“I am the animal…”

A winter’s walk in the Alaskan backcountry leads to a startling discovery for Bo Jensen, in their essay “The Unmarked Trailhead,” from the 2023 issue of Deep Wild Journal:

“An hour in, I stop to catch my breath. The silence of the tundra is complete. I sigh, satisfied. No planes, no highway noise, not a dog barks in the distance. The wind remains completely still.

Without any other sounds, I can hear something: some animal faintly panting, as if at a short distance. Fox? I think. Wolf. Straining to listen, I look all around me, slowly closing my mouth.

Then I open it again.

That wasn’t some animal panting.

I was hearing the beating of my own heart in a pulse within my own breath, the faintest huh – huh – huh puffs of sound rising up from my lungs all on their own as I exhale smoothly, breathing like normal.

I am the animal. I close my lips, and the sound is immediately gone. I open my lips, and again I hear my heartbeat in my breathing. All these years, and here is something about my own self that I’ve never experienced before. Each time I stop for a break, I do this listening experiment, over and over, both amused and amazed.

I think I am finally meeting myself on the distant trail. I mean, how can we recognize who we are, unless we step away from the noise of this distracting world, open our mouths in the moments of our exhaustion, and hear the sound of our own blood, our own breath, rising up to startle us into paying attention? We believe the threat to our lives is out there somewhere, some wild beast we must face. But in the still, quiet moments, we find that it is we ourselves we must confront—our ignorance of ourselves, of our breath and blood, of our own senses, our own needs, our own miraculous lives, running straight as an arrow or squirrelly as a mouse tunnel, revealed to us in the middle of nothing and nowhere.

What a gift, that edge of fear, that straining to listen; and then the breakthrough, a glimmer of recognition, and…wonder. I looked for what I feared, and my understanding changed. If only the foxes had been here to see it.”

To read Bo’s essay in full, as well as the work of 51 other writers inspired by their backcountry journeys, order a copy of Deep Wild 2023. The 2024 issue, our sixth, is currently in the works!