But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise

What the Elk Told Me

92 What the Elk Told Me Following the creek through the canyon searching for the mine the mine led me to the elk. I saw the elk who was not bothered by how I continued after it. We walked up and up the ridge. I learned the elk is not a bear. The elk is not a wolf nor a cat. The elk is not a declaration a girl with hips pressed to the spring-covered ground though I thought it might be or it could be something that perhaps not an elk at all should be. That is a song. Hips are a song. The elk is not a hip though it has two. The elk is not a trap with its hips. I am a trap with my hips. The camera is a trap with its hips too. When the elk saw I was not going to leave it spoke and told me that I am not a camera though most days I act as one. The camera is a costume and a costume is not an elk. The elk can never be a costume. What need does an elk have to pretend. Yet the elk knows I must pretend. Alpaca keeping said the elk is a costume. Keeping a handful of alpacas is never the real thing. This is the wisdom of the elk. The wise elk looked at me with its even darker eyes. I have been told that I too have elk-like eyes especially in winter and I could see that its eyes were darker than mine darker even than my brother’s eyes who is not my twin but sometimes I sense him like such. When I asked the elk about birthing she said I was a sorry thing to have to ask. I said to the elk I am wanting to know 93 the size of my heart. Can you tell me is my heart the size of you? This was possible said the elk if I could carry large things on my back then surely I could carry a large or heavy heart on my back. But the elk could not say if my back was good for carrying. Then the elk asked me what it was I carried in front of my eyes. I told the elk I carried these things to see better that I cannot see well on my own without them. Not like the elk. For miles the elk sees through and past the timberline when the sun and clouds move just right sees the game trail it must take through wolf territory to the spring made from melting snows where its offspring sleeps. The elk could see that it was starting to snow and that I had never before seen or knew to know snowfall in june though the elk did not know it was june. The elk could see that I was lost. The elk told me up is mountain down is home and that is how she left me there. ...