Learning to Climb

CURWOOD: Rocky Mountain big horn sheep are born with all the climbing gear they need: feet evolved to grab and hold on near-vertical rock, and an uncanny sense of balance. Writer Mark Seth Lender came across a herd of the sheep near Albertas Jasper National Park late last summer and discovered that for the lambs, having the equipment is not enough. They still have to learn how to use it.

Leap of Faith: Lambs Learn to Climb
Rocky Mountain Big Horn Sheep, Jasper National Park, Canada
2014 Mark Seth Lender
All Rights Reserved

LENDER: They are working it out. The lambs, by themselves. Where the mountain tapers smooth and hard off the ridgeline. The rest of the herd, already picking their way among the crags and cracks is heading down. But the lambs upon this unfamiliar terrain, hold back. The ewe by her stance and where she looks has led them here. To the edge. But will not show them how. Down they will learn on their own.

She stands aside, and waits.

They will not amble like the lambs of the ground. They are not full of play. They stand on the high point and look, long, toward the river and the sweet grass far far below. They look. And look: To left to right slowly turning their heads. They plan: each move, each angle polished into an extended curve. A calculus: For every waypoint, every stopping place, the risk of a dead end.

Nor is the route straightforward.

Sometimes the only down is up: they scramble against the vertical, grappling with their cloven feet, the ledge where the gamble led too narrow for a bird.

Sometimes, what looks easy is impossible: the gradual slope, which ends in a sheer and impassible cliff.

Sometimes the granite cleaved along the head grain is the only path and the only safety a headlong run, the living rock inclined too steep for caution.

The hooves of rocky mountain big horn sheep are broad as a puck, gray as the living rock (as if the color gives them grip). They hold, like India rubber pads, where purchase seems untenable, a magicians trick, inertia where there should be none. Up where the trees are far and few and the dead wood outnumbers the living…

The herd, already arrived, goes about its grazing.

The rams lick salt by the side of the road.

At the river others drink.

Not a one looks up to see who will beone of them.

And the Rocky Mountain Big Horn babies look down and down and down, their ears, raised, the hairs standing straight out. Like you they can fall 1,000 feet, just once.

CURWOOD: Writer Mark Seth Lender. There are pictures at our website, LOE.org.
Special thanks to Fraserway RV and Judy Love Rondeau.