“The mountains are calling and I must go.”

-John Muir

 

I buckled my snowshoes and carefully swung the pack on to my back. The operative word, “carefully,” is used for two reasons: to care for my back and more importantly, to care for the cargo of a bundled-in-blue, one-year old granddaughter, Eleanor.

We waved goodbye to the downhill skiers and headed up a slope directly opposite the mountain ski runs. In short order, the first pitch of the climb demanded a quickened cadence of my breathing. While I tried to fall into a sustainable rhythm, Eleanor asserted her protests. Perhaps her kicks to my flanks were urges to move faster. I was grateful for the lack of baby spurs.

Easy breathing became more difficult and clearly audible. At the front edge of an exhale, I told Eleanor, “Let’ stop for a break” (puff) “to look at the new day.” (puff) I would argue she is an exceptionally bright one-year-old, but I’m sure she could not decipher my declaration. By now her flank nudges had disappeared and her vocalizations had become bubblier.

Those clear, rising and falling baby notes, like a bird’s sweet song, have given rise to my occasional affections to my “little wren.”

Back and forth we steadily switchbacked up the trail through the forest. The previous night a fresh snowfall on this Washington mountain had added another four inches to the snowpack and flocked all the trees with pure crystalline highlights. Finally we stood before a fork in the trail. Do we take the groomed left or the unbroken path to the right?

“Hey Little Wren, let’s take the road less travelled.” I stepped into the deeper snow and added, “Never ever underestimate the road less travelled.” Her reply was a soft, cooing affirmative.

Finally we were beyond switchbacks and on a gentle, more lung-friendly section of trail. In short order it was apparent that my wren was limply roosting and engaging in a most serene, soft song of slumber. A glance over my left shoulder spied her tipped head bedded in precious sleep.

We passed a small routed that sign that said we were on the Crystal Creek Trail and that I was just over two miles from the famed Pacific Crest Trail. Known as “the PCT” this path is over 2,600 miles long and runs from the Canadian border all the way to the Mexican border. For the next ten minutes I fantasized about Eleanor and I backpacking the PCT together someday.

Moving quietly under the tall tree canopy I began to quietly sing and sermonize. I praised the unbroken span of tall Douglas and Noble fir trees with their slightly shorter companions of western hemlock and yellow cedar. Here, I explained, we are in the company of royalty and saints. And here, I admitted to Eleanor, is where I am most humbled.

I carefully crossed  a narrow foot bridge over a lively stream. Tumbling like a writhing dark ribbon in the snow through the  forested mountainside, the water music anchored me for a moment.  I ached to hear the explosive, seemingly tireless song of the tiny and shy winter wren. But given that it was December in the mountains, the winter wrens and most other songbirds had migrated to warmer latitudes. On this day we heard only the occasional guttural squawks of ravens and the sharp cry of a Stellar’s jay.

Every time I hear a winter wren sing, I am awed by its ability to let loose such an exclamation all in one breath. It is not unusual for one loud vocalization to cover nearly ten seconds. How is it possible that a bird that I could easily hide inside the gentle hold of my closed fingers cast out such a long song?

I wondered about the May dawn chorus here on Crystal Creek. I imagined the bubbling notes of the tiny mountain wrens with the ethereal, flutelike background of a hermit thrush song. Both are among my very favorite bird songs and to hear them together in the same moment would be sheer bliss.

Eleanor slept through my shuffling sermon.

“No matter, little mountain wren, someday we will sit together, under a forest canopy, and let ourselves get lost in such a duet.” I smiled with the obvious classification of this newly discovered wren species, the mountain wren, with its scientific name, Troglodytes eleanorii.

For now the creek was making the only noise. The snow buffered all other sounds. Here we could not hear the ski lifts, the distant sounds of skiing laughter and whoops.

I was mesmerized by the silence. After spending some weeks in a fully urban setting, this was pure tonic.

Arrangements had been made to reconnoiter with Eleanor’s mom and dad for lunch down at the lodge.

I was less than a mile from the PCT but gaining it would mean we would be late and possibly incite a needless state of worry. Reluctantly, I let good sense prevail over explorer and I side-kicked a turn around and returned on my own trail.

With the return trip following my own tracks the going was easier and faster. I continued my walking silent meditation interspersed with snippets of sermons. And the rare, one-of-a-kind, mountain wren took it all in while sleeping, head on my shoulder, beneath a majestic cathedral of fir.

 

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