It’s 5:30 on a Friday evening in Colorado. Right now, all around the Denver area, people are getting off work, sitting in traffic, meeting for happy hour, perhaps going out on the town.
As for me, I am sitting on the bottom of my muddy driveway, with my hands wrapped tight around my legs, trying to be as still and quiet as possible. There is a herd of 50 or so elk about twenty feet away from me. The group is quite spread out. Some are hidden in my neighbor’s aspen grove. Some are ambling slowly up his dirt driveway. Some are in an open field close by, and some are quietly flitting in and out of the pine trees of my own yard. They know I’m watching them, of course, and they’re initially annoyed that I am interrupting their evening graze.
Elsewhere in the world, a suicide bomber has just senselessly killed 13 Afghan civilians. In Yemen, 200 people are dead, 2,000 are injured and many more are hiding in their homes in fear as local factions wage ferocious war on each other. Justin Bieber is trending on Google News because Argentina wants to arrest him and, in presumably unrelated news, he may be dating a Kardashian. President Obama shook hands with Raul Castro.
The elk and I know nothing about these current events, however. They are placidly focused on their grass. I am simply rapt, watching them enjoy their meal, absorbing their calm.
The air tonight is unusually heavy for Colorado. I look up and notice clouds rolling in. As daylight fades, a light breeze whips up, and brisk rain drops spatter in the ruts of the dirt leading to my house. The elk move unhurriedly into the trees, away from me. I reluctantly pick myself up and walk slowly back to the house and civilization.
It’s a soul-restoring thing to sit watching a herd of elk on a Friday evening – an unforgettable, authentically happy hour.
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