As Nevada Highway 278 crests Garden Pass and falls south along the base of Mt. Hope, I jam to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believe’n,” and throw in an invisible air guitar as the giant ridge of Hope is framed for a final instant in my rear view mirror.  The base of a finger ridge bends the road in a shape of a “U” and I lose complete sight of the mountain all together, without even realizing I had passed it.  Suddenly, the radio crackles as if it is coughing up a loogie, and lyrics fade back to the tune of humming tires against highway.  I flip the seek button on my radio and frequencies fly by without even hitting a religious station.  Usually a religious station breaks the static, when no other could muster signals past the mountain ranges and canyons, but here, even on radio, god is tuned out.

My bare feet flirt with the idea of more speed as they lean against the gas pedal, but let off, sensing the rape of rocks and ragged earth beneath them, as I make my way into Diamond Valley.  My eyes grip the mountain range bordering the eastern edge of the valley, and there, kissing the overcast is Diamond Peak.  Speed is halted and prevented, even discouraged in the presence of such a summit.  Four sharp cut ridges make up the peak and it looks back at me, eyes of rimrock squinting, shoulders of mountain broadening, gripping my presence like a boxer sizes up an opponent.  The mountain is so steep that it appears to be a two dimensional image drawn on the horizon of wild-fire haze.  I drive down the highway, ignoring the mountain’s unavoidable glare and quietly tell myself I’ll be kissing its ridges in a matter of hours.  I reach the end of Diamond Valley, and finally come to the conclusion of Highway of 278 at the junction of what Nevada calls, “The Loneliest Road in America”.

I turn east on Highway 50, coast through the pinion and cedar trees, and three miles later crest the hill that falls into the township of Eureka, Nevada.  Eureka is tucked away behind forested ridges filing down from several eight-thousand foot peaks, and lays below these mountains quieter than a fourth grader sits friendless in after-school detention.  If it weren’t for the road signs, one would never know a town is nestled in such a place.

Even though everyone I love and cared about has moved away, the simple life that Eureka represents, still is as comforting to me as it claimed to be six years ago.  There is a magnetic force there that draws me back, and I can’t think of a better place to spend my hunting season.  It is a great place to hunt mule deer and that reason alone entices my animal instincts to hunt and pursue in wild places.  It is these lonely places that surround Eureka that capture my interest and imagination.  The Pony Express Trail is slightly to the north, and the solitude that those brave riders experienced makes me hungry for the untamed draws and canyons year after year.  The possibility that my footsteps are the first to stake their claim into a place where no other human has been before influences deeper exploration into the backwoods.  For me, it is these unknown places that hold the precious aspects of life that technology and population forget and misplace. 

           
The road maneuvers into a canyon, and passes a ranch, the last reach of human influence.  I drive a mile further and suddenly I’m driving in the mountains, gaining elevation slowly, but noticeably.  I get to the top of Newark Summit, the highest point that a maintained dirt road drives over, and take a left, driving on a road weakened by the lack of human attention and angry wilderness.  The road feels like a faint pair of cow paths pointlessly wandering deeper into nowhere.  Road conditions worsen by each inch of gained altitude.  Dust is replaced with gravel, and soon gravel with rock, and rock with erosion that is now sucking my tires into ruts.  I flip in the Four-wheel drive and it adds new determination to weakening traction.  Sagebrush limbs overhang the two track and slice into the flesh of my truck, and shrieks of scratching paint cry out for mercy.  Suddenly the road takes a turn straight into the blue of afternoon, appearing to point my blue pony vertical for take off into the atmosphere.  Yet my tires remain grounded on the path, fighting gravity with horse power.  Wheels begin spinning furiously, digging and spewing thick dust into the fresh mountain silence.  Time stops within the steepness of the moment, gripping seconds with anxiety.  The road rounds to the top of a mountain and screaming r.p.m’s fade into my relief laden sighs.  The road soon ends and I find myself glaring into the southern face of my favorite devil.  I cut off my engine, and breathe in the sweet thin air of civilization lost.

I enjoy the last few moments my ass graces the interior of my truck, for it is the last time in five days it will feel such pleasure.  I step out and trade my flip flops for hiking socks and boots.  I throw on a long sleeve shirt, even though it’s August.  Mountains that don’t believe in god don’t believe in hot August nights. 

I go over a checklist of survival items, strap down my pack with compression straps, and chug two bottles of water.  With my hydration gauge back to full, I reach for the fleece that confines my only companion for the escapade. 
           
