I don’t know what units of measurement hunters use. Yards, meters, miles, feet, klicks? I would have called me out of sight, the image of their trucks slipped between a bending landscape. I was sure that they were the property owners who had seen my car parked on the side of the road. And that they were waiting for me to come out of the high altitude mesa I had just come down from.
I mean, it was more of a hill than a mesa.
Atop it was a string of wind turbines that I had decided to document. The place where I was being shot at was a testing field for NASA prototypes in the 1970s and 80s in a search for a commercial viable mega-turbine. The blades had been painted diagnostic red, easily measurable against the horizon. A tone of caution. The pioneering turbines aren’t there any more and in their place are their progeny, mega-turbines that are now commonplace in the American West.
I was dressed in all black, my pack as well, black. The pack is what must have made me seem more animal than man. I had thrown it off and removed only the equipment I needed near a drainage ditch maybe a mile into my hike to the nearly mesa. The culvert was the low point in an electric fence that draped the perimeter of the property. I was able to slip under but had left my pack on the other side.
Lightened, I did something that was now a repeated task. I chased light, waiting for good light and then trying to position myself in a photogenic spot. Landscape doesn’t pose for you, you must pose your body and your camera within it. Its like minimally invasive surgery, you snake the endoscope through the grasses, around the fences, past the wild horses to find the disease.
On the way out, anxiety drove me up the mesa. I am always worried of getting caught, even in places where I am allowed to be. As I was running forward I am looking over my shoulder, a completely pointless act. In a space this open, this majestically large, my sideways glances were bening. I could be seen for miles let alone klicks
I heard their first shot on the way back. I didn’t think much of it. The distance created a false sense of security, as the echo ricocheted what seemed to be a thousand yards off the mesa I was returning from. I saw the trucks of the hunters, the same ones I had seen before. This time they stayed in place. I retrieved my bag. As I rose from gully and slipped under the electric fence another sounded. Its echo was also unplaceable as it lumpily bounced off the flat prairie and its soft mesh of grasses.
An easterner in the west I was gullible to safety. I didn’t hear the whirl of wind parting for a bullet. I didn’t hear the shell casing ricochet emptily. I never had hunted before. I had no sense that it could have been me that was their target. I didn’t realize that hunters may not have known what they were shooting at until they’ve killed it. I didn’t know this until after I had gotten back into my car and started to drive back the way I had come. One of the trucks that had been nervously skirting the edge of the terrain now approached me.
We slowed the nearer we got. The kid was young, in high school. We rolled our windows down and I said hi to the boy who would have been convicted if he was a better shot.
In the moment I was still holding onto my innocence. I still didn’t understand the danger I had put myself into or that the person I was talking to was the perpetrator of this unforeseen violence.
I asked,
“What are you hunting with?”
He answered:
“A crossbow”
I had heard the gunshots.
Like a tourist, I asked:
“What are you hunting?”
“Mule deer”
With pride that I made contact with a local I said:
“Nice man, have a good day”
A few days later I went to Walmart and bought a flourescent yellow sweatshirt.
- - -
Common Utilities is a project to get comfortable with the idea of moving Upstate. It was created by Mike Robitz as he looks for land and the complimentary utilities needed to be comfortable within it. If you have suggestions on places/services for him to get comfortable, email him: here.
