Saturday, July 16, 2011

The Miracle of Mountain Goats

As I was driving back to Utah from the Sawtooth NRA, I happened to pass a sign just past Galena Summit on Highway 75 outside of Ketchum, ID. The sign said, "Billy's Bridge...Goat Viewing Area". I whipped past the sign, barely having time to read it. As what it said registered, I had a moment of hesitation. Should I turn around and go back and see what it was? Yes, I decided, yes, I should. I have never seen mountain goats in the wild.

It took about a mile for me to find a place to safely turn around, and my typical resistance to backtracking was tugging at me, but I was firm with myself. Who knows when I will make it back this way? I drove back, and pulled into the Billy's Bridge turnout.  I took a trail down the hill through the trees. It ended at a platform perched just out of the trees on a hill over a meadow. The platform had a bench, two spotting scopes, and a sign with information about mountain goats.

I looked up at the sheer sides of the mountains across the valley. There was still patches of snow clinging to the mountains. I pulled out my binoculars and started scanning the cliffs for mountain goats. I started out low, where the trees meet the cliffs, because that looked like a reasonable place for an animal to be grazing. There was nothing there, so I started looking up the cliffsides, to the impossible places. My binoculars slipped pass 4 small white dots. Are those mountain goats, or a little patch of snow? I re-focused and braced my arms on the platform railing to steady my binoculars. One of the little spots moved. Mountain goats are animals of impossible places.

I went to one of the spotting scopes on the platform and aimed it at the mountain goats. With the spotting scope, I was able to see that it was two mother goats with two babies, all four grazing midway down a sheer side of the mountain. On a cliff! Not on the edge of a cliff but half way down, in the middle of a cliff face. Grazing! What tiny little alpine plants grow at that altitude? How do the goats graze on a cliff? The babies can only be a few months old, and yet they are walking on an invisible ledge halfway down a cliff like I can walk across a meadow. How do they survive year-round in such a rocky, impossible place?

I came to the conclusion that mountain goats are miracles.

I have read about them, I have seen pictures of them, but where and how they live never really registered with me until I saw them myself. I watched for several minutes all four goats making their way around their impossible place, moving up and down the cliff face, stopping to graze on the tiny plants able to grow at that altitude. Seeing these miracles filled me with joy. I laughed out loud, and was answered with a snort from a deer in the meadow, who then bounded leisurely off into the trees at the edge of the meadow.

As I continued on my drive back home to Utah, I couldn't help but wonder how many more miracles are out there in our life every day, if we just stop long enough to observe them.

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