to a needle of support about twelve feet down. As if on wings he had then dropped to a thread of a stone. One print was pressed there. But where had he gone after that?

  “Yaw,” Marcus cried. “You evaporated. You went to the sun!”

  Then he spotted footprints on a spicule to the left of the thread. More prints told of Old Gore’s escape behind an escarpment.

  “No!” he cried. “I’ll not be defeated.” But he knew that even with mountaineering equipment he could not follow that trail. Old Gore was safe. He was sheltered behind the avalanches and cuts of the mountains, in the tors and pinnacles. The Jaw had embraced the cloven-footed king and protected him from Marcus.

  A grunt sounded behind him. Slowly Marcus rose, turned and looked into the black eyes of the mountain goat.

  Marcus froze. The precipice was at his heels; his gun was just out of reach. Any movement toward it would change him from a helpless man into an aggressive hunter. He could not reach the gun before the goat could strike.

  Marcus stared at Old Gore. The gleaming white fur that bedecked Old Gore was immaculate and perfect. The lowered horns, the flowing beard, the intelligent eyes were beautiful. The damp nostrils were night-black and alive.

  In spite of himself, Marcus smiled at the goat. Old Gore was the creation of the ice, wind and snow. He had adapted to, and been created by, the mountain. He was a work of art. His legs and his shoulders seemed to be carved from quartz. His needle horns were ebony honed by nature, the artist of the alp.

  “You’re not Will,” Marcus said softly, his voice gentle with admiration and respect. “You’re a goat-person. I lose, old man. I’m the loser for understanding you too late.” Marcus no longer felt fear as he waited to fall.

  Old Gore shook his head. Aggression flowed out of his eyes, for the hunter had fled from the youth. There was no enemy to strike. Old Gore stepped back. Marcus walked forward.

  He stepped over his gun, and its silver inlaid butt became just another mineral on the mountain.

  For a moment Old Gore and Marcus walked side by side; then the goat stopped and turned toward his herd. Marcus smiled into his long face.

  “You and I got to the sun,” he whispered. “You and I, Old Gore. At last I know the secret of the Indian Trail. It does not lead to death. It leads to the sun, and life for all creatures.”

  The goat grunted, turned his noble head and looked down upon the valleys, rims and cirques. Then he went quietly down the side of the Jaw and vanished like a cloud on the snow.

  “Yeah, Old Gore,” Marcus said hoarsely. “We got to the sun. We ended an Age of Man...the Hunting Age is over.”

  Marcus smiled and looked toward Chalet Glacier. He could see his refugee camp site from here and the flat monocline with its pillowy boulders. Then he noticed the sky. It was smudgy with smoke that was fading away.

  “Melissa,” he gasped and ran headlong down the Jaw to the saddle. Hollering joyfully, he rushed along the trail to Sky Lake. He leaped and whooped. Melissa had won. He ran, unafraid. As he came toward the pa
ss into Chalet Glacier he took his fugitive trail to the camp site.

  Melissa was not there. He glanced down the cliff, peered behind the lava pillows, ran to the edge of the precipice.

  “Melissa!” No answer came back. He jumped to a rock and glanced around. She was nowhere to be seen. Cold fear seized him and he scanned the ground. His eyes fell on a piece of Melissa’s notebook paper, weighted down by a stone. He leaped upon it.

  Dad won’t arrest you. He is having the marriage annulled, but I came back to you.

  Marcus, I saw you. I saw you hunting Old Gore. I cannot face you again. I’m going back to school. Good-bye, good-bye. M.

  “Dear God, no,” Marcus cried. He slowly turned and looked up at the Jaw. The route he had taken to the summit in pursuit of Old Gore was clearly visible. Every step and stalk he had made, as well as the moves of the goat, would have been seen by Melissa—Melissa, the lover of wild, free things. He felt the shock and loathing she must have felt as she stood here watching him hunt.

  He retched and his mouth felt like dust. He dropped to his knees. There he read the letter again and when he was finished he read it once more.

