Listening to Mountains Breathe

On the Noatak River, in the Brooks Range, I could feel certain mountains breathe. We'd be paddling along in the canoes--a string of five boats, two people in each one. I was in the front of the lead canoe, feeling that lovely dip of the paddle, the cool water splashing back over my hands, trying to remember if it was Lewis or Clark that Mom always said we were related to.

And from time to time, I'd feel one of the mountains breathe.

The mountains were all around us. The Brooks Range is a beautiful batch of mountains, craggy and steep, and the tundra colors were starting to pop nicely--magenta red bear berry, deep yellows of the grasses, and just a few orchids appearing on impossibly thin stalks.

"I'm feeling big mammal," I'd say, and for the first day or two, everybody else just laughed at me.

Then they realized that every time I said that, we'd spot a big mammal. Bear, Dall sheep, caribou, and, best of all, a lone male musk ox, who hung out on the hillside above our camp for two days.

I don't know how I knew. There are simply some landscapes where the language of the place makes sense.

I could head the mountains breathe.

And the sound was astonishingly beautiful and full of life.