Elkhorn
True West Dispatch
My wife left the high country for the flats. Almost an hour out, she called. I found the elk, she said. The most I’ve ever seen, maybe 1000? On the far side of Wilkerson Pass, on the left. I stabilized things, poured a coffee, and went to see for myself. Perhaps not a once in a lifetime chance, but a herd that big is something. Worth seeing.
It’s strange to say, but out here it can be hard to find a giant herd of large animals. They weren’t where she saw them, and I did not discover where they went. After a while driving around places with names like Badger Flats, a bit disappointed on a beautiful day, I headed back home. Keeping with the theme, I took the long way home, Elkhorn Road. Here is some of what I saw.
It’s the warmest and driest January anyone can remember. It’s still cold, though, and the wind is brutal. Almost always. So is the scale.
These images really need to be seen on a decent screen, and most should be expanded until they break down, lose coherence. Which, I suppose, is the point. Hints of ranges beyond . . .
Note the shipping containers. Containers litter the High Mountain West. The technology isn’t that old, actually, from the 1970s. And on that basis intermodal transportation was built, meaning globalization and the rise of China, too. And this, a mood we associate with Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and maybe the Appalachia of my youth, but that was then and there, and this is now and here.
My head and heart are full, and quotidian demands must be met, and my writing is falling behind. This isn’t the Signal I had in mind, nor the one after that, nor even the one after that. Never mind. Sitting and staring at screens are the new cigarettes, especially for men like me, so perhaps it is good that I get out there. And there is this, which wants to be addressed.
Note the school bus.
That mountain is just over 14,000 feet. That house regularly takes hurricane force winds out of the west.
No idea.
Front of shooting complex. You cannot see most of it from here. The curves of the earth hide things, like giant herds of elk and shooting ranges and who knows what else? Maybe it’s just the news, but dark thoughts. Zeitgeist is a fantastic word. I realize I’ve been writing, and photographing, anxiety, violence implied, all year. I wonder if my world is collapsing. That was what I wanted to write about, well, write more. But I didn’t.
Ranges.
600 yards. Single shot bolt action precision weapon. Berger bullets, very fancy. Going sheep hunting, dialing it in. Nice young man and his girlfriend (?). The wind, again the wind, and the target moving, so the rangefinder wasn’t working too well, and he had to drive down to see what he’d hit, or not. The gun is not loud at all.
What’s with these colonies of old campers, truck boxes, containers, stacked up outside some compound. Waiting for what? Somebody to come buy? From where? Why? Just sitting in the cold dry wind, year after year.
Even though it all feels so existential, for want of a better word, I don’t think the West is more profound than anywhere else. We humans share our condition. Soon enough, I’ll be back in the City, abstractions upon abstractions. Marx said that all that is solid, meaning human relations, melts into air, meaning is replaced by ephemeral monetary relations. Finance squares that, and then keeps going. But sometimes, in the bright sun and cold wind on a high plain, one may be forgiven for feeling closer to the truth of things. It’s probably an illusion. Or maybe not an illusion, for those of us already predisposed to such things. Anyway, it means something.
The mountain to the right is Silverheels. The mountain to the left is a bit farther away and slightly higher, just over 14,000 ft. Our place is on the left (southern) flank of Silverheels, in the trees but on the ridge. The wind is still pretty bad, but the view is good. As it were.
Safe travels, Pilgrims. 360 awareness, for you and yours.
— David A. Westbrook