Election Day

Posted On November 4, 2020

It was a hotly contested election. Tuesday, November 2, 2004 dawned as another sunny day in Colorado Springs. It was chilly in the morning but would get up to the 60’s by midday, and I was growing used to the quirks of weather in the Rockies after eleven months.

The news media had whipped the electorate into an emotional frenzy over the Bush-Kerry contest and I wondered for the millionth time why ordinary citizens such as myself gave cable news talking heads with impossibly white teeth and fake smiles such power over our emotions and daily peace of mind.

As a radio person, I preferred a diet of over-the-air talk with personalities I almost considered friends. That’s what I tried to be on the two Binghamton music-radio shows I did every day, long distance through the Internet on a brand-new technology my stations were pioneering: a companion, a soothing friend.

My radio shows were done for the day and I didn’t have to be at work until my evening shift in the big box store bakery at 6 pm. I decided to take a drive up into the hills toward Divide. Some of the Aspens still had gold leaves clinging to mostly bare branches. I wouldn’t drive high enough to encounter the snow that had already turned the peaks of the “fourteeners” stark white. I just needed a splash of adventure. And a diversion from the histrionics of politics.

I set my Buick’s radio to my favorite talk voice and headed for the hills, which, in Colorado Springs, is ridiculously easy to do. From the highway leaving the city I turned left—west, repeating the mantra I had used to calibrate my sense of direction ever since my arrival: the hills are always to the west. I began to climb higher as the road got narrower and narrower until it was barely more than a one-lane gravel-paved twisting sliver that would have posed a real challenge if any cars approached me from the opposite direction. But this morning I had it all to myself.

It was easy to let any heavy thoughts dissolve as I drove further into the wildness of the hills. I had plenty of gas in the car and the whole afternoon ahead of me. Some of these hairpin turns in the road were making me a little jittery but the car was navigating them well and I enjoyed the stark beauty of the mid-autumn day.

For someone who had little imagination, it all looked brown and dark green. But I noticed little clusters of russet leaves on willowy thin vines, deep plum fallen leaves on the forest floor, gold strands of thistle clusters that resembled wheat and would dry out and be uprooted to become tumbleweeds in the wind. The sky was a shade of blue I couldn’t find the right word to describe: azure, maybe? Wedgewood?

There were puffy white clouds with rays of sun poking through, occasionally replaced by gray smudges of clouds that drizzled rain onto my windshield and, as I drove higher, little wispy snowflakes. The weather and what it had in store for my journey also didn’t worry me; I savored the element of surprise and knew I could cope and come safely through.

The radio signal got staticky and I switched it off, rolling down the window and listening to the rustle of branches in the wind instead. The woods smelled sweet and musty with an occasional whiff of pine.

The road transitioned from gravel to pebbles to dirt and narrowed even more as it twisted and spiraled its way up the mountain. I climbed for a long time, hours, I thought, but I had little choice. There was only this road, going this way, with no place to turn around and no way to go any other way than to press onward. The sliver of road kept climbing. Surely it would have to lead me back to civilization eventually.

I had no idea where I was. I tried to check my phone’s GPS but there was no reception. I turned the radio on again but the signal was weak and drifting. Oh well. I clicked it back off and concentrated on my driving.

After what seemed like a few hours more, the incline of the road leveled off and I realized I had stopped going up, That was a good omen: I would soon begin to descend back down toward town. My instincts proved right when the road made a sharp left and the sun reappeared, showing me I was finally heading back the way I had come. I began to relax a little and my knuckles on the steering wheel were no longer white.

Then all at once I saw it.

Off to my right, twenty yards away, the clearest of lakes and a huge grayish-brown form bending to take a drink. As he raised his head back up I saw an enormous, magnificent set of antlers silhouetted against the sky. An elk.

I stopped the car and tried not to make a sound. I recognized at once what he was, although I had only seen them in pictures. A wonderous, beautiful full-grown male elk. He was facing the lake and either hadn’t seen me or was deliberately ignoring me. I sat completely still to watch. After a minute I reached over for my phone to try to take a picture. But my car must have made a noise and he darted off into the woods, surprisingly graceful for such a large animal. And he was gone.

I rolled up my window and continued my journey, feeling more satisfied, somehow more fulfilled than I’d been in months. The dirt road began to widen, got less twisty, turned back into gravel and continued down the other side of the mountain. Now the sun was out full force and at the bottom of the hill was the turn-off to the highway leading back to town.

I was in Woodland Park, and though I had been driving for hours, still only a very short distance from the center of Colorado Springs. I’d have just enough time to head home and then drive to work at the big box bakery, grabbing a quick bite along the way.

A few blocks from my apartment I clicked on the radio again to the familiar friendly calm voice chatting about exit polls. The election—I’d forgotten all about it.

I’d intended to keep tabs on the voting while I baked the croissants, rolls and pastries that evening, but I only had the opportunity for the occasional glance at the news channel on one of the big box store’s TVs as I restocked the shelves.

The non-stop news coverage didn’t feel so important anymore. I finished my shift, headed back home and got ready to do my radio shows. But first, I tried to sketch the scene that had caught me by surprise that afternoon. I tried to capture the expanse of those impossibly huge antlers against a clear sky. I’m not much of an artist, but at least I would have it fixed clearly in my memory to return to in the future.

Election Day, 2004. When I’d elected to stop fretting those details over which we have zero control, which the corporate media conglomerates escalate into high melodrama to drive up the prices of their stocks and satisfy their shareholders on any given day.

An afternoon when I’d chosen instead to get lost in the moment, to be captured by the splendid elegance of a wild stag at a mountain lake. When I’d opted to be grateful for the stark reality of those things we are frequently tempted to ignore: little surprises from the universe we inhabit, the restful beauty of nature, the restorative wonder of adventure.