Elliot Tolar

I had a Tuesday off for the July 4th weekend and I was determined to get up into the mountains. I picked a trail and packed up my things, which included an exorbitant amount of photo equipment for a twelve mile day hike. My buddy, Hayden, just happened to be sick and therefore couldn’t go into work. Naturally we meet at the trailhead at 4 am and hit the trail. Our out-of-breath conversation and bouncing headlamp beams are all we initially make out of the world around us. Dawn breaks and one wonder presents itself after another: Perfect pale blue columbines, Indian paint brush’s complimenting the warm morning light which—look! is just now spilling into the reservoir. As we trek on we brush our shoulders against the heather and it offers us the dew that it spent the night collecting. We stop and say thank you. Making reverent photographs of that which exists outside our need to freeze it in time. Onward and higher up we feel the shortness of breath that backcountry beauty and subalpine altitude loan to those who show up. The mountain shadows crawl across the valley floor, the lake glistens and glows as bright as the champagne sky. What a privilege to be a witness to a new morning in a place like this. We stop and shade our eyes as we look at the next accent. “Are you ready?” Is the only thing that needs to be said as we survey the steep slope that lays ahead of us. We talk less; our quick breathing is punctuated only by occasional offerings of wonder at what we witness unfolding below our feet. Hayden notices what is always there when we pay attention: the evidence that we are not alone. Bighorn sheep hair is strewn on the narrow trail ahead of us. We round boulder on a trail just wide enough to walk single file and come face to face with the patriarchs of a herd of Bighorn sheep. Up we go! We scramble off the trail as quickly as possible to give way to the powerful creatures making their way directly towards of us. We are guest here, after all. At last we make it to the top of the ridge. We rest and enjoy the food we brought. After a much needed rest we begin our decent down the mountain side. My legs are shaking as, with difficulty, I do what the sheep are doing with ease. We finish the steep decent and rest our legs before we continue with the remainder of the hike down. Just then, a thunderclap reverberates around the cirque we are standing in. No time to rest! We don’t know what our chances of being struck by lightning are while above the tree line at 12,000 feet, but don’t want to find out. We move as quickly as possible towards the trees, at times running. We laugh about it as soon as we are sheltered below branches. We stop to pack our cameras inside our packs before continuing down at a more reasonable pace listening to the storm as it approaches. Just as the parking lot comes into view, the rain begins to fall.