The Wild Marsh

by Rick Bass

  We saw the deer the next day. We had packed up and I was driving Travis to the airport in Kalispell. I might be plain wrong about this, but what it felt like to me—and I still believe this—is that it was an echo of my prayer, my beseechment, and that the delivery of it was filled with irony, and something else, not quite prankster-ish, but something along those lines. Something I don't think there's a word for, but it certainly got my attention, and reminded me—not that I had ever doubted it—that Bill still had an eye on his boy, would always have an eye on his boy.

  Travis had witnessed a good way to hunt, a fair and honest way—an engaged way—the way Bill liked to hunt, and the way Bill liked to do everything, with muscular force and passion, and now he, Travis, got to see the other way too: the lesser way.

  I'd been asking for even a glimpse of that big old deer, asking for it fervently, and when we came around a bend in the road not two miles into our journey, crossing the bridge that spanned the creek where we'd turned back the day before, we got to see him.

  He was in the air when we saw him, as if flying. His antlers were huge, almost supernaturally so—dark and long-tined—and his body likewise was dark and long. And so spectacular a deer was he that the strange sight of it almost made sense, for a moment; of course such an amazing animal should be flying, just like Pegasus.

  He was huge and graceful and flying through the air, right in front of us. He landed awkwardly, however, slipping on the icy road, and then lay there on his side, kicking, slipping each time that he tried to rise, as if the ice was getting the better of him: as if there existed, within his great power, some sort of Achilles' heel whereby the force generated by his body was too great to focus itself upon the ice, constrained as he was by his delicate black hoofs, which seemed so useless now, failing him each time he tried to stand. As if there was simply too much torque for the ice.

  I stopped the truck and we sat there, staring in amazement. The deer was only thirty feet in front of us, and like the deer itself perhaps, I felt strangely off-balance: as if I had run into some fracture of time, some disynchronous chasm where yesterday's hunt had not ended but had only been paused, and was now continuing. There seemed also to be a similar break in space, so that it was as if our truck had struck the deer and knocked him to the ground, even though we had stopped thirty feet short. As if we had run into a glass wall and stopped, but as if something else—the motion, through time and space, of how things might have been—had carried on through that glass wall.

  The deer lay his head down on the ice as best as he could, encumbered as he was by his antlers, and lay there, gasping; and it was only then that I focused beyond the deer and saw at the bottom of the icy hill, about sixty yards distant, the tilted skew of a hastily stopped truck, with its doors flung wide open, and two hunters—excuse me, two shooters—crouched out in the middle of the icy road, rifles in hand, out-of-state license plates.

  Such were the slightly-behind-real-time synapses of my mind that I perceived the wide-eyed, quick-stopped crouching shooters to be only now spying the fallen, ice-slipping deer, as were Travis and I, but that unlike Travis and I, they intended to try to shoot it, right there in the middle of the road. And realizing this, or believing it, Travis and I were severely discomfited, with that deer (which was growing strangely, slowly becalmed) directly in front of us, and us directly in the line of fire.

  One of the hunters had his rifle raised and was watching the deer through the scope—watching us through the scope, is what it seemed like—and angrily, we waved him off, and it was only as he, an Elmer Fudd-looking character, lowered his gun that I understood which side of the glass wall we were on and which side the deer was on.

  The deer lay there dying, already shot—"Pigs," I said—and we drove around him slowly, sadly, as if around the scene of an accident, and on past the road hunters without looking at them or stopping, with the unspoken obvious: that if they had missed that leaping, running deer, the bullet would quite likely have gone into our windshield just as we came around the corner. That although it was not quite this way, it might as well have been, and in one sense, was true: that that deer had leapt in front of us and blocked, with its body, the bullet that might otherwise have struck us.

