Mountain Lions. Ya' gotta love 'em.

My American Dream came running into camp.

“Where's the Little Alien?” she demanded.

I was changing his diaper inside the tent, and had just pulled his jeans up.

“Right here,” I answered defensively. The tone of her voice sounded accusatory.

The wife pointed to where she’d come from.

“I just had a close encounter with a big cat.”

“What!?!”

Gearhead and GB leapt to their feet.

Cat?” Sharkbait echoed.

“A MOUNTAIN Lion, or a real big bobcat!”

“Kitty-cat?” Alex, whom we called the Little Alien at that time, asked as he gained his feet.

“You saw a mountain lion?”

“I heard a mountain lion, right behind me.” She gasped for breath. “Real, real close. Growling!”

“Where?” GB bellowed in his baritone.

“Down in the creek bed!” the wife squealed, as if no one believed her.

GB grabbed his walking stick. “C'mon!” he ordered, and Gearhead and he took off down the trail.

I started to follow the boys.

“What were you do-doing in the...?”

“I’m hitching up my jeans here, Sharkbait. Work with me!”

The creek bed was a good fifty yards from camp. Still I was concerned that a predator would be so close. The Little Alien had mastered the art of walking, and I feared he plotted an escape.

We were remote camping, perched on the edge of desert mountains, with the Yuha and Anza-Borrego stretching out below us. We'd brought a group of our friends that we hadn't been able to get out with for some time, Gearhead, GB and Sharkbait. I’d made the creek bed just in time to see the boys leap up onto the rocks and begin making a circle around a pile of boulders that had sumac and manzanita growing up through the spaces in between.

“What are you doing?” I bellowed.

“Looking for the mountain lion!” Gearhead answered.

“What are ya' gonna do when you find it?” Sharkbait had just reached me.
The boys ignored him.

Gearhead moved carefully from giant rock to boulder, but GB, a handsome kid; six feet tall, lean as a rail with sinewy muscles, bounded like a bighorn sheep, fearlessly landing at incredible angles on the stone so he could stab his walking stick down into the brush between the boulders.

“I used to be able to do that,” I said to no one.

“I dream I can fly sometimes,” Sharkbait answered.

“Y'know, I’ve been thinking,” a distant voice called out. I looked back. From a boulder on the edge of camp, My American Dream and The Little Alien had a panorama of the hunt. “Maybe it was more of a purr.”

My American Dream had regained her composure.

Having no intention of hunting a mountain lion with a walking stick, I studied the brush where my wife had obviously been.

The wind had blown all night, the limbs at the bottom of the plants had tirelessly swept the sand until the smooth surface around the plants looked like some kind of art. If you didn't know what had caused it, it was eerie and wondrous. The whole length of the creek bed's edges was brushed and carved like this.

The boys disappeared around the back of the pile of boulders, making a circle around where I suppose they figured the cat would still be. "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty,” the wife and the child chanted from the boulder above us.

The boys reappeared on the other side, their interest lagging.

GB had meticulously made his walking stick from a dowel, five feet long, with a copper fitting and a washer screwed into the bottom of it, then varnished ad infinitum. Gearhead accused him of being 'Anal'. I just figured it was symptomatic of an engineering student.

The boys jumped down to me. "Nothin'," Gearhead mumbled. "Could still be there," GB offered hopefully.

"The both of you should be just tickled to tears..." I started, then my eyes caught something incongruous in the wind-and-sand art just in front of me.

In the midst of the swept sand, right where the wife must have been, where I had been standing all this time, there now was a single perfect paw print that had not been there when I arrived. It was clear and untouched, sharp around the edges, and as big as my fist.

Just as the possibilities started dawning on me, that something huge had taken one step out of the brush, then drawn back in, a soft growl began to build. With widening eyes I stared into the brush in front of me, and saw nothing, even as the growl continued to grow louder.

Without moving my head, I looked to my right.

Everyone was gone. Just me and GB, and we were very, very alone now. One word kept screaming through my brain; Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

I looked into GB's almond Asian face. Words cannot totally contain that look he now gave me, but let's start with unadulterated, uncompromised, pure joy. No questions, no fear. Hemingway's 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber' flashed through my consciousness as my blood pounded in my ears like white water rapids.

Suddenly the growl began to rise in pitch, intensity. My eyes snapped back to the brush. When it came, would I see it?

I took one slow step backward when abruptly, from behind, something exploded, sharp and loud.

I staggered and looked back.

GB stood between two large boulders, swinging with adrenaline-charged energy, smacking the rocks with the copper and washer tip of his walking stick. It cracked off the rocks like a gunshot.

“Nice bellow!” he exclaimed. I looked around. Sure enough, that'd been me screaming.

The crowd on top of the boulder up the hill, Gearhead, Sharkbait, My American Dream and Alex, were all jumping up and down shouting and pointing to my right.

I didn't actually see anything myself, although I seem now to remember hearing what I can only describe as a pratfall. What they told me was that the brush to my right split and shuddered, like a shark splitting water at record speed, just under the surface, dividing the brush up to the near horizon of sumac and manzanita, and disappearing.

Alex spent the rest of the evening smacking rocks with his little walking stick, bellowing “Boom, Boom! Run Silly Lion!”

I'm glad he enjoyed it.