The Helmet, the Sphinx, the Existential Question

The Helmet and the Sphinx
Madison Range, Montana
11.5-miles round trip, strenuous
"What the f--- are we doing here?"  Those words pierced the brisk morning air, and the gratuitous profanity (after all, isn't profanity almost always unnecessary?) only served to heighten the intensity of the moment.  Certain facts seemed clear.  The kill appeared to be fresh, no more than a few days old.  We were several miles from the trailhead.  And we had not encountered anyone on the trail that morning.  This was no sidewalk stroll with hundreds of candy-ass national park visitors.  We were a bit... out there.

Beyond that, we could only speculate.  Yes, there had been bear scat-- plenty of it at times.  A few tracks as well, although our ability to distinguish grizzly from black bear was limited.  Frankly, some of the tracks appeared to be mountain lion, but we took no solace from that observation.  After all, that predator stalks you before moving in for the kill.  We wouldn't even have to do something stupid or piss him off to end up as a meal.  

But we hadn't actually seen a grizzly-- just a few live elk to complement the rotting carcass and collection of clean-picked bones arrayed on the trail before us.  And the hike to the Helmet and the Sphinx had been breathtaking.  We appreciated the stark contrast between the redrock face of the Helmet and the azure of the cloudless Montana sky.  We reveled in the absolute solitude of the forest, silence broken only by an occasional bird call or the light breeze rippling through pine.  We marveled at the vibrant beauty of a solitary outcrop of Indian Paintbrush struggling to survive on a spartan rock face.  All of this: and then, the carcass.
 

Recognizing that we had already hiked more than half the distance of the 11.5-mile trail, we pressed forward, paralleling the Middle Fork of Bear Creek most of the way back to the trailhead.  We plan to return someday, but on this day the feeling of relief upon exiting a heavily-wooded section of the trail to sweeping views of a grassy meadow-- and the trailhead-- was palpable. Every step of the journey to the Helmet and Sphinx provided affirmation of precisely what we were doing there-- experiencing the grandeur and uncertainty of nature at it undiluted finest.  Reminders that we don't always sit at the top of the food chain and control our destinies, like spontaneous outbursts of profanity, only served to intensify the experience.