I hiked Foundry the other day, the mountain in our backyard, and reached one of the false peaks just as a mama goat stepped to the rise, soon followed by the dad, and a moment later, their baby.
We stood on opposite ridges, staring at each other, before the male hoofed it down over the edge, followed by his kid. The female goat stayed a minute longer to watch me and my dog Hemlock, before deciding to follow her family.
Nice to meet the neighbors, I thought.
We live two miles from town, but on the edge of the Lowell Point State Recreation Site and DNR land, so our backyard feels endless.
(Our house is the dot on the hill above the beach.)
Wild.
Especially if we avoid the well-traveled trail and make our own. A much-needed respite from the human world of square angles, concrete, and artificial light.
I cried when I reached the wildflower meadows, up in the alpine, before the jagged peaks.
The beauty, the slight wind that spared me from the worst of the flies that attacked me during the climb up through the steep alders causing me to swear like a prisoner, the happy look on my dogs' faces as they leaped through the Lupine and Chocolate Lillies, the fact that my body, ravaged from long-Covid, recovering from knee surgery, regained enough strength to ascend this high.
And with tears in my eyes, despite during the climb saying I'd stop in the meadows, I hiked even higher, just in time to meet the goat family, and stand in awe of this wild place we call home.
Yesterday, after hiking across Resurrection Bay with friends on Mt Alice, Olive and I returned home with the dogs, who quickly jumped out of the car with their deep don't-mess-with-us barks in overdrive.
"What is it?" I asked, as I followed them into the bushes, my arms full with a bottle of wine, garlic bread, and the day's mail. Nick came out of the basement to investigate as well. I clambered up on a stump and Nick climbed a ladder propped on the snag tree we plan to build a viewing platform on some day.
"Bear!" Nick said, just as I saw the black head pop up from behind a felled Spruce.
Caine and Hemlock stood feet from the black bear but retreated with us when we called their names. That garlic bread and wine would have done me a lot of good if the bear chose to charge.
After the bear "disappeared", as I walked through the garden, I found a fresh pile of bear scat and we realized the bear had been in our side yard while Nick sanded in the basement with the door open and Pop and Elias worked on the front porch.
Good dogs!
Caine and Hemlock chased the bear away a second time when it circled back around--this time Nick followed with bear spray in hand-- and we all remained on alert as we worked on garden and house projects throughout the day.
A little while later, as I walked toward one of my compost piles, I saw something white fall through the trees.
"What was that?" I asked the Poppies, who swayed silently but revealed little.
In my rock garden, next to a piece of heart-shaped shale, lay a long scrap of Halibut, still warm to the touch from the eagle's mouth who circled above.
"You trying to attract more bears?" I asked the eagle, who rose above the Hemlock, out of sight.
I made Olive come outside to see and touch the fish too, amazed by the heat of the flesh, before I dug a home next to my rhubarb and buried it.
"You should have cooked it," A friend said when I told him what happened, "Just for the sake of the story.
His comment almost made me want to dig it back up: And then we ate it!
We did eat halibut and salmon for dinner last night, but not dropped from an eagle's mouth, caught by friends as we shared a potluck around our neighbor Mary's table.
In this life of ours, we need our human interactions, our family, friends, community, but we also need wilderness to sustain us.
We need wildflowers, bald eagles, and the rustle of a bear moving through the brush.
We need a family of goats to stare at us through the fog, as tears trace the storied lines on our humbled face.
We need mountains, oceans, rivers, forests to put us in our place.