Blue Mountain (11 page)

“Did he tell you all that, then?” Rim said.

Just then the otter came swimming up. “Be careful! Come away!” he called to his mate.

“But here are the beasts who love you so,” she said, “who made you king of the bog.”

The otter looked from her to Tuk and Rim.

Tuk made a low-stretch bow. “King Otter, we ask for permission and help to cross your bog,” he said.

The otter sputtered, and then said, “Brave bighorn, of course you may cross my bog, and of course I will help you. Again.”

“And otter, we do not wish to spend the night in the bog.”

“A night in the bog! Not at all! I am not sleepy. I am cheerful. You will be across in a short time. Follow me!”

And so the herd crossed, each bighorn following carefully in the footsteps of the one ahead, and Kenir at the front following the otter. The otter was true to his word, and they crossed without incident.

Once on the other shore, Kenir said, “No wonder you made it safely to blue mountain, Tuk—with wolverines and bears so willing to allow, and otters so willing to help.”

 

MEADOW MOUNTAIN AGAIN

 

When they came to meadow mountain, the herd drifted toward the wide rocky path to the top.

“You don't want to go that way,” Tuk said to Kenir. “We will take the narrow twisty path.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Wolf bones,” Rim said.

Fog hid the twisty path, fog dimmed the day, fog filled the night when they took a wide pass to avoid the man outpost. Their coats dripped with fog, their feet waded in it. When they came at last to the top of meadow mountain, they could not see blue mountain at all—just a world of deep cloud, mottled gray and white.

“So that's what a story looks like,” Zel said.

“It is just the fog,” Kenir said. “Isn't it, Tuk?”

“Yes,” Tuk said. “We'll see blue mountain in the morning.”

*   *   *

When Kenir saw blue mountain in the morning—

When the sun burned up the fog, and Kenir and Tragus saw blue mountain—

When they saw blue mountain for the first time, that the long high slopes were green with good grass and that it was vast and beautiful and real, they rejoiced.

“You are a good storyteller, Tuk,” Tragus said quietly.

They descended meadow mountain, exclaiming at the beauty of blue mountain whenever the forest afforded them a view. They rested in the new wintering valley for several days. The valley was rich with good food, and in a single moon cycle the herd grew sleeker and fatter, their eyes lost their hollow stare, and their coats began to shine.

When at last they climbed blue mountain, Tuk's band came solemnly to greet them. Dall stopped and bowed a low stretch to Kenir as she approached.

Kenir also bowed. “Matriarch of blue mountain,” she said to Dall.

“Fellow matriarch,” Dall answered.

Kenir did not protest. Together they walked the broad, muscled back of the mountain.

“Your mountain is beautiful, Tuk,” Balus said, “and it will make us great again.”

“You have this almost right, Balus,” Tuk said. “It is beautiful, and it will see our herd become great again. But it is not my mountain. It is ours. Yours and mine and all the herd's.”

 

END

 

Kenir and Tragus lived long enough to see the herd grow and multiply and become great again.

One day not many years later, a strong young ewe, with the encouragement and advice of Dall, led a break-off band to a neighboring mountain to the west. It, too, had meadows and cliffs for the lambing and rock cavities for shelter. Tuk and the other rams visited both herds, and the new herd thrived and one day produced yet another herd. The mountains unfolding endlessly on the western horizon seemed to wait patiently for the next.

Tuk and Rim and Ovis journeyed far and found other valleys, great mountains, vast meadows, and an abundance of mineral licks. They journeyed without fear of man or wind or snow—lords of the mountain. Sometimes they wandered alone, but mostly they stayed together.

On one occasion when Ovis traveled alone, he met with a wolf pack coming from the north. He was able to lead the pack away from blue mountain and eventually escape, but he returned to the old herd so wounded he did not survive the winter.

After that, Rim and Tuk wandered longer and farther. Often Tuk forgot Ovis was gone and talked to him as they laid down game trails for new generations.

One late summer, years later, when Tuk's and Rim's horns had become heavy and battered and broken at the tips, Tuk woke to find that Rim had died in his sleep in the night. Tuk stayed a day and a night by his friend, the wind screaming without interruption over the peaks and bellowing down into the valley. Finally he turned into the wind toward the old herd on blue mountain.

After a long journey he arrived in the evening and stood at the ridge over blue mountain. He could see many lambs playing, scampering up the rock tumble to see who could get the highest, racing across the meadow, leaping and running.

The yearlings and some of the younger rams looked up to see him standing on the ridge and bowed their deepest low-stretch bows. Tuk saw that the herd would always be, and that he had been part of the always.