  It was that simple, and that complicated. We ourselves, in seeking to end the deer's life, to take the deer's life, had set it into motion the day before, like the winding of some vast and complicated mechanism, pushing the deer, with our relentless trailing, out of the care of his home territory, and here, only a day later, my wish, my prayer, my request to Bill— at least let us see this deer —was being delivered, though in what tone or manner, I was unsure. Hard irony, perhaps?

  These things, I know: That Bill loved Travis, loved all of his family fiercely. That Bill and Travis should have seen that mountain together, should have hunted Montana deer together.

  What were the trip's successes—what did I have to offer Travis, on both Travis's and Bill's behalf? I was glad for all that Travis had seen: the moronic, deadly attempts to drive under the influence of alcohol; the joy of a good hunt, and the ugliness of a bad hunt.

  Any other conclusions beyond that would be conjecture: notions such as the idea that there is another world beyond this one, or rather, a spirit world that accompanies this one. And whether that world on the other side is like a shadow cast by the short days of our lives or our lives themselves the shadows, cast by those spirits, none can say for sure. I do know that he, Bill, was there with us, on that hunt, and that I think he will always be there with his son, his family.

  The day opened up, after that, as if some pustule had been lanced. We drove on toward the airport through bright blue sky and gold-lit forests, with sunlight everywhere: as rare an occurrence, in November, as an eclipse. There were only three days left in the season, and the road hunters were frantic—even on U.S. Highway 2, we saw trucks pulled hastily to the side of the road and parked crookedly, errantly, doors flung open, and older gentlemen in blaze orange hurrying across the right-of-way, rifles in hand, laboring to straddle their way over sagging barbed-wire fences and then disappearing into the forest in pursuit of any rut-wandering buck that happened to cross the highway—and Travis and I could laugh about it, finally, because it was funny, like some sort of campy zombie movie, all those old fellows in orange suddenly being summoned from and abandoning their vehicles and rushing off into the forest, mouths agape and arms outstretched...

  We saw the most amazing thing, halfway to the airport: perhaps the most amazing image of a short and amazing trip.

  A deer had been struck and killed some time ago, crossing the road, and there on the embankment, its carcass was being attended by the usual assemblage of ravens—at least a dozen beautiful shining black ravens, thick-billed and broad-winged, hopping and flapping over their laid-out bounty, as if gathered at some Thanksgiving feast.

  There was an immense bald eagle sitting some distance from the carcass too, his snowy head more brilliant than even the new snow; but the sight that stopped us and then made us turn around and go back, even if it meant being late to the airport, even if it meant possibly missing the plane, was the giant golden eagle sitting atop that pecked-over carcass, trying to defend it against a coyote that kept sneaking in, trying to steal a bite.

  The golden eagle had one set of talons locked into the open rib slats of the deer's skeleton and was using his other talons to claw and feint at the coyote whenever the coyote darted in for a quick bite. The golden eagle's wings were spread high and wide to their full seven-foot span, and even grounded as the eagle was, its powerful wingbeats and awkward ground hops were dragging the carcass of the adult deer, a doe, along on the ground. And as it did so, the coterie of ravens, like the rise-and-fall fluttering of a kite tail, followed, and so did that stalking coyote, ducking the eagle's one-clawed swipes while snarling and baring his teeth, hackles raised. There wasn't much deer left to share among all of them.

  We sat on the other side of the road and watched. Som
etimes the coyote would run around to the back side of the carcass, so that the eagle—one talon still locked into those slatted, hollowed ribs—would have to whirl around, spinning the carcass as it did so and lifting it partially free of the ground so that it gave the impression of some wild helicopter trying to become airborne.

  There were no other cars on the road, during that time, and we watched for several minutes. Finally, the coyote's winter hunger, its winter boldness, was overcome by its fear of man, and it skittered off into the woods; and likewise the ravens scattered and flew a short distance away, cawing and croaking, unsure of our intent. The bald eagle, which had been watching this battle, left too, leaving only the gigantic golden eagle, which, strangely enough, or so it seemed to us, did not lower its head to eat but simply remained atop the weathered carcass, still gripping it and looking around as if still ready, or even eager, for another defense. Studying us, even, on the other side of the road, as if to say, You want a piece of this?