Yellow Havoc, my English style longbow, slides out of his fleece case, just like a morning sun slips quietly but meaningfully over an eastern horizon.  Yellow Havoc’s wooden flesh of maple and coco-bolo radiate underneath the spotlight of dark-yellow afternoon sunlight.  Scratches from rock and scrubs are tattoos of symbolic testament from past hunts.  The leather handle is worn and ugly, yet slips into the shape of my hand effortlessly.  I slide his waxed string up to the notch and marvel in the charm of simple power.  His quiver holds five arrows tipped with sharp black steel heads, and I can feel their excitement within the nearing possibility of venison. 
           
Feeling neglected, my shoulders begin to beg for the sixty pound frame pack; I give it to them.  My knees didn’t receive the “extremely heavy pack” memo and almost buckle at the new weight.  I hoist the pack up as if I’m getting a better grip on a piggy-backer, and snap the waist buckle and secure it tightly around my hips.  I am ready, except for the nuisance of communication within my pants pocket.  My cell phone, the representative of reassurance, a communicator back to humanity, a teller of date and time, is trying to hitch hike into the backcountry.  Anywhere else, it is a necessity, but here, it’s just another piece of shit that I don’t need.  Its screen nearly begins to speak to my sensibility, but I toss it in the driver side of my truck before it can.  I look up and five miles off is Diamond Peak, greeting my occupancy with a crooked smile in the form of a deep canyon.  I smile my own nastiness back and say, “Here I come you son-of-a-bitch,” and head for the faint trail marking the beginning of my life controlled by the will of the elements.

           
The first mile is easy; it’s just a matter of following the trail along the crags and rim rock.  There are traces of shells in the cliffs, and I smile, because I’m walking the paths that ancient sharks and sea-creatures swam by millions of years earlier.
           
I enjoy the breeze sifting up from the lower hills below, chasing sweat off my forehead.  I move along, swiftly heading deeper into desolation, putting yard after yard between me and my truck that is now the size of my finger nail on the distant mountain saddle.  My binoculars bounce off my chest to the beat of “Whole Wide World” by Reckless Eric and I hum the tune to compliment the percussion produced by my binoculars.  I’m hardly worried about hunting, just happy to be out and away.  Yellow Havoc sways in my hand matching the momentum of my stride, enjoying the ride along wilderness.  The trail turns into the beginning of the vertical ascent, and I glance to the top of an angry angle that now forces me to pick my path through the boulders and mahogany.  An hour later I grace the top of the mean little mountain, and even at ninety three hundred feet, I’m barely to the knee cap of the body that makes up Diamond Peak.  From here, I can see my future camp, Windy Gap, a place discovered three years earlier by my dad and I.  It is still a good two miles off.  I grip the bit of serenity and savor the growing shadow of Diamond Peak.  Imports of significant moments don’t come along that often, and I strike a pose among the evil country.  I continue on. 
           
I arrive at Windy Gap just before the witching hour of gloaming, and have a little time to look for deer among the high peaks.  I set my pack against the rock pile in which I built the year before, and stretch my shoulder blades, who now, are tired of the unrelenting weight of the pack.  I set off only fifty yards past my camp and search for velvet crowned deer.  I find them, on the East side of the top of Diamond, feeding peacefully on fading green grass.  The alpine vegetation is losing its influence to the proximity of autumn, and the deer are eating it like it has an expiration date.  I marvel in their beauty among the ample reaches of the alpine.  I have no desire to kill just yet, only to observe from a distance.  For me, it is just as fun to observe these creatures as to hunt them, for they have personalities all their own.  Tomorrow, however, is a new day, and maybe I’ll get a chance to launch a tip of black steel from Yellow Havoc toward an unknowing buck’s direction.  I quietly slip back to prepare my camp.
           
Windy Gap, a place named by my father, feels how it sounds.  The wind is impossible to avoid.  It’s as if god had decided to leave a crack in a doorway between wildernesses during a hurricane.   It’s a marker between two galaxies of wild country, and holds the only flat spot for a level camp.  It retreats below the southeast ridge of Diamond Peak, and serves as a base camp that’s able to touch any extreme of the surrounding country.  This is the first time I will camp at the gap alone, that is, without human company.  As the violets and dark blues of evening retreat into twilight, the winds start to howl doubt through my self deserted situation.  I look west and see no storm clouds.  I let off a sigh of relief.  “Ah, you’ll be alright,” I say as I decide not to put up the tarp and camp beneath the heavens above.  I eat some granola, and the growls in my stomach turn to half hearted grumbles.  I roll out my sleeping pad behind the rock-pile and reach for my sleeping bag. I pull out the sleeping bag and realize it’ll only go up to my hips.  Anger fills my cheeks and wrinkles my forehead.   The down mummy bag that I thought I had packed had been misplaced.  My brother apparently thought it would be funny to switch out my sleeping bag for the youth-size one that sat in the back of our garage.  “You little shit!,” I screamed out into the cliffs, with only an echo for a response.  I can just imagine him, sleeping in the cloud like comforters and feather mattresses of his bed, smiling at the thought of my four foot leg warmer.  I swear I’ll kick his ass when I get off this mountain and am as far from just joking about the future ass kicking as these mountains are as far from joking about thirty degree nights.  I have no choice, and have to use the tiny bag.  I throw on my rain jacket and another sweatshirt to compensate for the lack of sleeping bag.  I feel like an incompetent caterpillar.  The wind only blows harder as the eyelid of night closes on the sun. 

