20 August 07
Glacial Ramble
Our time in Colorado in April put us in closer contact with a landscape shaped by glaciers than usual. This weekend I renewed my acquaintance with tarns, deep scars left on rocks by the grinding of ice and boulders, and with the high-elevation plants and animals that now call this landscape home.
As a child when we visited the caves in Altamira (now closed to try and preserve the paleolithic paintings from human traffic and exhalations) I found myself imagining what it would have been like to have been an eight-year-old girl living in a cave so many thousands of years ago. The paintings are works of art in the most visceral sense I can think of, and though I had no idea about the shamanic (assumed) power of the paintings, the musculature of the animals (bison, deer, goats) was real and skilfully portrayed, even to an untutored eye. What was it like to draw like that? I found myself pondering those caves again on Saturday, as I watched mountain goat family groups pick their way easily across the scree slopes that would have sent me to the hospital, as I tried inexpertly to draw them.
We were in the Ruby Mountains of eastern Nevada to see a bird, a bird that doesn’t belong in North America. It’s a hard bird to see (and, I gather, to hunt, for which reason it was introduced here from the Himalayas in the early 1960s). It took two attempts of a two-mile hike at 10,000 feet and a lot of hours before we finally saw it on Sunday morning, just before we were going to have to head downhill and drive all the way back to Davis. But spending a day surrounded by mountain bluebirds and pikas (whose alarm call is very similar to a red-breasted nuthatch’s), golden-mantled ground squirrels and Brewer’s sparrows, in the high glacial meadow with no sound except the wind and the occasional “hey, there’s a badger!” makes me feel the tug of the mountains again.
Reading Butuki’s account of his trek across the Alps has great resonance for me just now. I’m not a strong hiker and I blister easily but it’s worth it… I’m hoping to convince Numenius to come with me to the mountains more. Promising the sight of introduced birds won’t do it, but Numenius is a mountain goat at heart…
[See Richard’s account of this trip here ]
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A post after my heart! You’ve seen Altamira – I’m jealous! Love your sketches, Pika/Pica!
Oh, Marja-Leena, you’d have LOVED this place — half the granite was gray, the other half was stained red/black from the iron leeching out, it was an intense experience just sitting in there, a mile-wide amphitheatre…
Altamira: yes. I’m very lucky. Lucky, too, that my parents trusted us enough to enjoy it rather than leave us behind and do it on their own. It’s marked me deeply, I think, more than I really understand.
Yes, I was about to say how I envy you having seen Altamira while that was still possible! I shall think of that henceforth, when admiring your drawings…
This is such a marvelous post. If anyone asks me why I read blogs, I’ll just point to this. Love the drawings, the description, the vicarious wandering in the high country. Thank you!
I second the envy, and congrats on the snowcock!
Your goat sketch does evoke some of that Altamira flavor, at least of what I’ve seen secondhand. When we were down ‘t the San Diego Zoo and saw the Przewalski’s horses, we had the simultaneous thought that they’d just galloped off a cave painting.
It’s amazing how the mountains have this quality that makes you look for something, often abstract, beyond yourself. The suffering of a hard climb seems to accentuate the colors and the appreciation of small details, don’t you think? I’m always utterly entranced by the ability of many alpine animals and plants, seemingly so fragile, being able to survive in such a harsh world, and come out of it with such grace and beauty.
The more I climb mountains the closer I seem to feel to my sense of purpose. I like the challenge they give me and the way they make me feel insignificant, in that healthy way.
Have you tried trail running shoes for hiking? People, including many in the Alps, doubt their effectiveness and worry about their lack of “ankle support”, and yet I had no problem at all doing the eleven-day hike around Mont Blanc in them. In fact, when I changed to boots for two days at the end I immediately got blisters. Give them a try, they might change the way you hike. Just make sure the soles are firm and not soft like a lot of trail running shoes have become lately.