The small canyon with the clear spring seep was a special place. It stayed cool in the heat and had an upslope breeze that brought to the Bull all the information he needed of what passed below its hidden entrance. In foul weather, the steep walls kept out the heavy gales. The Bull would sometimes look up at the hawks that passed over the window of sky above him as their shadows climbed its rock walls, or their cries reached down into the secret canyon, echoing their strange language.
While the archer spent long evenings re-working his tackle, or weekends scouting Bull Mountain, the Monarch lived the secretive life of a bull elk mid-summer. Already a very large animal, the Bull packed on weight as his internal systems drew nourishment from the pregnant browse around him, delivering it in the very best ways to muscles and sinew. His favorite bed was under a large spruce with down swept boughs that almost reached to the tips of his remarkable rack, in velvet but for a few more days. By chance, this bedding place under the massive tree was graced by the morning sun, a rare thing inside the small hideaway canyon. The Bull would make the effort to be laying in this spot as the sun clocked over it, warming his scarred flank under the soft wash of gentle heat. As the years had passed, the old wounds gave him trouble and were stiffened from the mountain nights that were so cold this high on Bull Mountain. In this way he grew in weight and his velveted crown reached higher and higher as each day passed. Still, when summer had drifted through July, the Bull had not grown a larger set of antlers this year. In fact, large though they were (and they were larger still than the largest on the mountain) the Bull's antlers were a little bit smaller than the years previous.
Sometimes, and only at night, the Bull would leave the safety of the canyon and walk the edge of the open parks where he had spent the early years of his life. He never allowed himself out into the open, having learned long ago that even in the semi-darkness of a quarter moon in the open was danger. He had seen enough that convinced him of this. Those experiences had informed his already cautious nature to be even more so.
The Bull would wander among the aspen and the low growing spruce, visiting familiar wallows, but only to drink from nearby seeps. Morning would find him back in the safety of the hidden canyon, having returned well before dawn while the breezes came to him as he climbed the steep and timbered trace to its entrance...
Topic: The Monarch of Bull Mountain --DONE!-- (Read 4650 times)
