ABOUT MOUNTAIN GOATS, MIDWIVES AND MENTORS

I wonder if humans are launched from somewhere into the earthly experience.  If so, I feel certain that my launch pad had granite rock outcroppings, alpine soil and vegetation, and probably mountain goats.  I feel more at home in such an environment than anywhere else. 

Between 2,400 and 3,200 mountain goats are estimated to live in Washington, where I have lived most of my adult life.  I remember encountering them from a distance when we camped in the Blue Mountains, although I have since discovered that those particular goats are from an Oregon reintroduction of the 1950's.  Goats without borders.  I like it. 

I saw mountain goats again along the Yukon Trail, when Ted and I took the original train that follows the hopes of so much humanity, in a long, deadly line, chasing gold up Chilkoot Pass to Canada. 

In Washington, or along the Yukon Trail, I am attracted to mountain goats because they are singularly adapted to the sharp, angular precariousness of the alpine setting.  The silhouette of a mountain goat speaks about solitude, but not loneliness, to me.  I probably love them because they make me think of my Ted, who was with me camping in the Blues, with me in Alaska, and is with me still in spirit -- never a stronger spirit connection than when I am in mountains like the Cascades.

After a misadventure camping recently in Whatcom County, two complete strangers who saw my bad camp experience post on a teardrop camper website, invited me to accompany them across the Cascades.  When I told them of my fear of towing my teardrop camper across Snoqualmie Pass, they made arrangements for me to travel in a caravan with them -- me in the middle.  I felt tense, frightened, out of control, light headed, self-doubting most of the way up and down, up and down to reach the summit.  I saw myself hanging from a granite cliff, like Cary Grant in the film "North by Northwest".  There's a dramatist in my head that is making Hitchcock films when I'm irrationally afraid of something.  But, I made it.  And, I made it back over the pass and home, a few days later, without fear.

These two women were midwives to the birth of something freeing and strong in me:  The power to take off any time I want, go where I want, come back when I am ready.  They didn't know me, but extended this monumental and transformative help to me.  From midwives they were again transformed into mentors, about camping and living.  We cruised more secluded and so-called "primitive" campsites on Federal lands, along the Cle Elum River.  My mind is fresh with glimpses of myself, my future.  I also like these two women, and they are no longer strangers to me.  Friends.

In the little town of Easton, I snapped photos of a decrepit old building, which also became a momentary midwife and mentor.  Underneath the word "SCOUTS", one can barely make out the earlier words: PACIFIC BEER.  Underneath those words were: Best East or West. 

On the north face of the building, there is a pocking to the brick that didn't exist anywhere else on the building. North winds bite.   Kind of like mountain goats, I thought, as I was photographing.  In the dead of winter, some mountain goats hang out on the very harshest part of the winter mountain -- the top.  There, they eat the tiny bits of alpine vegetation scoured and exposed by the coldest of winds. The north face of the Scouts/Pacific Beer building was telling me a similar story. 

Here I am, still standing.  Facing the harshest elements, I yield.  Just so, I continue to stand.  To live.