Being able to gambol about with pronghorn is a peak experience. And when one is surrounded by pronghorn and high snowy peaks at the same time. It is peak upon peak. One starts to run out of superlatives. We were fortunate to make sightings, first in the desert where they browsed in the heat on new bunch grass. They crossed the road, single file in front of the car.
When we continued to make our way up into the Sawtooth mountains in Central Idaho we found the graceful ungulates again this time in a shallow valley surrounded by ragged mountain chains 6,000 and 9,000 feet. The pronghorn were mildly curious but mostly engaged in their own mysterious behavioral rituals. Staring at each other and capriciously galloping through the sage if they were startled in any way. When they turned their cloudy white bums on us we would inch forward so as not to lose our connection. Sometimes they would look back at us with striped faces and twisting horns.
“The fastest land mammal on the continent,” our waiter reminds us later at dinner. Yes, they evolved to out-run the now extinct North American cheetah.
The pronghorn fascinate. I’m taken by the evolution of their skillful speed in relation to an external threat. Like these speedsters, sometimes my greatest strengths emerge entwined with the fear that brought them into being. I wish it were otherwise. Calm reflection has brought me gifts too. I look no gift gazelle in the mouth. Now that time and science have shown me that true fear is huge energy, I have nothing to fear of fear itself. It can power a pronghorn. The fleet beauty is not paralyzed by thoughts about fear. In that regard they squarely agree with Winston Churchill: “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”. It is thoughts about fear that bring me down. Pronghorn don’t run their emotional sensations through a cerebral filter. Fear itself is a life saving, complex engine, pumping necessary neurochemical, muscles, blood and oxygen. A good blast of terror and I can see myself out running the cheetah. Fear can be a peak experience too. It depends on how pervasive the thoughts and images of the cheetah. I’m sure the North American cheetah was magnificent, but it is no more; outlived by a springing creature of controversy. Is it a deer? A sheep? A gazelle? Antelope? Peak experiences are mostly ones of curiosity. What is this creature? Who am I in relation to fear? Where is the pronghorn of speed, strength and endurance in me?
