Runs With Elk

by Mark Dawkins

     Sunday mornings are calm and tranquil along Meridian from Clear Lake to Eatonville. They are, that is, until the church crowd rises, the breakfast crowd heads in to eat and the folks heading to Grandma's house are underway. However, before this weekly metamorphosis takes place Meridian is a peaceful stretch of road on a Sunday morning.
    So thinks one lone runner as he makes his way along Highway 161 (Meridian) on his weekly pilgrimage from Clear Lake to Eatonville. It's early (before 7 a.m.) and spring weather renders the morning brisk and refreshing. Fog lies as a translucent blanket in the open fields. The dew hangs on the foliage like perspiration collecting on the upper lip of a heavy-breathing adolescent. The peacefulness is broken only by the occasional car.  “Life is good,” he thinks; as beta-endorphins flood his system and the rhythmic pounding of his feet propel him towards his destination.
    Open fields dot the way along Meridian like the black squares of a checkerboard. It was at one of these expanses that caught the peripheral vision of the heavy-breathing runner. Silhouetted against Mount Rainier
he sees a herd of magnificent grazing elk. They jump to life as the runner quickly approaches, perhaps a hundred feet to their western flank. Their flared nostrils shoot hot steamy breath like exhaust shooting from the pipes of a 1954 Lamborghini.
    The herd of 28 elk begins to run in a parallel direction of the runner. He quickens his pace but neither gains or loses his position with the thousand pound beauties. Suddenly, like marching Marines on a parade deck, the lead elk turns abruptly toward the runner. It was only seconds before this elk reaches the highway, where, frozen in his tracks, stands the now terrified, quite insignificant-feeling runner. Just
feet away from the runner the elk herd gracefully jumps, one and two at a time, over the four-foot barbed wire fence. Only a few more seconds pass before the thundering display ends. The elk, at near top speed distanced themselves, disappearing into the forest on the opposite side of the road.  The runner slowly resumed...he had run with the elk.

"Pity the poor kids who grow up in a big city. They miss the little things that made growing up in a small town, ah, so wonderful."
~Tom Morrow