From the meadow below, Dall looked up at Tuk. She was old and barren, but she was still the matriarch of the herd. She knew he would not return without Rim unless Rim was dead, and she hung her head in sorrow.

Tuk sensed someone behind him and turned his head to see an enormous ram, even bigger than himself.

“Fight me, Tuk, king of blue mountain and all the mountains that it birthed,” said the ram.

“My fighting days are over,” Tuk said, returning his gaze to Dall.

“Fight me,” the ram said again in a commanding voice. “I have heard stories that say you win every battle. I have come to prove the stories wrong.”

“All stories have some truth in them,” Tuk said, turning to face this bold ram.

He looked then at the giant of a ram, and, bowing his deepest low stretch, he said, “My Lord Denu.”

Tuk laughed, feeling suddenly young and strong, and assumed a threat stance. Denu also presented, and they charged.

Their horns clashing sounded like far-off lightning. Threat stance, clash!, over and over until they both panted with exhaustion.

“You cannot beat me,” Tuk said, though he thought that if Denu charged him one more time, he would.

“You are a true bighorn,” Denu said, bowing to Tuk. “Come with me. I have a new mountain for you to see. It is glorious—even more so than your blue mountain.”

Dall was staring up at Tuk, rigid, and she seemed to be trying to say something.

Tuk nodded to her, and then, with all his stories inside him, followed Lord Denu into the deep light of the evening.

Down in the meadow, the lambs pestered Dall for a story. For a long time she would not speak, but at last she began: “Tuk was born in the snow and wind of early spring. He was the biggest lamb born on the lambing cliffs that season, and for seasons out of memory…”

When the story was over, the lambs played, and the mountain—the mountain laughed.

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

My father, James Webster, was raised on a ranch in southern Alberta, cheek by jowl with Glacier National Park. When he was twelve years old he was already riding his horse far and wide in the foothills, exploring the lakes and rivers, coulees and forests. He loved nature and the animal world.

As an adult, he would pack his gear and hike into the Rocky Mountains in Jasper National Park, Banff National Park, Glacier National Park, and the mountains near his home in British Columbia. He walked every trail, and made a few of his own. He knew the wildlife, the names of the trees, and the names and origins of the rivers. He could read the ancient geological story in a rock wall. At one point he became intrigued with the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and made a study of their ranges, habitat, herd structure, and social order. For many years he trekked into wild places and photographed them and recorded his observations. He loved their independence and their ability to live in the most forbidding places. He loved their wildness. Long before it was in style, he was concerned with wilderness environments and the effects of man's encroachment.

He showed me an account he had written of a bighorn sheep through four seasons of the year. I was transported to the mountain and the simple but adaptive life of these remarkable animals. One day my father gave me a gift of all his notes.

I accepted his gift with gratitude and based this story on it. My story became a very different thing than his beautiful and perfectly accurate rendering, but we tell the stories we can. I found the entrance into my story when I read that sometimes a herd, when faced with serious range depletion, will make a migration into unknown territory.

I am grateful to my father, who taught his children to have a reverence for the beauties of the planet and all the forms of life that grace it.

—M.L.

“Few sights are more gratifying than a herd of bighorn grazing peacefully along a mountain slope, or more stirring than that of an adult ram, horns at full curl, head held high against the backdrop of an alpine setting. It is well past the time for the wildlife and wilderness areas remaining on this continent to be regarded as a sacred trust. Each time man allows another wildlife species to fade from the face of the earth, another shadow is cast over his own quality of existence.”

—James Webster, from his backcountry notes, circa 1980

 

 

Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010

Text copyright © 2014 by Martine Leavitt

All rights reserved

First hardcover edition, 2014

eBook edition, October 2014

mackids.com

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Leavitt, Martine, 1953–

    Blue Mountain / Martine Leavitt. — First edition.

       pages cm

    Summary: “Tuk, a bighorn sheep of the Canadian Rockies, leads his herd beyond the snares of man and the wiles of predators to the freedom of the Blue Mountain”—Provided by publisher.

    ISBN 978-0-374-37864-6 (hardback)

    ISBN 978-0-374-37865-3 (ebook)

    1.  Bighorn sheep—Juvenile fiction.   [1.  Bighorn sheep—Fiction.   2.  Sheep—Fiction.   3.  Survival—Fiction.   4.  Endangered species—Fiction.   5.  Canadian Rockies (B.C. and Alta.)—Fiction.]   I.  Title.

PZ10.3.L487Bl 2014

[Fic]—dc23

2014003697

eISBN 9780374378653

 

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