  I cannot face you again. The words loomed up at him. It was so final, so hopelessly definite.

  “Please listen,” he yelled and ran toward the cliff above the Chalet. He stopped and looked at Melissa’s letter.

  I’m going back to school.

  He must not interrupt. School would be good for her. She ought to finish school.

  Marcus sat down and ran his fingers through his hair. I saw you. It would do no good to tell her that he had not shot Old Gore. That wasn’t enough. He had hunted him. He had wished to kill the king of the mountain. To release Will’s spirit? She would not accept that. To win over the mountain? Out of sun madness? It didn’t matter why. It only mattered that he had hunted him.

  “Melissa,” he yelled off the edge of the cliff. “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill him.” His voice ricocheted from the hollows of the glacial bowl and came shrieking back to him. It was Will screaming as he fell.

  Marcus clutched his head.

  “Will, go away, go away,” he groaned. Then he heard his own father roar: “Get out. Get out...I’ll disown you.”

  Marcus slumped to the ground but he did not cry. He could not. He could not even feel sorry for himself. His body was too strong and vigorous, his mind too clear and rational. The summer was over and there was work to do. A report must be written to Dr. Wing, the goats must be saved.

  As he got to his feet, Melissa’s charts fell from his shirt. His hands touched the names of the goats, the numbered plants, the counts of the croppings and bites. Quickly he found his pencil and pressed it to the corner of the covering page.

  Beloved Melissa,

  I hope you will publish this study. It’s very important.

  I’m headed for Macleod, Alberta, in the Canadian Rockies. There are still large populations of goats there and they need me. I’ll be camped in the Melissa’s Meadows of Macleod.

  And there I will love you as now.

  M.

  P.S. Old Gore has a trophy up on the Jaw—a gun with a silver inlaid stock.

  Carefully Marcus folded the charts, wrapped them in a clean sheet of paper and tied them securely. He addressed the package to Melissa Morgan, Hungry Bear, Montana. And now his tears came. They released his terrible pain and he cried a long time.

  Presently a marmot called in the rocks and Marcus looked up. The animal came toward him.

  The marmot rose to his hind feet and sniffed the air. He eyed the whole of Marcus’s body, its warmth and friendliness, its oneness with the rocks; then he dropped to all fours and sauntered up to sniff his hand. Marcus chuckled.

  “Hi,” Marcus said, “it’s going to be nice from now on.” He got up. “You guys are not going to be afraid of me anymore and we’ll share the meadows and forests.”

  Marcus wiped his nose with the back of his hand, glanced at the Chalet and, whistling softly, he took the trail to Canada.

  A Biography of Jean Craighead George

  Born in Washington, DC, on July 2, 1919, Jean Craighead George loved nature from an early age. Her parents, aunts, and uncles, all naturalists, encouraged her interest in the world around her, and she has drawn from that passion in her more than one hundred books for children and young adults.

  In the 1940s, after graduating from Pennsylvania State University with degrees in science and literature, George joined the White House Press Corps. She married John Lothar George in 1944 and moved to Michigan, where John was attending graduate school. Her husband shared her love of nature, and they lived for a time in a tent in the forest. They began to write novels together, with Jean providing illustrations. Their first novel, Vulpes, the Red Fox, was published in 1948.

  Following the birth of their first child, the Georges relocated to New York, living first in Poughkeepsie, then in Chappaqua. The family welcomed wild animals into their backyard, to stay for as long as they wished, but the creatures always remained free to return to the wild. Many of these temporary pets became characters in the stories George wrote with her husband.

  After winning the Aurianne Award, the American Library Association’s prize for outstanding nature writing, for Dipper of Copper Creek (1956), George began to write on her own, at first continuing to illustrate the books herself. She won a Newbery Honor for her third novel, My Side of the Mountain (1959), which tells the story of Sam Gribley, a young boy who runs away from home in New York City to live in the Catskill Mountains in Delaware County, New York. The book was adapted into a film by the same name in 1969.

