​A lone Canada Goose has taken up summer residence at Pearl Lake. 

In early summer I thought the goose was taking an overlong break before eventually joining its companions. But then I noticed how its left wing was at an odd angle, jutting away from its body as if arrested mid-ruffle. It seemed the goose was stranded, unable to fly. 

Despite the injured wing, the goose is an elegant bird, whether resting on the shore or gliding through the water. A snow-white band from chin to cheeks sets off its sleek black head and long, gracefully curved neck. The lower neck and chest are a soft whitish-gray that merges into the grayish-brown body. Sometimes the goose would be near the dock where I launch my paddle board, strolling the shore on slender black legs, curious, but keeping its distance. 

Although I’d encounter the goose most often at the dock cove, it seemed to enjoy other areas as well. I glimpsed it at the campground and at the private property on the northwest corner of the lake. Most likely it traveled around by swimming, making good use of those strong webbed feet. 

Heading for the water also seemed to be good safety protocol. One morning the chainsaws (fire mitigation by the Forest Service) started up in full-force as I was finishing my paddle. It sounded like a gigantic swarm of angry bees on steroids. As I neared the dock, I could see the goose hanging out in the center of the cove, well away from shore, on the lookout for whatever attack might be coming from the horrible sound. Smart goose.

When early-morning temps dropped to below freezing, I wondered what would happen to the goose this winter. I contacted the Steamboat Lake Visitors Center. They explained that there is no rescue for the goose, no policy to remove injured animals. The hope is that the goose will survive the winter on its own. They told me about a fox with an injured leg. The kids that found the fox were worried about it; the fox survived the winter on its three working legs and was seen again the following spring. That’s terrific for the fox, I thought, but foxes do not fly south for the winter so the situation with the goose is different, and perhaps more dire. 

In the last couple of weeks I haven't seen the goose. Since it is dark when I am starting out, perfect for star-gazing but not goose-spotting, I might be missing it. Due to hunting season, there are now more early-morning vehicles in the cove parking, so perhaps the goose is avoiding the increased activity? Or maybe with the much colder mornings it has taken up residence on some other waterfront real estate on Pearl. I hope that the goose is okay. I hope it will figure out with its own wild instincts how to manage. And I hope that it will survive in the months to come. 

​You can stand in a place rich in historical events, or deeply steeped in emotional turmoil, and feel that it is haunted. Not the haunting of ethereal figures floating about, but with our knowledge of what has taken place, and our senses working with our imagination. Haunted in this context means having a connection to what other humans passing through this place in a different time might have felt and experienced.

I can still remember visiting Gettysburg with my grandparents when I was in college. At Devil’s Den, steamy heat drenching my skin, I looked out over the green battlefield, strewn with large boulders like a giant’s game of oddball marbles. I could almost see the soldiers in their ragged uniforms of grey and blue, using their waning strength to push heavy cannons over the giant rocks, sweat running in rivulets down faces grimy and exhausted. I could almost hear the wounded and dying, moaning as they lay helpless in the sun’s pitiless glare. And then, as a tiny breeze swept across the hilltop, bringing a brief coolness to my damp arm, I could almost hear the terrible silence of the aftermath of battle.

The Puye Cliff Dwellings in Los Alamos, New Mexico, are another opportunity to connect with the past. The small shelters carved into the cliff face, and tiny apartment cubicles and ceremonial kiva atop the cliffs, are something to see. The Puebloans moved along the steep cliff faces, between dwellings, on tiny paths. Through hundreds of years, their feet created deep imprints in the sandstone so that one literally walks in the footsteps of the previous inhabitants. Walking in those footprints is to experience an ancient past.

Walking the storefronts on Lincoln Avenue here in Steamboat Springs you can put a hand to brick and mortar, some of that masonry laid by Carl Howelsen, the famous Norwegian ski jumper who lived here from 1913 - 1922, and helped start the Winter Sports Club. You can almost glimpse his trowel smoothing the cement before laying the next brick.

Looking up to the ridge above the Heart Spring, the current site of Old Town Hot Springs, one can almost hear the cries of the battle the indigenous Utes fought there, leaving the dead where they fell as was their custom. 

And out at Perry Mansfield, the oldest operating performing arts school in the United States, lantern-lit paths guide you to lively evening theater in the summertime. Wandering the campus, founders Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield are still integral to the feel of the place they began in 1913. Their influence lingers over the whispering aspen groves, the intense creativity on-stage, and the serenity of the coral sun setting in a lavender-pink sky. 

History, hauntings. Connecting with these people and their experiences, though decades and even centuries have passed. It is a reaching back through time and prior occurrences. Connecting via the mind’s eye, through the senses, bringing history alive.