Two traveling elk hunters came to the end of their trail this past September in Colorado when a late summer thunderstorm overtook them. Sometimes, there’s just nothing you can do. It reminded me of a hunt I was on myself some years ago. We were at the opposite end of Colorado and no one was injured, but all the other ingredients were there. Like something out of a bad dream, we were watching elk when lightning walked over the mountain behind us like the devil’s fingers playing piano. As it closed, each stroke slammed a crisp, bass note while we checked the bushes for rattlesnakes, looking for a safe place to hide.
It was the first week of September in the Rockies of northwestern Colorado. The days before had been calm and clear, as the days after would be. Rain was in the forecast, though, as we headed uphill to meet the afternoon elk coming down.
Three Southern flatlanders and a U.S. Marine from New Orleans trailed Chase Fix, an appropriately-named elk guide, up a stony expanse of westward-facing slope. We had checked the radar back at camp and seen nothing but, out there, storms don’t take long to brew. That morning we’d seen elk heading for the dark timber and planned to meet them when they reversed course in the afternoon.
“I find snakes there every time I’m on that hill,” Fix had said. His glasses and ours pointed across the valley. We’d seen a snake that morning, too, so the subject was fresh to mind. “Never been over there without seeing one.”
Now, climbing the hill, we stumbled over loose rock among knee-deep sage. Chase walked looking ahead. We followed in single file looking down. The last guy in the column jumped over the first one. The son of a professional woodsman, he was carrying 60 pounds of camera gear but levitated over the bushes nonetheless.
“My dad always claimed they hit the last guy in line,” he said. “The first ones wake him up and the last one gets it.”
We almost had him calmed down, then we walked another 10 yards and saw the next two. One snake lost himself among the sage and the other slithered through a wide hole under a rock the size of a queen mattress. Chase poked after the latter with the shooting sticks he carried and set off an orchestra of buzzing that told us he wasn’t under there alone, not even close. Quickly we gained the plateau above the rock face and rested.
“They’ll calm down when it gets cool later,” Fix said, which is what we were waiting for when the lightning came. When it became obvious we couldn’t beat the storm back to our vehicle, we found snakeless spots, got away from our metal gear and sat low as it passed over. The rain would have gotten us wet but the wind blew so hard the drops barely slowed down long enough to notice us.
We didn’t have any really close calls, with a lightning bolt or a rattlesnake, but we got the message nonetheless — enough to make me think of it when this past September’s story from Colorado rolled in.
We didn’t collect an elk that afternoon long ago, which is just as well. We’d already had all the excitement we could stand.
Kevin Tate is a freelance writer. Email [email protected].
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