Friday, I drove through a mountain pass, late at night, in dense fog, thinking, this must be what limbo is like. A low beam, peephole view of the chipped stripe and the monochrome guard rail framing a windy road where everything else had faded to a quiet white. Threading a needle in that dreamscape of fog, I wasn’t making good time. The road wound around, the scene looped again, definitely limbo.
No one else was on the road. What wasn’t black or grey was lit flat white. The first shimmer of color in what felt like forever came at mile marker 17. The sign reflected green, 17 glowed like pearl in the night. Then the road switched back, I climbed out of the fog and nearly died.
An elk was galloping beside my truck. It’s huge rack, and chestnut shag with white marks, rippled alongside me, and it was massive. I usually see elk at a distance in the mountains, and I forget how big they really are, and that the early settlers decorated their antlers, balanced carefully on their backs, and rode them into town like elf princes.
The bull elk brushed, my side mirror, it groaned, and I jinked into the oncoming lane as waves of elk washed over the road. I held my breath; made the smallest adjustments. I was surrounded. We were a herd. My heart raced. My eyes darted. Their hooves clattered on the blacktop, and their exhales chuffed. I was hemmed in. We raced in formation. It was surreal and frightening, and wonderful, but I didn’t know how to leave. Would my horn spook them? If I slowed down, would they? If I nudged over would an elk bigger then my Ridgeline yield, would his friends?
I was a stampede. Then two bucks in front of me clattered and veered off the road. I took the opening, a wall of elk filled the rearview, and I accelerated away. Then the road dipped, and I was back in the fog.
Snaking through quiet limbo, breathing hard, calming my heartbeat.
Seven mile-markers to go. Almost there.