have power struggles, amorous liaisons, a good knowledge of
local terrain. Shooting one of these local elk would seem
unneighborly somehow. As would running them down with a
truck.
All of this talk of life and death, of majestic
neighbors who we eat, indicates a certain tension in the
relationship that we humans have with elk. Traditional Native
American views seem instructive: local herds were believed
to be human in nature, just like us, yet elk were also a staple
source of food. This is a paradox to the Western mind, which
separates all creatures into those that are eaten (e.g., pigs,
cows, or chickens) and those that are not eaten (e.g., dogs,
humans, and recently, whales) - all beings, divided rather
neatly into those creatures that are viewed empathetically as
intelligent social beings, and those creatures that are not To
the indigenous peoples of this coast, all creatures - elk,
salmon, whales, and others - were traditionally viewed more
as separate ‘tribes’ than as inert organisms that existed in
sharp contradistinction to human societies. They all had
‘souls.’ In mythtime, most of these creatures could speak, and
there was little reason to think that they did not continue to do
so when humans were not present. And yet they were eaten.
The consumption of these creatures as food, the placement of
sentient beings at multiple levels of the food chain, created
some real cosmological tensions. By consuming a creature
that was viewed as intelligent and self-aware, humans
generated obligations, ceremonial and mundane, that had to be
repaid in a manner similar to human debts. Elk could not be
killed casually or excessively, and elk had to be repaid for
their losses, being honored in multiple ways, through symbolic
offerings or the elkish equivalent of a ‘first salmon ceremony’.
The European mind works somewhat differently, and must
first dehumanize beings to justify killing them. This point
warrants far more consideration than I have room for here, but
it is a recurring theme: many historical cases come to mind, in
both our relationships with other creatures, and in our
relationships amongst ourselves. Suffice it to say that I am not
sure that the West’s way is the best way. I have eaten elk, and
I have run elk down with my truck. This is no great tragedy -
certainly, in time, all elk must die, and there are worse ways
for an elk to end its life. But this does not mean that I am
comfortable killing them casually. I know them far too well
for that. May we all look at elk just a little differently, for
they are not as different from us as some might think or hope.
And, elk willing, may these words, this symbolic offering, be
partial repayment for my personal debt to the mid-town herd.
Lately, the elk have been reminding me that I owe
them. A year or two ago, driving down 101 within the
Cannon Beach city limits, I had a head-on collision with a
member of the mid-town herd. Seeing the last of the herd
disappearing into the roadside trees, 1 slowed to 35. But she -
that last, nervous straggler - accelerated to 30 in a panicky
dash to rejoin her clan across the road. Diving into the street
from a roadside bluff, she hit me before my foot could hit the
brake. She bounced off the front of my truck and into the
muddy roadside ditch, as the truck crumpled and popped, its
plastic grill exploding, the frame bending, the passenger door
jamming shut. (These are huge animals, dwarfing their closest
local relatives, the deer, who can bounce off of grills without
leaving much of a mark.) I pulled over and watched her
massive, 500-pound form struggle in the mud. Feeling
helpless, I fingered a small knife, realizing that the situation
required a coup de grace that I was not prepared to deliver.
Mercifully, the local police arrived immediately and did what
needed to be done. Though people kill elk every day, this
situation left me feeling morose. It wasn’t the adrenaline
spike and the awful sights and sounds. It wasn’t the truck,
which - though the elk wasn’t insured - was eventually
repaired. It was something else, something hard to describe.
Here on the coast, we live in close proximity to the elk; I knew
this herd. Somehow, this felt like running over a local.
I think that I have patched things up with the elk in
the time since. Still, the elk herds seemed to visit my yard
more this year than usual, until our town’s late spring touristy
clatter chased them back into the woods. Pushed down from
the high mountains by inclement wintry weather and the lack
of food, big herds grazed in the lush lowlands, and filed
through neighborhood streets in nighttime silence. They left
deep pothole prints in the lawns where they graze, and mighty
piles of dung. They gave the flowerbeds a well-churned,
craters-of-the-moon look, pockmarked with split-heart prints,
like they had been performing Rockettes routines outside my
front window all night long. I don’t mind. It is their
prerogative, and a suitably elkish thing to do. Each dawn they
disappeared, moving on to greener pastures far from the
chaotic clanging and banging of a human morning.
Up, back on up into the mountains they go, on trails
of their own making. Elk trails zig-zag all over the coastal
forest. Through dense brush, over logs, under branches, along
muddy and musky scented paths to which they have returned,
year after year, and generation after generation. I often choose
to hike on these muddy elk trails, rather than on meandering
human paths. The soil is churned up there, the downed logs
and sticks pulverized by a thousand hoof beats. Brush is
battered back, cleared to an elk’s width. Connecting the
geographical nodes of elkish life - bedding areas and feeding
areas, places to drink and to breed and to give birth - in a
dense network of linear trails. There are well-worn resting
(
areas on local mountainsides, with spectacular ocean views.
And off to the side, there are the places they go to die.
(Invariably, my dog finds these places, sneaking away with a
robust femur or two; over time, she seems to slowly
reassemble elk skeletons, one piece at a time, in my back yard,
like a museum’s well-chewed paleontology display.) In the
spots where elk linger, the grass is grazed short, and the soft
tops of other favorite foods - sword ferns, huckleberry bushes,
young salal shrubs - are grazed to a uniform low level.
