inhabited knowing

Yesterday, Dory and I hiked up the North Cottonwood trail on the south side of the Bridger Mountains. It was our first time back since the snow had (mostly) melted, and it felt like a reorientation to green. The trail meanders along a barbed wire fence through a field on private land (courtesy of a trail easement with the landowner) until, at the base of the mountain, it begins to switchback and climb through National Forest land.

We meandered up the trail, greeting yarrow and lupine and yellow bells as we went. The lichen-covered rocks in the meadow always remind me of the trolls from the movie Frozen. When I hike, my eyes are nearly always scanning—for wildlife, for other dogs, for humans. I glanced up the slope of the mountainside to our north and felt a full body awareness—mountain goats. Flecks of white dotting the side of the mountain. For once I’d actually remembered to bring binoculars. As I unstrapped my backpack, shuffled through the contents, and pulled out the binoculars (no, Dad, I didn’t have them strapped around my neck), I started to second guess myself. I’d never seen mountain goats on this trail before, and come to think of it, I hadn’t seen mountain goats anywhere in a few years. Perhaps the flecks were just patches of snow that hadn’t melted at that altitude. Or very white cows that somehow found themselves higher up than usual?

I focused the binoculars on the slope. Mountain goats. Fourteen of them, their outline undeniable—bulky through their chest and back, hooves planted at an angle on the slope such that the space between their front and back hooves forms an upside down “v.”

My senses perceived and pieced together “mountain goat” without conscious effort. Only in bringing my brain into it did I start to question that knowing.

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Further up the trailhead, Dory clambered up and out of a drainage ahead of me. As I scanned left, my eyes registered an outline of ears under the Douglas fir trees across the barbed wire fence, then another set. In the time it took me to scan, assemble the picture, and register it, my body instinctively relaxed: what creature possibly has ears that big? Mule deer, three of them, resting in the shade. My eyes travelled from the ears to the big, open eyes underneath—fully aware of my presence and ready to run, but still lying down.

“Hi, you’re ok,” I called. “She has no idea you’re there.” (Dory had bounded up the trail, oblivious to the deer.) That the deer stayed put felt like grace, and acceptance. 

I believe that when we walk with presence, we become part of the landscape again. At ease in my body, I belong, and the deer recognize that belonging and stay. Granted, had I been oblivious in my own thoughts, they would have stayed, too, because a distracted mind won’t see them at all. Still, I felt mutual acknowledgement and acceptance.

Sensing requires presence. If we’re lost in our heads, we don’t sense the mule deer, the mountain goats. In staying present, we receive the gift of belonging and inhabited knowing, aware of ourselves in relation to the earth around us.

Have you ever “known” something with your body before your mind could register it, or second guess it?

What does it feel like to fully inhabit your body in a landscape?