![]() Then a pika voice rings out and I am pulled out of my misery I look up, engaged in my surroundings, looking for the rounded shape among the rocks. This is a sort of walking meditation upon suffering, an inescapable demonstration of the limits of the body. All I hear is my own rasping breath I feel my heart thumping hard against my ribcage with a force that always makes me think of someone braining a hefty trout against a riverside boulder my legs burn with exertion with each step forward. There is nothing to see outside the beam of a headlamp, and this forces me inside myself. Often I will be hiking in the inky murk that thickens just before dawn. There are few views or geographic points from which to judge the distance gained. Hiking toward treeline is discouraging work. On windless mornings their shrill cries are the only sounds I hear. ![]() Their vocalizations recall a dog’s squeaky toy or the sudden blast of a piccolo. This is where pikas make their homes, where the trees fear to root and the wind tears music apart.Įvery climb, wind or no, I hear pika calls, and depending on the time of year, songs. Everything beyond this line is held by hostile forces: wind, freezing temperatures, and snow. The trees at the edge of the line are stunted with twisted trunks and branches that lean downhill away from the emptiness above. Treeline in Colorado is the elevation where trees stop growing, between 10,000 to 11,500 feet, a magical line where evergreen forests suddenly stop their climbing and stand in a solemn row against the upper mountain. They live in talus-fields of boulders and rocks piled among alpine tundra-above treeline along mountainsides. About the size of a fist with thick fur ranging in color from grey to tawny brown, they blend into their rocky habitat so well they can be tricky to sight even just a few feet away. Pikas look like oversize hamsters with mickey-mouse ears. He is the pika, smaller relative of the rabbit, known in the 19 thcentury as little chief hare, known to me as a mountain hamster, singer of songs, good Samaritan of the alpine, and conduit of winter memory. I listen for his song as I hike up past the trees and into the talus and tundra. Who would dare to stake their future on singing in the alpine? Certainly not I. In alpine wind you keep your mouth shut so the gusts don’t hollow and dry it like a carved pumpkin. Stand into the wind and your song will be thrust back down your throat before it can leave your mouth. Try to sing in a lashing wind and your song will be ripped from you before your ears can hear it. Someone more romantic might call this wind wailing song, but anyone who has experienced hundred-mile-per-hour winds knows they are not enchanting or melodious. When I hike above the treeline in Colorado it is either quiet enough to hear my own ears ringing or, more often, the wind is ululating wild whomps against the mountainsides. There are not many songs sung in the Alpine territory. Pika Past Present and Future Rebecca Young Pike and Flowers by Vivienne Edwards for more information, visit
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