Salt

Grizzly

20 G R I Z Z l y The ranger glimpsed her first as she crossed the fork in Highline Creek. He dropped his nonchalance: “a grizzly,” he whispered, “off the trail, about a hundred yards away.” I thought he might be trying to scare us until he slung his pack aside, abandoning his camera. We watched for streams of light to trickle through the pines and catch her blond hump and prove to us her imagined poise. I held my breath. you saw, with a shout, then leaned your head to mine, discerning her shifting shape in the mountain shade, distinguishing fur from fir and limb from limb— your vision seemed enough to carry us. I tried to spot a shift of order, a sway of branch, a shrub shaking. I couldn’t see her. later, we closed the tent against the night, secured the fly, for rain, we said, then zipped our sleeping bags together, squeezing out unspoken hollows. something new and wild unmoored us. I pressed against your skin and sought your curves and angles, finding anchor in other familiar ways of knowing, warily moving forward, the way the grizzly growls before her instincts stir her on to sniff huckleberries in the glacier wind. ...