I try to sleep, but I know it won’t arrive for hours.  I think of my warm, windless bed and my purpose for being here, far from comfort.  I reach for understanding and another hour blows over my sleeping bag.  Why must I journey far from comfort and the security of a house, a bed, a civilized life?  I ask myself over and over again.  The question slips through the wind before my lips grasp the answer.  I could hunt deer somewhere lower, further from the elements, closer to civilization, but no, I have to play Indiana Jones.  I roll over, and see Yellow Havoc, leaning against the rock pile, sending silent curses toward my direction.  I feel his point even through the might of the strong westerly.  I close my eyes and accept discomfort. 
           
After sleeping for two hours the alarm on my wrist watch goes off and introduces me to the new morning.  I am more than ready to get out of the midget bag.  I pull out my lightweight burner and boil water.  Nothing soothes a shitty night like cowboy coffee.  Drinking it is like flirting with a crush; it means nothing but it motivates for further discovery.  The water nears boiling and I poor some in a tin cup.  I dump some coffee in the water and swirl it around.  It seeps flavors of ease into the sky, and even the wind seems to calm with its warm aroma.  I sip slowly and enjoy the panorama from the front porch of my rock pile.  The ambiance of wild fire smolder covers the distant daylight like cigarette smoke in a poorly lit bar.  Stars suffer in the near moment of morning.  Skeletons of gnarly jack pines haunt the dark horizon.  Constellations tell stories in a language all their own and even though I don’t speak their language, I still know the story.  Distance has never felt so close, until this moment has introduced the steam of my coffee to the final night shine of constellations.
           
I finish my coffee, and there is still two hours before legal hunting light.  I take out all the camping gear from my pack and leave all the necessary survival and hunting items.  I will return back to Windy Gap in the evening.  Yellow Havoc sits in anticipation, and finally I grab him, and begin the upward hike.
           
There is no easy way to the summit, I have to continue stumbling along ambushes of rock slides booby-trap my path.  I nearly slip down the slope, and Yellow Havoc receives another gouge in his skin.  His limb tips refuse to falter in pain, and he leads me along the south face of Diamond Peak.  Before we know it we’re on the southwest ridge, only two hundred yards from the ridge summit.  I move on in pain, my muscles grip my bones in anguish, and sweat is challenging the early morning chill.  I want to surrender, but one foot keeps overstepping the other.  I am a questioning camel, burdened with the weight of my purpose.  I count my each awkward yard up the slope: one hundred, fifty, twenty, ten, five, one yard and suddenly I’ve met the ridge summit with the toehold of my boots. 

I peek over the crest and my eyes meet velvet antlers highlighted against the environment now gathering a fresh, pumpkin-colored sunlight.  I hit the deck as if I’m in war.  I peek over and count fifteen bucks.  They are having a guy’s morning out, partying on the same green buds of grass they were the previous evening, but now only a hundred yards away from my post.  There is no cover to solicit a stalk and I again observe, this time with a deadlier eye than the evening before.  The bucks wandered across the slope for an hour and begin to feed down the mountain and not up.  By noon, all the deer made a bed under a single jack pine, three hundred yards below windy gap, leaving no opportunity for an approach.  If five or six had separated from the group then I may have had a chance, but they stayed together.  With the senses that one mule deer buck possesses multiplied now by fifteen, any consideration I had on a stalking attempt was dismissed.    

I end up moving all the way back down to camp to get in closer on the herd of bucks, still three hundred long yards away.  I watch them as they feed further down the mountain and behind a rocky ridge.