  We were late to the airport, then, and had to leave, had to hurry on. Travis was ecstatic; we both were.

  "It's not always like this," I told him.

  Unsettled. That's the word I'm looking for, about the feeling I got that Bill, or the spirit of Bill, might have been with us that day we went up on the mountain, in the blizzard. Like new snow on a steep slope early in the winter, before the passage of time and the accrual of more snow weight settle that first snow.

  By and large, the sun vanishes in November. In addition to spring's ceaseless blood tide of mosquitoes and the summer's tide of wildfires, there is this aspect of the landscape that I'm compelled to remind the gentle reader of—the daunting gloom, and the descent of the cold rain. In November, out in my writing cabin, my candles waver in the night, stirred now it seems not by any breezes but simply from the weight of winter descending. On the plywood floor of my cabin, the treaded boot prints of snow remain Vibramed across the floor, unchanged from their initial deposition more than three hours ago, despite their proximity to the wood stove by which I sit huddled.

  It's a beautiful wintry view at my window, all fog and crystal frost and ice rime, and for the first time this season, I'm having to write with gloves on, so that I'm holding the pen clumsily, gripping it in my gloved hands like chopsticks in the hands of a first-time user. As such, I can barely read my own writing, which is often barely legible even under the best conditions—and further complicating the act of writing in this weather, the rhythm and pace of it, is the fact that the page before me is obscured momentarily by the large smoke-cloud of fog formed with each exhalation of my breath, the page vanishing for a few seconds, then reappearing, as if through an opening in the clouds, only to disappear again. And there is very much the disorienting sensation that I am flying along through the clouds, trying to peer down through brief openings at a landscape far below.

  My feet are blocks of ice, and I'm shivering, ignoring these things as much as I can and trying carefully to follow the path of my own sentences, as if trailing the tracks of some elusive quarry through the woods.

  The rut is coming. It's only days away, and might even be already starting. As I stare out the window at the marsh, grieving Homer, there is the hunter's part of me, the physical part, that responds nonetheless with a deep joy at the sight of the purple-gray storm sky to the south, with its impending promise of the sweet coming betrayal of fresh snow, upon which the comings and goings of no animal, neither prey nor predator, will any longer be kept a secret.

  One day while the girls are at school, I carry the Great Pumpkin and his entourage of Great Cucumbers off the porch, where they have been slipping daily into deeper and deeper senescence, collapsing in on themselves as each night's frost breaks them down further—as if breathing, through some cold bellows, the allure of rot into them, rather than the spark of life—already, they retain only mere vestiges of their former glory. And I take the sad pumpkin, and the sad cucumbers, far out into the forest to decompose in peace and feed the larch trees as they do so, carrying them out to the forest as I would carry the dogs' bowls of food to them, out in their kennels: feeding the Great Pumpkin to the larch trees, whose needles, in another eleven months, will be as orange as the pumpkin itself.

  The twisted stalk vine of the jack-o'-lantern's lid, the vine-handle, looks exactly like the base of a buck's antlers.

  Earlier in the day, I had seen a nice big buck, strips of orangish alder bark hanging from his antlers, cruising through the marsh, where he had been marking his territory. Perhaps later in the evening—at dusk—he will come investigate the cucumbers and pumpkin. Perhaps he will even chew on them, a bit—becoming, in that manner, the Great Pumpkin, like the larch trees, like us, like everything that is still connected up here. The pumpkin top that looks like the deer's antlers becoming the deer's antlers.

  Who needs any more magic? Isn't it already everywhere, and not just in the color orange, but in every color, every shade, every pulse, and every stirring of a taut and full world?

  The girls notice the pumpkin's absence, of course. "Where did he go?" they ask.

  "Ah," I tell them, looking out at the treetops, "I believe he has flown away."

