Elk on Yom Kippur: An Autumn Van Life Reflection

Today is Yom Kippur, the holiest of days on the Jewish Calendar. It is the beginning of a new year, a time to reflect on the year that has past. And here I am, sitting in the sun beside the Yampa River, listening to bull elk bugle on the opposite bank. All night they caroused, the bulls bugling (more the sound of a rusty swing set than a true brass “bugle”) and the cows swam the river to meet them, then bunched and paced the sandy shoreline.

Earlier, a lone bull, his left antler shattered, wandered through our camp. He clanged his good antler against the trunks of the autumn-yellow cottonwoods and bugled for all he was worth. No elk cows lined up for him.

Fall is a time of great beauty, but also one of desperation.

The days grow shorter, colder. A meager sun hunches low on the horizon. When we first arrived here, there were days of torrential rain. Moody black clouds pounded overhead, bringing lightning, deafening raindrops, and mud. At times like these, “van living” means hunching inside your vehicle/home with a cowering dog, waiting for the rain to stop so you can go out and pee. But afterwards, there were rainbows.

Autumn is like this.

It is time to take stock: What have we made of our days, the easy warmth of so many summer evenings? What will the winter bring? For the elk, it all feels a little desperate. Carousing by day and deep into the night as if they mean to make the most of these last thin rays. Do they feel the breath of winter? I imagine they do indeed.

But Autumn is also a beginning. In the Jewish tradition, it is the start of a new year. For the elk, it is a beginning too. Mating now, means birthing come spring.

Here on the banks of the Yampa, the only river left undammed in all of the west, I take stock as well. In the past, comfort masked the harsher realities of this season. But in Autumn, the earth teeters on the brink of many sorrows, and we know in our bones that living is so… temporary a state.

This year, Dan and I feel the world in a new way; seasons are tangible. They affect our comfort, sometimes our safety. They mean something new. As do sunrises and sunsets, heat and cold, rain and thunder. We are closer to that edge. In fall, we watch the sun slope lower on the horizon and we know each day is a finite gift.

Yom Kippur is (in part) about this awareness. As is the bugle of the elk, and the wild get-it-while-you-can on the banks of this broad muddy river in the waning light.

Today brings to mind Mary Oliver’s spectacular poem (ironically, it is about summer):

"Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"