  In 1963, divorced from her husband, George and her three children, Twig, Craig, and Luke, began to travel around the country, visiting parks and preserves to learn about the plants and animals that thrived there. These experiences were the inspiration for many of George’s novels, including what is perhaps her best-known work, Julie of the Wolves (1972).

  In the summer of 1970, George and her youngest son, Luke, visited the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory near Barrow, Alaska, one of the northernmost cities in the world. In preparation for a Reader’s Digest article, George studied the wolves living on the tundra nearby, learning about the animals’ social structures and intricate methods of communicating through sound, sight, posture, and scent. One day, George saw a very young girl crossing the tundra alone. The image remained with her as she began to write Julie of the Wolves, the story of an Inuit girl who escapes her abusive husband and survives in the wild by joining a wolf pack.

  Julie of the Wolves was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1973. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award, and it was selected by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) as one of the ten best American children’s books of the previous two centuries. A film adaptation was released in 1987, and George later wrote two sequels about her Eskimo heroine, Julie (1994) and Julie’s Wolf Pack (1997), and shorter illustrated stories about the wolves, Nutik, the Wolf Pup (2001) and Nutik and Amaroq Play Ball (2001).

  George also wrote sequels to her first award-winning novel, My Side of the Mountain. The Far Side of the Mountain (1990) and Frightful’s Mountain (1999), along with the picture books Frightful’s Daughter (2002) and Frightful’s Daughter Meets the Baron Weasel (2007), relate the further adventures of Sam Gribley and his peregrine falcon, Frightful, as they live off the land in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. George and her daughter, Twig, published their Pocket Guide to the Outdoors (2009), a practical companion volume to the books.

  George has written more than one hundred books in the last five decades, including the Thirteen Moons series (1967–69), comprised of illustrated chapter books about wild animals in their natural habitats through the seasons of the year. Most recently, she has collaborated with illustrator Wendell Minor on more than a dozen picture books for younger readers, including the Outdoor Adventures series.

  In addition to this extensive list of fiction for children a
nd young adults, George published an autobiography, Journey Inward (1982), in which she reflects on her life as a writer, naturalist, and single mother. George still lives and writes in Chappaqua, New York.

  Jean Craighead George (bottom left) in Ontario, Canada, in 1923 with her twin brothers, John and Frank Craighead; mother, Carolyn; and next door playmate. Jean’s brothers were a great source of inspiration, and worked as photographers, naturalists, National Geographic writers, champion wrestlers, and, finally, grizzly bear biologists. Jean also attributes her love and appreciation of natural history to her teacher and father, Dr. F. C. Craighead, a forest entomologist and zoologist.

  Jean Craighead George (far right) in the wilderness of Seneca, Maryland, with cousin Ellen Zirpel, brother Frank, Spike the dog, friend Morgan Berthrong, and Trigger the dog, in 1936. They spent just about every school weekend together along the Potomac River, learning about vegetation and wildlife.

  Jean Craighead George with her then-husband, Dr. John L. George, in 1958. The couple lived in a twelve-by-twelve Army tent for four years while John got his PhD and Jean wrote books and illustrated filmstrips.

  Jean Craighead George and Yammer, a screech owl, in 1964. Yammer lived with Jean and her family and made his home in the breaks between books in their bookcase. (Photo courtesy of Harper Portraits.)

  Jean Craighead George in Chappaqua, New York, in 1964, with her pets Tonka, a Newfoundland dog, and Tricket, a Manx cat. Jean learned many things from her domestic pets, including animal language, social structure, and personalities. (Photo courtesy of Ellan Young.)

  Jean Craighead George circa 1970, catching Monarch butterflies to band and release. These bands were used to track the butterflies’ migratory destination, which was still unknown at the time. (Photo courtesy of Ellan Young.)

  Jean Craighead George and a young peregrine falcon named King David in the Catskill Mountains in 1985. Jean was gathering a falcon’s perspective for her book Frightful’s Mountain, a sequel to My Side of the Mountain.