  My youngest brother, B.J., born when I was fifteen, is coming out for Thanksgiving this year, and I'm hoping to be able to take him on a good hunt. He's only going to be here for a couple of days, but I'm hoping to be able to spend one of those days going far into the backcountry and seeing whatever we might see. I understand completely the Native American practice of being careful about speaking aloud the name of one's quarry, in the belief that such casualness would be a form of disrespect, implying a taking-for-grantedness, and an act little different from saying, "I'm going to run down to the store for some oranges."

  I understand completely the greater respect afforded by a statement such as "I am going to go into the woods to see what I might see"—and, cursed at times with my past history of having been a scientist, first a biologist with a timber company and later an oil and gas geologist—there is often a part that tries to analyze the selective evolutionary advantages of various behaviors and adaptations rather than simply or solely reveling in the mystery of a thing.

  I am not saying a thing is any less beautiful for being examined or studied or better understood; in my experience, in fact, the contrary holds true.

  But as a scientist, there can become a habit of believing that just because there is usually a logical and interconnected reason for anything you care to examine, then there must therefore be a logical and interconnected reason for everything; and that mysteries such as love and honor and respect can become subtly devalued, not by knowledge but by the accruing arrogance of beginning to believe that everything in the world can and must somehow justify itself.

  From such a pattern or mindset, it is but a short hop to the belief that everything in the world must somehow have the potential, and sometimes even the obligation, to serve mankind through the mere virtue of that object's existence and through mankind's knowing.

  Nonetheless, like any miner, I push on, probing and picking, grasping and handling the objects that interest me: wanting, often, to know them more deeply. I can examine such a beautiful emotional truth as the fact that hunters in native cultures preferred not to speak the name of their quarry out loud, and I can sense and celebrate the beauty and mystery of that truth even as the scientist part of me—almost sacrilegiously, it feels—is musing how for those native hunters, a constant acknowledgment of the grace and luck involved in hunting could have a selective evolutionary advantage. It's possible that those individuals—and therefore a culture that supported the presence of such individuals—could be more successful in that by reinforcing their respect for their quarry, and the extreme luck and grace required to kill or capture their quarry, they might move more carefully and cautiously through the forest, more respectfully, more observantly, perhaps, than a hunter who entered with any lesser degree of respect. And that it could be, then, that those extra-cautious, extra-r
espectful hunters ended up with more game-taking opportunities.

  I can think that way as a scientist even while knowing as a hunter and an artist the deeper emotional truth, that it is the landscape or sometimes even the animal itself that usually gives the animal to the hunter; and that although there are exceptions, particularly with our brute technology, the land once rewarded (and still sometimes rewards) hunters who were able to enter the woods in that state or zone of a respect so deep and honoring and respectful as to approach a trance. Connections between the woods, the hunter, and the quarry, and every other thing in the woods, animate and inanimate, were established under such conditions, with a complexity that surely exceeds any electronic circuitry or schematic wirings of man's design.

  And for whatever reason, it is still in the backcountry—in the biotic integrity of wilderness not yet damaged, the wilderness still intact—where such connections are most likely to still be deeply felt.

  The scientist part of me can wrestle with this piece of cultural anthropology even as the hunter part of me understands it intuitively without having to explain or defend or deconstruct it.

  Writing on the etiquette and rights of hunters of the Dene people—a nomadic hunter society of Athapaskan Indians, living in the interior of British Columbia and Alaska, once including as part of their southernmost range the Kootenai-Salish country of the Yaak—a 1953 monograph prepared by the Provincial Museum of British Columbia informs us that when

  any Déné hunter made a kill, custom prevented him from using the meat himself. If he had a companion, he gave the animal to him. If hunting alone, he would skin the carcass, hang it in some safe place, and, on returning to camp, would tell someone where it was cached and that they might have it. Among certain bands this custom was modified to the extent of the hunter making a distribution of the meat among all members of his band.