First light, and I was freezing. We Chicagoans may laugh at 20 degrees, but not when sleeping outside.
Every April I go on spring break, and it was my first time camping in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park.
It was 6:57 a.m. when I crawled, shivering, from my sleeping bag and got dressed with considerable difficulty in a tent in which you can’t quite stand up. When I finally unzipped the flap and stepped outside to make a fire, I found myself face to face with a bull elk.
Well, maybe not exactly face to face, for at better than 6 feet tall at eye level, and taller than that with its huge head and antler rack, the 1,000-pound mammal with reddish-brown fir and white rump stared at a downward angle at me from where it stood adjacent to my picnic table.
Then I noticed, all around me, the rest of the herd of 18 mostly females (they stayed long enough for me to count them), who likewise stared back, having waited without panic to see the two-legged creature emerge from the Coleman dome. My heart was pounding, and I breathed a smell like that of cattle, only more raw or gamier.
It really quite literally hit home for me that morning that we are all in this together. Campground, trees, elk, Fall River, tents, mountain grasses and a quaking senior citizen — all were components of a spontaneous micro-ecosystem, all momentarily contained within a 7-acre campground, and all dependent on the same phenomenon we call “nature.”
And I realized that the often-debated question of whether we should choose nature or development is, itself, somewhat of a fallacy, since human development in the long term depends on nature.
To elucidate: I discovered during my spring camping trip the many and intricate ways that the elk herd in Rocky Mountain National Park is managed. Since re-introduction in the 1950s, the elk have been counted, medicated, fed, culled, photographed, tagged, pampered and studied.
Truly, they are cared for and conserved partly for aesthetic reasons, insofar as it fosters our sense of adventure and history that “wild” elk still inhabit the West. But more important, and more to my point, is that protecting the elk is beneficial for human life.
Either not feeling threatened or simply bored by me, the animals resumed their ponderous walk through the campground, some lowering their huge heads to munch on sweet grass, a few nosing at other tents whose inhabitants were snoring, oblivious. For a moment, I thought the male was going to enter the camp shower, but he paused at the entrance and turned toward the campground gate, his hooves clicking on the asphalt as he sauntered down the hill.
To the elk, this was not a separate place. They could not read the signs or recognize man-made barriers. To them, the campground near Fall River in Rocky Mountain National Park is but is a strange punctuation mark in the midst of their mountain, stream, wood and meadow realm.
But elk thrive here because nature has been preserved for them. There are hundreds of square miles of aspen and willow trees, shrubs, fresh air and fresh water that they require for survival. In turn, the coyote, the cougar and even the bear survive because they prey on the elk. So conserving this place for the elk safeguards it for all other species, including man.
This causes some inconvenience and may even seem to impede progress. Thus far, for example, exploration of minerals and oil has not been permitted in the Colorado parks and national forests where elk roam. Hunters have not been allowed to take cougar or bear, and they are limited to certain areas, as well as age and sex restrictions when it comes to taking the elk. Traffic throughout Rocky Mountain National Park and “elkswhere” is regulated, slowed, often even stopped to ensure safe migration of mountain sheep and elk between food meadows at varying elevations.
Yet these prohibitions and costs are not a matter of safeguarding nature at man’s expense. Rather, they are for his long-term benefit.
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How can that be? What does man need from Colorado’s wild, colorful and diverse cocktail of nature that’s more important than extracting precious minerals or more oil that can lower gas prices?
What’s been learned is that what’s good for the elk herd is also good for man, since they share the same environment. The Fall River that the elk drink from, for example, also provides pure water for tens of thousands of people in Colorado. The elk’s feast of leaves and meadow shrubbery depends on the health of a forest that seeds the cycle of rainfall necessary for corn crops, for beef cattle and, ultimately, for human sustenance. The U.S. and Colorado tourism industry, the very economy of Estes Park, as well as that of Denver and neighboring towns, profit from the presence of the elk, who depend on preservation of their ancient grazing grounds.
Saving the elk and its habitat was determined to have been the right choice for man, when weighed against the exploitation and inevitably permanent alteration of the mountain, water and forest resources.
The lesson I learned is that conservation is not just for tree huggers and animal lovers. It’s for the good of all of us.
Former Oak Forest resident David McGrath is emeritus English professor at the College of DuPage and author of the novel “Siege at Ojibwa.” He can be emailed at [email protected].