Tales of the Tree - In an enchanted park, in the heart of a modern city, an ancient oak whispers the tales of the ages. Listen carefully...you are invited to send us the tales you have heard, whispered on the wind.
Joel froze in his tracks by the ancient oak tree. He thought he had heard the faintest sound of a twig breaking. He concentrated on becoming part of the scenery, attempting to blend in to the tree trunks and bushes around him. Had he finally found what he had come hunting for? His finger tightened on the trigger of the rifle he carried...the rifle he had been given on his eighteenth birthday.
"You're old enough for a man's gun today." his father had said, with a proud smile. "You've been bringing rabbits to the table for two years. It's time that you started bringing in the big game now."
Joel had taken the 35 caliber rifle quietly, trying not to destroy that very special moment with an undignified whoop of joy. It had taken everything he had in him to study the weapon with a seemingly casual air of interest.
"She's beautiful, Dad." he had answered, remembering to open the chamber and check before he hefted it to his shoulder, peering down the sights. That night his dreams had been filled with visions of bear, moose and even cougars. Of course, his best dreams had been of bringing in Old Branch.
The buck was a Brewster County legend. He had been trophy sized when Joel's dad had been a boy. Rumor had it that he sported eighteen points now, a rack that would do justice to any big game hunter. It was every county man's dream to have that trophy for himself. Of course, any buck that lived long enough to have eighteen points was going to be incredibly hard to track, much less get in your sights, but Joel, like every young hunter before him, had high hopes.
He had spent the better part of two years drinking in all the deer lore that he could. He learned how to identify individual scrapings, and how to smell the earth on his fingers to see if a buck had marked a trail as his own. He learned how to fool a "hot" buck by scraping old tines together, to trick him into thinking that a rival buck had entered his territory, forcing him to reveal himself in answer to the challenge. He learned how to use the air currents and cover to his advantage and how to track through even the most difficult of terrain. But although he quickly earned a reputation as one of the area's best deer hunters, he never even once caught a glimpse of Branch.
In the last six months or so, he had taken to visiting the local watering holes in the evenings, to talk to the oldtimers and pick their brains. One or two of them had claimed to have seen Branch, but the majority of veterans scoffed, and called the buck a legend created to "heat new hunter's blood."
A few weeks ago, he had finally hit pay dirt. One of the local trackers mentioned a man named Tom Rankin. Tom was eighty years old, and claimed to have actually gotten a shot off at Old Branch. He lived out in a cabin on Hare Ridge, too old now to make the trip into town. He had all of his supplies delivered to him from Smythe's Dry Goods on the first of each month.
Joel had gone to Smythe's and offered to take the supplies up for him, no charge. Smythe jumped at the offer, and that afternoon Joel found himself driving a reluctant pair of Shires up to the ridge. The cabin was old, but kept up relatively well, although Joel doubted that the roof would hold more than a year or two more. The old man waved him into through the door, and set about storing the small sacks of flour and such. He moved slowly and carefully, and when everything was in its place, he offered Joel a cup of chicory.
Joel sipped the hot, bitter brew and gently led the conversation around to Old Branch.
"Now that was a day.." Tom chuckled drily. "I had been in the wood for 'bout three days, way out on the northern edge of Tawny Mountain, and I had fallen asleep by a stand o' tall pine...when all a sudden, I woke with the feeling that I was being watched. I opened my eyes, and there was the biggest buck I have ever seen..fourteen points..not twenty feet away!" The old mans eyes gleamed with the memory, and he seemed to drift into a daydream. Joel coughed politely, and Tom sat up with a start.
"Huh..oh yeah..anyway, I raised my rifle faster than a snake could strike, but damned if that buck didn't leap at exactly the same second. I figured I'd missed entirely, and ran to where he stood, cursing like a soldier. But he was already gone..melted into the woods like a beast made o' mist. I kicked the ground, I was that angry, and that's when I saw it. Just a small bit o' hoof, there on the ground. Here, I'll show ya."
The old man rose and opened a box on a stand by his bed. He hobbled back to the chair and placed the bit of hoof on the table. Joel picked it up and examined it, his heart in his mouth. The buck could be identified! Even if the horn of his hoof had grown back there would be a stress line in the track. Armed with his new knowledge, Joel took up the hunt once again.
He had gone out to Tawny Mountain and began tracking. He slept with no fire at night, and searched from sunup to sundown, examining every inch of ground along the way. Two days ago, he had found what he was looking for. A set of large tracks, with a stress line across the left hind print. He had followed them deeper and deeper into the heart of the wooded wilderness, and had lost the trail just this afternoon. He had been trying to find them again when he had heard the twig crack. He stood for what seemed like an eternity, certain that the pounding of his heart could be heard ten miles away.
Suddenly he saw movement out of the corner of his left eye. Not daring to breath, he watched and waited as the figure came around to the front of him, moving directly into his line of vision.
It was Old Branch. There was no doubt. The buck's head was turned away from him, nose in the air, scenting the wind cautiously...but there was no mistaking that rack. It was larger than the legends had stated. The few shafts of sunlight that came down through the canopy of the old oaks glistened on twenty points, ten on each side, spread over three feet across. Joel raised his rifle, moving infinitesimally slow. Somewhere in his gut he knew that if he blew this shot, he would never get another.
The buck turned, just as Joel was positioning himself. Perhaps he had been alerted by the sudden caw of a raven nearby, or perhaps he had simply sensed the young man's presence...Joel would never figure it out..but at that moment, man and animal were face to face...about ten feet from each other in the dim twilight of an ancient forest. Joel was paralyzed, his finger frozen on the trigger.
The bucks eyes were dark and liquid, full of mysteries and age old wisdom. His muzzle was white with age, misting to a light grey around his forehead. He seemed both more ethereal and more solidly real than anything Joel had ever seen before. Joel suddenly had visions of him, leaping through the brush, defeating untold numbers of usurpers, bugling challenges to the sky. He saw Old Branch in the glory of his youth, flashing through sun filled meadows...and watched him age, growing ever more cautious and wise..retreating further and further into the mountain wilderness, eventually coming to embody the very essence of all that was triumphantly wild and eternally free in the world. His power was the power of the earth itself.
But there was something else in those eyes. A strange resignation..a premonition of death. It seemed to Joel that he could see the mountains dwindling, and hear the earth crying for the loss of its most beautiful and noble creations. He was filled with a horrible guilt that he didn't understand, and couldn't bear. He no longer saw the trophy that he had worked so hard to bring home. He saw beyond the rack, and the prize..to what lay beneath. For the first time he saw the terrible fragility that lay beneath the foundation of the natural world he took for granted.
The spirit of the earth stood before him, and waited to die.
Joel stood for a moment, the aftershock of his visions making his heart freeze and his hands shake. He slowly lowered the gun, his eyes never leaving the buck's face.
"No.." he whispered, "Not today..not me."
The buck held his gaze for a few moments longer, a with a slow measured grace, he melted back into the dim recesses of the forest.
When Joel came home that week he was no longer the man he had been. He still hunted, of course. His family had to eat, after all...but he never took more than he needed, or killed for the sake of a trophy again. He spent more and more time alone in the wilderness...listening, watching...perhaps hoping. And Old Branch? He was never seen again, and was eventually forgotten, vanishing into the shadowy world of legend.