Friday, April 26, 2013

Incident at Glacier Park

Two summer tourists sat in their lone car at a Glacier National Park overlook, admiring the sunset splendor in the Montana peaks. Gazing far out and long down through the oncoming dark, each saw something—a shape—something approaching in rear and sideview mirrors: not a person but a looming staggering hulk, shaggy, lumbering, stupendous, wavering, clumsy but closing in, an enormous bulk.

“I’m shutting the windows,” he said, but she re-opened hers and aimed her camera straight at the massive hump-necked beast as he drew parallel, turning his head toward her just then, his whole form abreast when she clicked, a full gratifying action shot, as far as she could tell, and he—fell! collapsed in one imploded heap of fur and crumpled flesh, directly down, not three feet away from their car. 

“You just killed a bear,” her husband shouted, “with your instamatic flash! You must have scared him silly, with lightning in a box, given him one of those rare heart attacks an animal can get from sudden fear, even a giant grizzly bear, and you plain up-and-down killed him.”

“Maybe,” she tried weakly, “he just fainted.” 


“Oh my god,” she said.

He started up their car, put it in reverse gear, backed furiously a half turn and then zoomed forward out of that shrouded mountain overlook.


“Wow,” said the one with the rifle, “see that batmobile varoom the hell out of here?”


“Yep,” said the other, also striding to the tranquilized grizzly, “I tried making their license plates but couldn’t. Out-of-state is all I saw.”


“Out of their mind, you mean, going that fast.”


“Well, maybe they were that keen just to get away, because maybe our bear put ‘em in shock before he went down, tottering around like that, all that towering mega-weight, and they went ballistic to escape, just to zoom out of here.”


“We got about 20 minutes,” said his partner, reaching into a holster, fetching pad, pencil and penlight to record stats. He lit his watch for exact time and logged it, and they knelt to measure teeth, clock heart rate and do all the rest they do.


“Smitty’s got the pick-up above the curve, I’ll call and then we’ll sling Big Bruiser up and haul him out of here.” He flicked a finger at the darkening wood behind. “We zapped him fine but never knew we were that close to just right here.”


“And we were a little bit too late.”


And these were the best of men. (You can have know-how but not know-where, exactly, and not know-when).

And the grizzly? The last he knew, he was dying, all his body gone from feel and view. He was being trundled and trussed, he divined, weightless, borne aloft, transported to bruin heaven. Remembering that fiery quick point of spot lightning, he closed his heavy eyes on darkened skies and everything.

When he awoke, he had something new around his neck (the radio collar). Had he died and had now come back with a ruff of horns? would he grow a future rack as well as hump behind his head, turn into an elk maybe—or kind of moose-bear in this new track?


“He’s completely dead, he’s already got rigor mortis, his eyes still open like a dead person’s, with that glassy haunted look. I know what I know, he’s stone stiff, nothing moving, absolutely gone.”

“You can thank Him that no one else is here, it was a accident but could’ve been mistook.”

Now two Rangers came out of the hillside across the road and headed onto the sightseeing tarmac. 

Moral: Either none of us know half of it, or half of us know none of it.












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