Larger Than Life

by Jim Kling

High above, an aerial view would have shown the bustling, tiered streets of San Francisco and the sprawled cities and towns of the north coast of California. The 101 corridor leads from Silicon Valley to the Golden Gate bridge, but then it crosses the mouth of the bay and travels northward, through redwoods and along California's tabletop coastlands.

On one of those coasts, I was walking. Had been for a couple of hours. The rolling hills that I walked along were covered with low brush, and occasional, far-flung valleys cut across my line of sight to deliver the contents of rivers to the Pacific Ocean. It was a sunny October day, but the wind blew hard, perhaps explaining the rarity of trees in this place. To my left I heard the vague, far-off pounding of the surf, but the sound was distant, muffled I knew by the cliffs that rose up from the seashore to support the plateau I was traversing.

The beauty awed me, but only for the first couple of hours. By then, my legs began to register the effort, and the place wasn't so fresh and new. But I moved ahead, determined to reach the end of the hilly peninsula. That’s when I saw the elk. It was a small herd, perhaps 30 or 40 individuals, four or five hundred yards ahead of me and moving across my path. I slowed my pace, until I was barely a hundred yards away, and then sat down on a smooth patch of the trail. The herd took little notice of me, the animals grazing contentedly and looking up at me every once in awhile, as if to be sure I remained just another constant in the landscape. A buck kept his distance a little apart from the herd, watching me but scanning the rest of the horizon, eyes intent below a six-point, oak-colored set of antlers.

And then I remembered that I had a plane to catch, that I would need to reach the end of the peninsula and then return again, in time to return my rental car to the San Francisco airport later that afternoon. Flush with purpose, I rose quickly to continue the hike. It was then that I discovered that I was surrounded by elk. Eight or ten of them had been lying down in the tall grass immediately behind me, and they rose with me, alarmed but still, watching. The buck lowed and thrust his head out in a gesture infused with meaning that was clear to everyone present but me, and the elk moved silently into a circle. The big buck paced along the perimeter, warning me with black eyes and a tangle of dark bone.

I needed little convincing.

To say I was afraid would be to overstate it. But in an instant, in that serene rolling hillside, I had been set in my place. No fence, no metal bars, no firearm stood between me and a six hundred pound, wary animal protecting its charges. A false move might well have sent me scurrying for cover, or more likely into a curled ball. I comforted myself with the knowledge that the bull wouldn't attack me unless he perceived me as a threat, and so I walked slowly, parallel to the bull and the rest of the elk, my eyes downcast but my neck cocked, just slightly, to watch from the corner of my eye. He watched me, too, stock still, and relaxed only after I had passed well along the trail.

In this little refuge in northern California, in a tabletop savanna overlooking the sea, a bull Tule Elk played the role of its forebears, unaware that all around it the prairie and the woods were largely gone, tamed by humanity. Here in this place, I was the trespasser, not he, and, if only for a moment, my existence felt as fragile as his.

 

Copyright Jim Kling, 2001