The Times-News Online -- Twin Falls, Idaho -
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Published on: 5/5/2003
Last Visited: 5/5/2003
Dennis CornwallHe stood at the top of the mountain, overlooking the vast meadow with the cabin on the edge where the humans lived.He had roamed these mountains for all of his life, and he knew that he was the largest of his kind.
Each year that he had lived, his antlers grew more massive and he, particularly in his younger years, had no problem driving the younger and smaller bulls away from the cows that he would breed with each fall.He remembered how the strong desire during that time of year had almost cost him his life during his second year, forgetting about all the training his father had given him as a youngster about smell, unusual movements and sounds.
No, he had chased that young cow right in front of two humans with long sticks that made a lot of noise but, as he was later to find out, was very deadly.He had been lucky that day; by moving quickly to his right and getting between the humans and a thick stand of trees, he had eluded the menace, however, never forgot the lesson.
Nor had he forgot the day that -- while grazing near his father, who at that time was the most grand of all the animals that lived in the mountains -- how he had heard a very loud noise and, out of the corner of his eye, had seen him crash to the ground; and the man that lived in the cabin on the meadow came running out of the trees toward where his father lay, but he didn't stick around long enough to find out anything else.He just knew he would never see his father again.
Over the years, he had learned how to evade most of the humans, trying to teach his sons and daughters about the threat that they imposed and how to best stay clear of them.Some listened and some didn't, but that was life and death on the mountain.
As he had gotten older, he had become more curious about the humans that lived in the cabin on the meadow.He had watched them from afar as the man and his wife had a young son that seemed to have trouble walking.They would normally carry him when there was snow on the ground and push him in a chair with wheels when there wasn't.Either way, they were always taking care of him; and as he grew in size over the years, he seemed to get weaker.
One day he saw all the people leave, so he decided to take a closer look at the cabin.Very slowly and using all his senses as defense, he neared the cabin.Coming to a window, he peered in to find a large room with a fire in the wall and above the fire, of all things, was his father.Not all of his father but from his shoulder up, but my he did look grand.
A strange noise had shocked him back to his senses and he ran off to his safe haven on the mountain, but he had revisited that cabin from time to time just to make sure his father was still there, which, of course, he was.
So here it was at the end of his life.He knew he did not have the strength to survive another winter.He had seen others of his kind suffer during these times, slowly losing out to the ravages of the weather and then having the other animals of the forest tear the meat from their bones; no, not him.He had thought this through very carefully.
The following morning, the father and his crippled boy loaded into their truck and headed up the mountain to where they always hunted.The boy in his wheelchair at the fork of the old logging roads and dad sneaking through the forest in search of his family's winter meat.
He had watched them from just inside the tree line, watching how the father helped his son get comfortable, making sure he had everything for the day's hunt and then slowly disappear into the dark forest.It was a quiet, crisp and beautiful morning, and it was time.
Gliding out of the trees, he stood in the middle of the road, head held high and his antlers reaching for the heavens and a wide-eyed crippled boy in a wheelchair made the shot of his life.
Dennis Cornwall is an outdoors writer from Hazelton.
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