A Favorite View

There’s a spot along the North Carolina/Tennessee border where the mountains grow more angular, as if they’ve sucked in their breath. Their spines arch across the sky and all their rib bones show under their skin of trees.

I’ve decided it’s my favorite view on the drive to Nashville. Evidently I’ve driven that route enough times to feel like a “regular” on it. When I’m a regular, I choose a favorite view.

My favorite view on the Glenn Highway in Alaska was just after you get through the mountains and enter the Copper River Basin. To the south is a valley full of trees and rising from the far side are the Chugach Mountains. The sea side of the Chugach range has ski resorts and ocean views, but it’s the “back” side that I always loved.

Once, when I had a van full of visiting prospective students, we stopped at a pull out on the bluff to take photos of the valley. As the van rolled to a stop near the edge, a bald eagle took off from just out of view over the side—no more than ten feet from us. Its wingspan must have been six feet at least. The huge bird did not go far. It perched itself in a rickety black spruce nearby and stared at us inscrutably.

I glanced back at the students in the van. Wide-eyed, they stared back at the raptor.

I hated to break the majesty of the moment. “Um, so, guys…just so you know,” I said, “there may be a carcass right off the edge there.”

They blinked back to reality as I gestured to the eagle, pointing out the red smears on his white plumage. Yes, he’d just been feeding.

We stepped out of the van, a tad more trepidatious than typically. Sure enough, just off the edge, below our line of sight from inside the van, was the massacred carcass of a moose. I have no idea how she met her end, but the animals certainly demolished her flesh once she had.

‘Twas a bit of a turn off on the view for the first-timers among us. It’s hard to take in the lovely planes of the mountain sides and the snow-tipped spruce scattered across the valley floor with a mangled corpse before you and your nation’s symbol of power and grandeur eyeing you with ire for interrupting his snack.