The Hour Before

The hour before first light has always been mine.   Mine for assessing the stars.  For measuring the moon against my upraised thumb.  For making sense of the pewter lake below, the black trees.  For indulging my last frayed emotion from the previous day.

Today is different.  Today, I give the first hour to the lone fox I heard crying out from the dry gully below my house.  His is a desperation bigger than those I have conjured for myself this morning.  The fox cried incessantly, the sound of it fading as the animal fled up the gully and into the juniper and pine hills.

Last night, that girl and I watched Night of the Grizzlies, a documentary about two fatal grizzly bear attacks that occurred on the same August night in Glacier Park in 1967.  Both victims were young women camping in the backcountry.  Both were dragged away in their sleeping bags by the bears.  Fellow campers located one of the victims, Julie Helgeson, in the darkened woods sometime after the attack.  She was still conscious but fading.  As the would-be rescuers carried her to remote Granite Park Chalet, Julie told one of the men she was scared.  She asked him to hold her hand.

This morning, I give to the fox.  The fox knows how this ends.

--Mitchell Hegman