26—Sanctuary

To: Friends and Family

Subject: Sanctuary

From: walden@intermind.net

In case  you're wondering about not hearing from me in recent days—I've been spending my time getting acquainted with the Roosevelts. The Roosevelt elk, that is. 

I’ve been enjoying my wildlife neighbors so much that several days ago, my new human friend Jane drove me seventy-some miles north to the Jewell Meadows Wildlife Area, a three-thousand-acre refuge that is home to a variety of animals and birds, the elk draw most visitors. 

Every day from November through April, staff from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife tosses out enough hay for each animal to get a couple of pounds to supplement its grazing. Feeding the elk helps them get through the winter and can draw up to two hundred closer to the viewing stations along the wooded highway bordering the refuge. 

On our way, we stopped in for a hike and some sightseeing in Astoria so missed the afternoon hay drop. Feeling downhearted at the sight of an empty meadow, we spotted a herd and were jubilent—until realizing it was a herd of Jersey cows. 

As we thought about heading home, there he was just across the road—alone and gazing down on us from a small grassy rise. Perfectly still andunperturbed by our presence. At least five-feet tall at the shoulder and brown, the color and spirit of earth. His antlers so wide and tall I could have nested comfortably within them. 

In the beginning was The Word. But our modern culture does not have the words for describing how the spirit of this animal transmuted the trees, the road, the meadow, the Jerseys, the air, time itself into a moment of pure and radiant energy.  

The intensity of the moment relaxed, as if the elk had blessed then released us back to our world. Turning his gaze from us, he moved into the trees. His fluid gait made of muscle and breath turned his physical presence into a kind of grace bestowed on all he left behind. 

At the next pull off, we came upon two males that had locked antlers in what appeared to be some serious elk dispute. 

We left the conflict and drove down the road where we found a meadow of full of females grazing. They were so close we could hear them chewing. A light mist, like the feeling of intimacy or holiness, lay over the world. Then from off in the distance, a gunshot reverberated across the refuge. In the stillness that followed, the meaning of sanctuary settled over the meadow into a prayer for all those left to the devices of the powerful grown careless with life.

• • •

For the next several days, I began seeing elk as if my eyes had somehow been opened to their world.
At a distance, they commanded the landscape with their mystical elk presence.

photograph by Ciel Downing

Up close, I saw something powerful in their demeanor...something I dared to feel as reflection of that which remained wild within me...something drawing me down unexplored paths within.

photograph by Ciel Downing

• • •

Unable to sleep last night, I tried reading. But it was cold, and I’d become agitated with thoughts of everything my move here would entail. I built a fire, snuggled up in a blanket with the cats, and turned on the TV to distract myself. Surfing the channels, I came upon a camera following a bull elk like the one at Jewell. A man’s voice, quiet and peaceful like the ambling elk, was narrating the movements of the fine animal with its mighty rack. The voice fell silent into a feeling of sanctuary—and then BAM, a shot rang out, and the animal crumpled before my eyes. 

Too stunned to move even a finger on the remote to escape the dispiriting sight, I watched, like one bearing witness, as the shooter and his pal posed in smiling triumph on either side dead animal—their thousand-pound trophy, the narrator called it. There was a bemused look on the dead elk’s face as the two hunters decked out in camouflage lifted up the head by the gigantic rack, giving the appearance that the animal was just hanging out with them like a happy dog.

• • •

Today, I was walking down a wooded road when all of a sudden I saw twenty or so elk watching me from a small clearing to the left. I say all of a sudden because they seemed to materialize like magic out of their protective coloration. 

“Oh!” I exclaimed, “you startled me.” 

The elk just stood, all eyes on me. I felt nervous, as if commanded by their attention to account somehow for my intrusion into their afternoon. As I described my encounter with their relatives at Jewell, it occurred to me that no one had ever listened to my unfiltered reflections so intently. “You know,” I went on, trying to build on our connection, “I’m vegetarian just like you.” The elk continued to listen. “And,” I continued, “the Animal Speak book said you travel in herds so your medicine may be a reminder that I’ve been isolating myself from others...“ 

Without warning, tears filled my eyes; and the herd before me blurred into an image of their brother elk crumpled into a lifeless heap two hunters called their trophy. Not wanting to lose sight of the living, I blinked away the tears. “Do you have any medicine?” I asked them. "For the grief...for..."

The elk turned and almost as if floating walked with the silence of ghosts into the trees. 
In their place they left space. An opening:

I recalled how earlier that morning I’d read that elk was a name European explorers gave these animals, elk being their name for moose. The coastal elk were later called Roosevelts, after Teddy who saved them from extinction during his presidency.

www.theodore-roosevelt.com

www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tr.htm

From his youth, Teddy loved his science and nature experiments. Following his presidency, he went on safari in Africa to “collect” specimens for study. This collecting took the form of killing well over a thousand specimens, with Teddy and his son Kermit shooting 512 big-game animals. Teddy then went on to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end the Russo-Japanese War.

Perhaps as this world goes, I thought, sanctuary is a refuge from those myths that endanger our humanity by empowering it. 

I’d hiked farther than expected, and it was getting dark. 

I walked on, not making a sound with my feet and feeling just a little bit wild.

(Take a trip to Jewell Meadows and meet the Roosevelts. FYI: the banjo music has been added, unless the elk have gone hi-tech and set up a sound system.)

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