I retreat the short half mile back to camp see storms blowing in from the west.  I hustle to camp and urgency floods my senses.  The storm will be through in ten minutes, and I have that much time to construct a make-shift shelter, before all the important gear becomes wet.  I roll out my pad between the two windbreaks, and throw a tarp over the top for a shelter.  I gather my pack and gear and pile it underneath.  I feel a rain drop, and then another.  I pile more rocks to on top of the tarp to keep the wind from whisking it into places where it cannot be recovered.  The curtain of rain is upon me, bombing my shelter with thick heavy drops.  It pounds harder and harder and attempts to break the cover of the tarp.   Within the final light taps of rain, thunder grumbles in the distance.  My muscles tense at the thought of lightning. 
           
            It sounds like a giant lowering massive footsteps from a great distance, getting closer with every boom.  I check my shelter and patch up the weak places in which the quick storm had proven ineffective.  The storm is probably twenty miles off; I have a little time.  I finish fixing my shelter, and set up my portable burner for a quick dinner.  I boil sixteen ounces of water and find one of the few freeze dried meals I had packed.  The warm food rejoices in my stomach, simmering the pangs of stress prompted by the weather.  I finally finish the meal, and sneak into my kiddy bag.  I lie down, and watch through the side of my shelter as the approach of night escorts the storm directly above me.  A sense of un-easiness fidgets through my anatomy as the wind mysteriously stops.  It is the first time I haven’t felt a sigh of wind cross the gap.   

Before I could anticipate anything, lightning strikes down and I nearly explode out the top of my tarp.  Then another.  And another.  My toes curl as I can see spears of electricity shine through the tarp.  Flashes follow booms, and bangs hit five times at once.  My mind races and dream for the sky to release its anger.  Another flash, another rumble, and I cry out for mercy.  I glance at Yellow Havoc, and he blankly stares back.  I try to close my eyes, but they reopen, desperate to witness that final sting of life that could blast away at any second.  Helplessness surrounds the inside of my shelter and clenches my jaw in terror.  With each flash of lightning comes a premonition of the unaccomplished.  The truth for each brief moment is illuminated by the bright bullets of lightning.  For the first time in my life, I know what I want, and exactly what I had to do.  All desires and dreams now haunt the worth of life with each blast of spider-legging light.  My nerves tingle in every lingering second of peace and violence, and for the first time in my life, I feel the blood pump through my arteries and veins.   My place in the world has never been so well defined before now.  I can only beg time to sprint, to find its course, and yield its fate. 

We had met atop the ridge further to the north of Diamond Peek, and sat down and exchanged stories for an hour.  At first he gave me his name, and I didn’t recognize it until he mentioned his nickname, Lightning Boy.  He was once hit by a lightning bolt nearly twenty years ago on this same exact mountain.  He was hunting with a buddy and a thunder cloud came from the west.  He went onto explain that they let it pass and only until blue skies hung above them did they continue on with the hunt.  He stood up, with his metal bow in his hand, and in an instant, from ten miles away, a bolt of lightning crossed the valley and struck him down.  His buddy said that the electricity entered just above his ear and exited out his big toe.  Smoke came off his chest and he fell lifeless to the ground.  His buddy ran up and checked for life signs.  He got nothing.  No breathing or pulse.  His clothes were completely burned off except for a few shreds, and his skin was badly burned.  His buddy bailed off the entire mountain and went to get a team to help get his body off the mountain.  In the middle of the night, Lightning Boy woke up without any clothes on, confused to where he was.  He was so disoriented that he did not remember getting up and walking off the mountain at night half naked.  He was so disoriented that he did not remember walking twenty miles to the nearest ranch where, his buddy was getting ready to go up and get his body.  The next thing he remembered was waking up in Saint Mary’s hospital in Reno, Nevada, three hundred miles away from the mountain range where he was hit.

Life now became clear.  Fear must be conquered through experience, whether it means tempting the tempter, and feeling the wrath of the choices that had lead to this moment.  Tomorrow, I know, I will hunt again.
           
I wake up at four in the morning by the sweet sound of my watch, and the skies are unoccupied by the fury that embellished the heavens above a few short hours earlier.  No need for comforting coffee this morning, because I really don’t need it.  The comfort of being alive, the feeling of breath entering and exiting my lungs, represents all the motivation I need to start my day and begin the hike back up.
           
I’m hiking with the anger of a lion.  I no longer want to carry these burdens of fear and purpose.   Yards muster by like inches and suddenly I’ve met the ridge summit with the toehold of my boots.  My instincts shift from human hiker to the silent violence that only a hunting lion can possess.  Motions slow, muscles ripple, and focus sharpens as I glance over the crest. 
           
