There’s a storm coming, slowly, in shouting whispers that shake the dead needles from the fire scorched trees, dripping them onto the moon colored dust that replaces the loam as carpet on this forest’s floor. A fire burned across this side of the mountain a few months back, smoldering its way to well over a thousand acres before sweat and diesel chugging machines managed to strangle it out with a noose of dirt. Now the firefighters are gone, moved on to other places and adventures, but the trees remain, Grand Fir, Red Cedar and Douglas Fir, scorched around their feet but proud as ever. A good many of them are dead, although not all have accepted this as fact, their uppermost branches still boasting a small crown of green in defiance of the hungry flames that sought their fibrous flesh. Erect, though not all as solid as they would have you believe, they still praise their maker, heights and girth attesting to the richness of North Idaho Soil. Next year they will know all who lived and died but for now they have survived and they will be content in that.

I sit at the foot of one such tree in the soft ash, listening, watching the sky and from time to time giving a small elk call. It’s peaceful here and makes for good walking, all things the elk know as well, their tracks lace the ashen floor of the forest enjoying the newly cleared terrain. I wonder if it feels good on their hooves.

The Elk are quiet today, it’s the second week or archery season and the highpoint of the rut but it’s nine thirty and I haven’t heard the smallest bugle or grunt. Probably they can feel the storm. The sky in the West is looking darker and the wind swirls and prowl like an impatient mountain lion (cougar if you are from the Pacific Northwest as myself, keep your jokes I’ve heard them all) I think the elk can feel this and have decided to call it a day, bedding down in some brush were they can watch and listen.

Thirty yards behind me my hunter is nestled between two boulders, watching and listening for the elusive elk. He’s from New York, and has been coming for the past few years and had several, nearlies, not-quites and almosts. Twice this week alone he’s been at full draw and the elk have escaped to live another day. Such is hunting. I hope he gets one, he’s one of the most chill and laid back dudes I’ve guided, so it’s only a matter of time until all the elements line up and he gets 100% all natural and organic self harvested steak for his NY dinner. There is no doubt in my mind he’ll get one, although perhaps not today, depends on the storm.

We’ve sat here long enough, nothing heard, nothing seen. I walk over to him.

“What do you think?”

“I think all the elk died.”

I laugh, “yeah, they all burned up in the fire.”

We continue on up the ridge, silently winding through the smooth boulders. Maybe in the next draw we’ll find more luck.

We admire the scorched landscape, almost alien in the pre-storm grey light. It makes me think of one of my favorite movies, filmed in Washington state, Prospect. A familiar world but alien all the more for it.

In a fire the bark of the Doug Fir expands and puffs up like a scorched cheto in an attempt to protect from the flames. It disintegrates like sun rotted Styrofoam when you touch it, crumbling to black powder. Red Cedar is a spartan-tough tree, usually hollow with rot at their bases; they make an easy meal for fire to feast on, getting inside the tree and burning like a rocket-stove. I’ve seen them firefighting before, a sturdy looking Cedar with a window on its side revealing its fiery soul, like the gates of hell or a small kiln. Amazingly cedars can survive having their bowels gutted by flame and will live, thrive even, for years with a burned out shell as a base. I’ve seen one cedar far out in one of Idaho’s wilderness’ that was in the fire of 1910 (or possibly 1920) all burned except for a strip of tree about a foot and a half wide, over the past hundred plus years of living that strip of tree widened and stretched and twisted into an entirely new tree. Still supporting the burned out husk of the old beside it, a tree determined to live, laughing at the flames that sought it’s life and thriving to spite them.

We talk about trees and fire as we walk up the ridge in low voices, scanning between the blackened trunks for the yellow bodies of elk. Still nothing, and it’s starting to spit raindrops.

The steep slope of the ridge levels out and game trails rich with elk tracks criss-cross the scorched saddle before us. We set up again, the hunter once more thirty yards away from me, watching two trails. Again we wait.

I blow the Power Bugle, a green tube about two foot in length with a small grey rubber band on the black mouthpiece, the notes sound high pitched, like a young bull too full of confidence and self assurance. Just what I want. The rain threatens to get serious falling more regularly now, raindrops exploding silently in the grey ash. Nearly a mile across the canyon a reedy note echoes forth. A shot of adrenaline to my system, an elk finally.  I answer back, my hunter straightens and in excitement eagerly listening. Another bull bugles, deep, rough, musical, ending in a ragged growl. I sit up straighter. “Now that’s more like it.”

The burn stretches down into the canyon and we run down with it, stopping every few hundred yards to answer with a bugle of our own. He’s across from us, sounds like he’s staying in one place, as the hill gets steeper and the way back to the truck a further climb we hope our dive into the canyon will be worth it. I dart back and forth as we race down the hill. I’m a snowboarder but today I feel like an Olympic skier in the slick, soft ash, one part sliding, one part falling, no brakes.

The hillside begins to bench out gathering itself into a ridge with sharp edges and the wind coming up to us from every direction. The perfect set up, given the elk cooperates with our ploy. The rain has stopped, the storm sits and brews up some more for later, far from done. The elk has stopped speaking too, as if it’s inspiration went with the rain.

I call. We wait and listen. Straining for the faintest hoof beat or crackle of breaking wood to mark his approach should he try to sneak in. There is nothing but the noises in our heads. It’s noon now so we eat lunch and discuss our next moves, if he won’t come down to us we’ll just have to go up to him.

We slide the remaining distance down to the creek out of the burn now and back in the glistening, exploding greens of the Idaho forest. We’re a thousand feet lower than we were an hour and a half ago, I try not to think about the return hike.

Huge, ancient Cedar stumps watch us as we pass up canyon, formed by the axes and saws of men tough as nails and dead as stones. There was a time soon after the turn of the century when the industrious lumberjacks had these mountains skinned of trees, a time long past and a world long gone remembered only in photographs and the memories of books. I point out the small humps in the ground we walk on, old trees laid along the creek bed used as railroad ties for the steam engines that hauled the logs that made the lumber that built a nation. The tracks are gone, and the trains and probably most the lumber as well, these logs turned to mounds of dirt are all that remains.

Rain is falling again, this time steady and somber as any funeral, it means to stay.

We find a game trail cutting straight up the hill and follow it, calling like a cow elk as we go. We find a small clearing, sit down under a vine maple to protect from the rain and wait. I cow call again and the bull answered not eighty yards away. I call, then bugle and wait, muscles tense watching. We have a good set up, good wind and the rain helps cover sound.

He answers twice more and then silence. We wait, muscles still tense, straining for a sound, watching for the least flicker of movement; nothing but rain on the leaves. We sit for nearly an hour, the storm is settled and determined to soak everything below and prove the futility of our rain gear.

We stand up, sneaking towards the last place we heard the bull. Hopping against doubt he hasn’t left but he has and all we see of him are his tracks in the spongy mountainside pine needles.

It’s pouring, rain runs through my hair and into my eyes, It rattles through the trees and bounces off the leaves. Fog begins to form, like the soul of the mountain itself, a watchful ghost.

“I’m soaked, let’s head back.”

I nod, “sounds good.”

We fight through the brush sliding back down to the stream and the rotted memory of railroads. I look up and the hanging fog looks back. I think of the burn, the trees, the fire fighters, the railroad, the loggers, countless hunters and countless lives that have been here before. Each one of their lives a story, most of them gone now, their memories faded, last chapter told. They move on but the mountain remains and remembers.

The rain keeps falling. 

(This article was originally written for THE KRIKKIT MOTEL you should definitely go check out his stuff.)