To Rise

Springtime.  The rising sun illuminated the dank space of the cave, and the bear stirred for the first time in moons.  Knowing that now was the time to move again, he strolled out of his humble abode and began doing what he does best - looking for food.  He spent a few minutes nibbling on fresh flowers and foliage, and then made his way to the river.  While vegetation was delicious, the long hibernation had left him nearly starved; it was time for some real food.  Fish.  Delicious fish, a delicacy among grizzlies.  The best part of each spring is waking up to fresh trout, and this year was no different.  The bear walked over freshly thawed dirt and mossy rocks, past the briar patch next to the ant colony, and over the downed tree that had been there since the bear went to sleep.  Finally emerging at the stream, the bear gazed out at his home.  Subalpine firs cast their yawning shadows over the juniper and sagebrush. Water cascaded over boulders slowly turning to sediment that drifted listlessly downstream under the gaze of a peaceful sky.  Ambling his half-ton frame into the water, the bear stood, and waited… Within minutes, the first fish began to appear.  Anticipating the movements of the trout, he snagged the first with his powerful bite, and had ripped it in two before the fish even began to struggle.  Often, the first day of Spring was a difficult one for fishing, but not today.  The bear caught fish after fish after fish, eating them all on the spot.  When he got tired, he sat down in a shady spot on the riverbank.  When he was thirsty, he drank straight from the cool water of the river.  When he was hungry, he caught another fish.  He has purpose.  He is free.  The bear caught fish from mid-morning to early-evening.  The shadows of the trees drifted to sleep, and the sky turned from blue to orange, and then to gray.  His maw was bloody and his belly was full.  He took one last long drink from the stream, and then retreated towards his den.   Somewhere along the way back, the bear’s footsteps awakened another creature, in its own hibernation, in its own cave.

. . . 

Footsteps.  Night.  When the little brown bat, or myotis lucifugus, woke up from his slumber, those were the two things that he knew.  The footsteps were no doubt that of a grizzly bear, but weren’t to be worried about - it had no interest in the bat.  Night was as obvious as werewolves on a full moon; the coolness of the air and the call of the horned owl a few trees away were unmistakable.  The bat’s internal clock was never wrong, and its awakening could only mean one thing- insects abound.  Without pause, the bat dropped from his perch, righted himself, and began to speak.  Flying out of the cave, he found his way into the dark through the trademark chirping noises that all bats are known for.  Many larger animals cannot even hear the high pitched vocalizations, but to moths, beetles, and the like, it means death.  The bat swooped out of the cave, dodged the limber pine to the left, and ducked under a branch of the douglas fir on his right.  He spoke to his surroundings, and they spoke back to him - the life-or-death game of marco-polo that separates predator from prey.  The bat didn’t always win, but he seldom lost.  Tonight, he was especially hungry.  Flying at extortionate velocity, he dodged yet another conifer tree and called out to his first victim of the night.  A relatively large miller moth was on its own nighttime journey.  The bat spoke to the moth.  The moth spoke back.  “Marco!”  “Polo!”  Then the moth spoke no more.  Hardly slowing his flight, the bat snatched the moth out of the air.  After finding a decent perch on which to feast, he devoured his catch in seconds.  The moth would not be the last insect to vanish that night.  The bat flew up to twenty miles per hour, moving from bug to bug with the ferocity of hell itself.  He has purpose.  He is free.  The bat owned the night.  Only once his stomach was full and hibernation had been nigh forgotten did the first streaks of light begin to make their way into the sky.  After snacking on one more mosquito, the bat began his journey back to the cave.  Weary, he bumped into a tree a few meters away, rustling the chamber of yet another creature in sleep.

. . .

The first thing the groundhog felt was cold.  She woke up to a body that was half its normal temperature, her heart hardly beating.  As with every year, the first thing she did was shiver.  She shivered until she could feel all her limbs again - until her heart began to thump in her chest and her senses woke up to the earth around her.  As with every year, she was in a burrow.  The smell of the dirt and the humid warmth of the air let the groundhog know that she was safe at home, and a home of her own construction at that.  Of course, she was hungry.  Despite the dangers posed, she would have to venture out of the safety of the burrow in order to scavenge for food.  She carefully crawled through the passageway and poked her head out into the world.  While eager to see what had changed in her habitat during the long rest, she was methodical in her surveyance of the forest.  The groundhog adjusted her ears to listen for large footsteps and used her powerful nose to sniff for danger.  Pivoting an entire 360 degrees, she eventually decided that there were no predators in the vicinity.  Only then did she begin to emerge fully, crawling out of the burrow an inch at a time.  Finally, she stood outside and got to work.  Her incisors had grown to an uncomfortable length during the sleep, so the first thing she did was grab a strong stick a few feet from the hole.  She began to gnaw on it, grinding her front teeth against the wood.  This process would help to shorten her incisors to a length that she could eat with; given that eating was her main plan for the rest of the day, this was an important first step.  In a matter of minutes, she had nibbled the large stick down to something of more twiglike proportions.  Discarding the chew toy, she pranced off to find some real nourishment.  The rest of the morning was spent foraging.  It was spring, and her environment was filled with flowers, green grasses, berries and all matter of delicious plantlife.  She would grab a bit of edible vegetation and hold it up to her mouth with both hands.  Chomping her incisors up and down faster than the eye can see, she rotated the meal around without pausing her chewing, ravaging the product in seconds.  This process went on for some time, until the groundhog heard something.  A rustling in the bushes a few feet away.  Might have been nothing.  Might have been a coyote.  Abandoning her food, she began to slowly move away from the area.  The groundhog backed up at first, but then turned around, notching her walk up to a trot.  And then a run.  Coyotes can run more than three times as fast as groundhogs, but the groundhog had been smart enough to stay close to her den.  There, she could wait out the coyote; she had stored enough food before hibernating that the coyote could starve five times over before she needed to leave.  As the coyote began to give pursuit, the groundhog increased her pace, frantic to escape.  She waded through heavy brush - in and out of spaces that a coyote couldn’t possibly fit through.  Even as the coyote made its way around trying to catch her, the groundhog knew that she would be fine.  The terrain was hers, and the burrow was close.  She has purpose.  She is free.  After scampering over another log, she dove into the burrow with her assailant still meters away.  She was safe at home.  Between her search for food and her attempts not to become food, life was a constant game of cat-and-mouse.  So far, she was winning.  And that meant life was good.  Miles and miles away from the burrow, one last creature was reaching the end of its hibernation.

