In the morning, we took our time,
brewed our tea, cooked our eggs and toast,
and watched the sun turn everything to fluff and gold.
The snow that fell in the night sloughed off rapidly and the day grew warm.
We filled our backpacks and hiked out to Skilliner hot springs, a few miles from our campsite. The trail we walked was a highway! We made the first hot spring foray of the year in this area and the animals, with the nonexistent local human population, were using the trails as their own. We saw cougar tracks like dinner plates and followed, for at least a full mile, the Smoky Mountain grey wolf pack.
This was the largest track of them all:
Startlingly large, if you keep in mind that I have really
big hands for being such a little girl — bigger than RW’s!
I strained my eyes, searching and searching the mountain sides for a glimpse of the powerful grey wolf pack that calls the Smoky Mountains home…but we saw nothing but the scuffle of tracks and frequent piles of scat, thick with elk hair.
I can’t explain why I wanted to see a wolf so badly, besides the fact that it’s a rare and special thing to see one romping about in the wild. Had I come face to face with the wolf that made this track, he’d have easily stood higher than my waist…
I suppose…
I suppose I sometimes feel like a wolf.
A solitary wolf.
A few weeks ago, a friend referred to me as a “…lone wild woman…” and while these wolves seemed to be running as a pack, there is still an unfettered spirit and a lonesomeness associated with the species that I identify with.
I prayed to see one.
I wished I may.
I wished I might.
I wished to see a wolf that night…
The Smoky River blasted through the canyons, scouring the mountains with silty snow melt. RW, being the fisherman he is, continuously commented on eddies, holes and quieter bends that would hold fish later in the season. Then he lamented how his summer months are stolen by his work every year. Then I reminded him that whenever he jumps out of an airplane and into a forest fire, he always carries a broken down fishing rod in the leg pocket of his jumpsuit and that last year, he fished remote regions of British Columbia, Alaska and the North Cascades…and then he felt much better.
All things were leaning into spring.
The Douglas firs were dropping their snow melt in fat drips on a quiet forest floor.
I hugged every ponderosa pine I encountered.
The lodge pole pines were weeping their sap.
Plumbelina fell in the river.
We came to Skilliner, shucked off our shoes and clothes and then slid into the natural hot spring pool like Adam and Eve before the fall of Eden. There was a rough wind whipping down the valley, cooled as it flowed over river water and pink on our faces as it buffeted our sanctuary again and again. There was the awe that comes with soaking in water that flows hot out of the ground, hot from the crust, warmed by the earth instead of the fires of humankind. We had a larger than life feeling of smallness, and the glorious actualization of goodness and God.
There was Robert, primal and beautiful…
…as beautiful on the outside as he is on the inside.
There was lunch, a sip of water or two, carrot sticks for Plumbelina who burned her feet in a secondary hot spring creek that was much hotter than our pool. There were bare feet gripping rock, a cascade like a perfect shower and sock tracks that wouldn’t leave my ankles.
There was the walk back to our campsite, distant mountains rising up so rich with life and seasonal promise, so ancient and stalwart. I felt gaurded by the natural and kept by the strongest Keeper.
Best of all,
there was a feeling of grandness of heart,
of potential for survival,
the defeat of the fear that sometimes
comes with another season of fire.
We walked down through the sun and dust
to Talulah, piled into her happy space and hit the road again.