In places such as our local state parks, this network of
elk trails overlies a separate network of human constructed
trails. The two co-exist, facilitating the coming and going of
the two species through the forest along distinct routes. And
though separate, they are not equal. While a human trail may
twist here and turn there - to avoid steep slopes, for example,
or to detour to a particularly impressive view - an elk’s path
tends to be more focussed, more direct. Unlike park visitors,
elk are not on vacation. From Point A to Point B they go, in
direct lines between places of elkish interest, regardless of
terrain. Straight up cliff-like slopes, straight down the other
side. They are robust creatures, adept at plowing through
obstacles and stomping the trail clear of debris. If they could
be convinced to work for these local Parks, they would be
formidable members of the trail maintenance crew. As it is,
their trails criss-cross human trails, going to different places,
manifesting their different agendas.
Formerly, elk were found throughout almost all of
North America. The increase in human population and the
dramatic transformation of the American landscape over the
last three centuries has pushed them to the unsettled fringes, in
the mountainous forests of the west, or the taiga forests of the
far north. Sometimes, when hiking in these forested places,
you might stumble upon an elk. Some run, but there have
been times when, walking silently through the woods, I have
seen them hold their ground, grazing, watching me with
apparent disinterest from close proximity. During their
autumn breeding season, agitated males, their antlers
accounting for up to 40 pounds of their 1/3 toil weight, may
escort you through their territory, paralleling your movements
from just behind the brush, making menacing grunts. No
doubt, it is best to avoid confrontations with a grunting bull
elk.
Though they arc huge, elk do have to concern
themselves with predators - formerly, the young, the sick, and
lame had to be wary of bear, wolves, and mountain lions.
Before Europeans arrived, local Native American hunters used
spears or bows to hunt elk, often aided by hunting dogs who
would chase the herd this way or that. On occasion, portions
of a herd would be run off cliffs, buffalo-like. Today, the
healthy adult males are the primary targets of human hunters
with guns. I do not hunt elk, though I have eating a goodly
amount of elk meat as the beneficiary of those who do. But I
avoid eating the locals. Our association with elk seems too
intimate here, our proximity too close. There are distinct
herds that live in the mountains around us, recognizable by
their number, and the look and behavior of each herd’s
individual members. Each, like human communities, has their
own distinctive cast of characters, their own agendas. There
are herds consisting largely of cows and their young. There
are herds consisting largely of bachelor males. There is a held
that lives in one place, a herd that dwells in another, each just
beyond the outskirts of town. Hunkered down, in our own
winter-reduced numbers, they seem like neighboring tnbes.
They walk parallel trails, live in parallel communities. They
•JUNE'S GARDEN'!
June could not be enticed from her garden, but will return next month
318 Laneda Avenue
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by Bill Wickland
Those people with an interest in learning
more about elk might consider contacting
the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation at
http://www.rmef.org/.
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“The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization
are disorder, fnction and malperformance. “ Peter Dnicker
1
Crap is scrap without the ’s’; and the ’s' is
essential.
Oh, boy! - 1 have been too sedentary this winter.
I took a real hike today, and my calves and forelegs are
scream ing from it, but it was beautiful. Between here
and W inchester Bay are very high hills, and I'd heard
that som e good views could be had by parking at a
locked gate halfway to WB, and walking in.
So I did that. This one is a form er logging road
through a clear-cut which was replanted in '96. The
gravel road now leads to a com m unication tow er u n d er
construction. Steep m other.
I probably hiked only a mile and a half to the
tower, but early on the way I was wheezing, and 1 had to
force m yself to stop to breathe from tim e to time, even
though I had stopped sm oking cigarettes on purpose six
m onths before.
It was really w arm up there, feeling like 6 5 .1 have
doors and w indow s open at hom e now, getting rid of the
beach m old, but the official tem perature is only 57.
The views u p there are am azing. Had I hiked
another mile or two d o w n the other side, I m ight have
been able to see W inchester Bay, but 1 did see big parts
of the U m pqua betw een here and there, and m uch of the
coastline, and one angle back here to dow ntow n
Reedsport and a bit of Scholfield Creek. Breathtaking
views, and those rabid, unrelenting environm entalists
can dan g me, but I'd like to put a cabin u p there. Gee
d a m I w ould like to do that. Just sit there and look out.
There was a bit of litter on the road, but not a
whole lot, and except for one very old H enry W einhard's
brow n beer bottle (Batch 137), it was new crap discarded
by low er engineers o r contractors in 30-wheel-drives.
Year 2G H um ans who had m ore room inside their rigs
than third-w orld denizens have in their hom es, but felt
like there w asn't enough room for that piece of scrap to
stay in the rig until they could get to a p ro p er recycling
place; so instead of scrapping it in the right place, they
crapped it out the w indow.
Oh, hell. Is there a proper recycling place? Do
we have a chance?
The first piece of crap really bugged me, a Fed
Ex envelope. I hadn't brought a litter bag and I d id n 't
w ant to carry that dam ned thing up a hill, so I h u n g it on
a broken branch on the side of the road. That got me
started. I h u n g up six pieces of litter w here they w ould
be visible. At the site was a w ooden gear box, the lid of
which I could lift a little. I picked up about six m ore
pieces of crap and put that crap into the gear box.
W hen the contractors com e back they can't miss
seeing that Fed Ex envelope which stands o u t like a
billboard, and has their nam e on it. If they w ant to get
rid of it, they’ll have to stop the rig and get out; and if
they w onder why the hell som eone hung it on a branch,
m aybe they'll w onder why the hell som eone threw it out
of a truck window.
The brow n H enry's beer bottle, with a sprig of
som e pretty blooming red flora, came all the way hom e
with me; I'll get a nickel for it after the pretty red leaves
d ro p off.
Bill Wickland, a life-long wordie and frequent (oumalist,
moved to Reedsport last winter on purpose.
UPPER LIFT E.DG.E TIME 2-000
3