Today, nothing is there, but presence of other animals is still felt.  I figured the deer would still be lower on the mountain.  Perhaps they would come back up in the evening.  I set out to hunt country unexplored and walk the final mile to the summit of Diamond Peak.  Up there, in a rusty Folders Coffee can, lies the highest book in all of Eureka County.  It holds signatures by all hikers and hunters who have conquered the peak, and a few stories.  There after a couple pages I recognize my signature from signing the book several years ago, and then there is Lightning Boy’s.  I take a moment to sign the book again and write, “the fear is gone.”  I seal the can again for future adventurers and head off the ridge to the north.  This is a more gradual decent, and isn’t as extreme as the southern face that explodes above windy gap.  I hunt along the ridge and see young does and bucks, but none I really have a desire to arrow.  I end up three miles off Diamond Peak, and the morning is nearly halfway finished.  I decide I’ve gone far enough and venture back the way I came.  When I get a view of the basin leading up to Diamond Peak, I spot a reddish summer hide of a deer on the hillside.  After flipping my binoculars up, six bucks in the view of my binoculars and one of them is a heavy antlered buck.  I watch as the bachelor group feeds for another hour and finds a day bed in a stand of mahogany and pine trees.  They are in a good spot for a stalk and I scheme to get within twenty yards of the biggest buck. 
           
After two hours of walking around to get into position, I finally find myself a mere sixty yards above the slumbering deer.  Every movement is slower than slow motion.  I keep a sharp eye on the body language of the deer, and lift a shaft tipped with sharp steel onto the string of Yellow Havoc.  I can feel his ambition pulsing through the veins in my hands.  He only needs to be forty yards closer and he can work his magic.  I watch as the biggest buck lays his velvet antlers against the ground.  I get closer by inches.  Suddenly the youngest buck gets impatient and begins feeding directly away from me.  I watch as all the bucks follow suit and disappear behind a group of pine trees.  Now that they are out of sight, I stalk faster but with care not to roll a rock or snap a twig.  I get a view of deerskin through the trees every few seconds.  I creep closer.  I finally get ahead of the biggest buck and begin to wait in ambush.  I fail to see, however, the smallest buck feeding a mere thirty yards below me.  The young vigilante instantly spots me and bounds off, taking the rest of the deer further down the hill.  I trudge back to the top of the peak and back on to Windy Gap.
           
As I stomp the final yards back to camp, I feel the winds return, as if they had never left, and see more rain clouds to the west, this time brewing thicker with moisture.  The hand of darkness is moving them closer by the minute and I return inside my tarp for the final night of my trip.  I get into my shelter, exhausted from hiking the majority of the day, and eat a little dinner.  I shove my legs into small sleeping bag for the last time and wait for the weather.  It hits with gusting winds and rain.  My fear from last night is gone, and I keep breathing through the rain and wind. I lie down, and am hypnotized by the sound of rain slicing through wild wind.  My focus is clear and I remember to breathe in the anxiety of profoundness, instead of holding my breath trying to prevent its inevitability.  My minds sword becomes sharper with each gust of wind, each splatter of water.  I ready to kill the fear inflicting dragon infecting my personality’s prison.  I endure the final night, and again wake with the mornings chill.
           
In a final attempt at venison, I shoulder my pack, and follow the limb tip of Yellow Havoc back to the peak.  This time I climbed without the anger, only enlightenment.  I finally climb the mountain as clouds do: Drifting, mind clear, and only living.  I know longer feel the fear or anger of loneliness, only the sacred yes of adventure.  I don’t climb with the burdens of the camel or the anger of the lion any longer, only the sacred yes that a young child knows.
           
Today, nothings here, not even the sunlight, as clouds in the east mask its warm eye.  I feel the vacancy of any living being upon the mountain.  Today, it is just me, and Yellow Havoc, enjoying the view from the top, savoring the Indian paintbrush swaying with the wind of from the west.  I lean back and feel the answers brush by my face and into country I have yet to define.  I feel the truth of loneliness and emptiness saturate my senses.  Within the harvest of this emptiness I have found a new friendship, and here where the mountain knew only ocean millions of years earlier, it now knows me.  It knows my weakness like termites know wood, as it exposes me to the perfection of wild country.  I accept the colors of the Indian Paintbrush into my blemishes, and I am glad for my mishaps, because without them I could not know the medicinal fulfillment of wild flowers.  For reasons like this, I embrace the mountain, the loneliness, the emptiness, the freedom from people, and the harshness of truth.  Today I am here, tomorrow, I will be there, but now, I only grasp a friend I’ve come to know through the pointlessness of time.  I used to call him nowhere, but now, only know him as now-here.