Yesterday we took an evening hike in to a spot Nick had seen on Google Maps. It was an odd anamoly that turned out to be a water collector for wildlife. We chose to take a "shortcut" back to the vehicle. Long story short, it took three hours to get out of what took 45 minutes to get in to see.
In the meanwhile, the sun went down and we were deep in a Black Hills Spruce forest that was overgrown and had tens of thousands of blowdowns. Along the way, Nick related a story of someone he had heard speaking on his experience in extreme elevation climbing where the one guy asked the other "having fun yet?". The speaker states his response was "sometimes fun isn't any fun". This wasn't fun by any means, but it somehow was a darn good time!
In the dark we stumbled onto a complete elk skeleton including the skull and the 6x6 antlers still attached. The points were all well chewed by rodents and had moss growing on much of it. "Huh, wonder if this is our fate?", I mused. The consensus from the others was that if that was to be the case, well so be it.
Three hours late getting back to the vehicle and we paused for a little Scottish barley based heavy water, sitting in the dark catching our breath and waiting to see if our trembling legs would calm. That's when we heard 'em. Elk. Bulls and cows all over the ridgeline we had just struggled through. Bugling and chirping, bulls challenging and cows being coy. The moon finally cracked above the mountain behind us, barely lighting things up enough to see each other's silhouette. Nick reached over and wrapped me in a bear hug before doing the same to his old high school buddy on the other side. A quiet, "thanks guys, I needed this more than I knew" and we knew we were having a little "church" time.