. . .

When the human woke up, the first thing he saw was his plaster ceiling.  There was the small crack next to the fan and the coffee stain on the wall above the headboard; both had been there when the human went to sleep seven hours ago.  Both had been there for a while now, actually.  The next thing the human saw was his phone.  As usual, he scrolled through social media for a little while before checking his email.  His eyes lit up- four new messages!  Two were spam, one was a promotion for a new product, and the last was a notification that the video he shared had earned seven likes.  This made the human happy.  He got out of bed, got dressed, brushed his teeth, and went to look for breakfast.  On his way into the kitchen, he noticed that the half-eaten bowl of chips from last night was still sitting on the couch.  He decided that he would clean it later, and continued pouring his Fruit Loops.  Breakfast tasted good; it was familiar.  After breakfast, he tossed his dishes into the sink.  He noticed the pile of dirty plates and bowls that had accumulated over the past few days.  He decided that he would clean it later.  Today was a good day- Saturday.  He didn’t have work, which meant that he could spend the whole day relaxing and catching up on TV.  The two day recharge would be just what he needed to get through the next workweek.  He moved the bowl of chips to the side and plopped down on the couch.  He pulled a throw blanket over himself and grabbed a handful of the chips.  He considered turning on the TV, but the remote was a few feet away and he’d already gotten comfortable.  Instead, he reached to the ground and picked up his laptop from where he’d left it yesterday.  He logged in and browsed Netflix.  He thought about continuing the series that he’d been binging the last few days, but decided to watch some shorter videos on Youtube to warm up.  He clicked on something in his recommended page - a three-minute video of a cat fighting its own reflection in a mirror.  Then he watched a five minute clip of a late night talk show inviting a ‘master hula-hooper’ to perform.  Then, a twelve minute stand up comedy bit.  Videos kept appearing, and he kept clicking.  After promising himself, “one more,” for the third time, he clicked on a video reviewing a movie that he hadn’t seen yet.  Before the video played, there was an ad.  While this wasn’t out of the ordinary, something else was - he didn’t hit the skip button.  The advertisement was for a company that specialized in outdoor equipment; it showed mountain runners scrambling up peaks, skiers traversing a glacier in the backcountry, and rock climbers dangling off of vertical slabs hundreds of feet up.  One verbalized message was echoed in the essence every clip: “To live is to rise.”  These people, these athletes, were alive.  The human looked around at his place - the piled up dishes in the sink, the bowl of chips sitting in his lap, the crumbs on the floor, the microwavable dinners in his freezer, and the dusty rack of dumbbells that he’d used twice since buying them a year ago.  For the second time today, the human woke up, and he rose.  He vacuumed the floor and threw out the chips.  He washed his dishes and then dried them for good measure.  He sat back down and opened up his laptop again, closing Youtube and opening up a new tab.  The human clicked on the search bar and typed, “mountains near me.”  A map of his area appeared, and with horrified shock he realized that he had lived his entire life within an hour’s drive of the Yellowstone volcano, yet had never once visited the park.  Continuing his search, he discovered a mountain called Avalanche Peak.  There was a trail that went most of the way to the summit - a 2,000 foot climb over nearly three miles.  He plugged the trailhead’s location into his phone, grabbed his keys, put on a pair of tennis shoes, and ran out the door.  The drive was relatively short; the human manuevered his car through the winding entrance road and wondered how he could live so close to something so beautiful.  He parked his car at the lot and paused to look up at his target.  The rocky summit stared down at him.  It issued a challenge, and the human is not one to back down from a challenge.  He started up the trail at a fast pace, not running from anything, but pursuing.  The higher he got, the more difficult the trail became, the ever-increasing gradient doing its best to poke holes in the human’s confidence, and drown his will.  He climbed further, starting to feel like he was on a treadmill.  His shoes were no match for the rocks and scree - without traction, he slid back half a step for each one he took.  He climbed further, as the trail gave way to scrambling over loose boulders, and he resorted to climbing on all fours.  His fast pace dropped to a slog.  He hadn’t felt this much pain since his middle school days training on the track team.  He hadn’t felt this much adrenaline since he rode the drop tower at a carnival.  The past and future melted away.  Inhibitions and doubts left him.  There was only now, and the singular objective of the mountain in front of him.  The human knew that there was no place he’d rather be.  

His legs were on fire.  His brain was melting.  His lungs begged for a reprieve.  

He has purpose.  He is free.  He is alive.  

With the summit in sight, he pushed on.