the mountain goats are a late-90s, early-2000s indie rock band led by John Darnielle responsible for such hits as “Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod” and “The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out Of Denton”. The are also pretty common wildlife to encounter when one ventures above treeline in the Rocky Mountains. A mountain goat skull is also probably my next tattoo — for some reason, the image of death in the wild west has been resonating with me these days.
I don’t quite know what it is about mountain goats that I love — from the surface, they are wholly uninteresting (as are so many interesting things). they nibble, unworried, at short grasses and lichen in the high alpine plains. they leave tufts of their soft white wool peppering white the green path, a sign that a more-than-human visitor has already trekked this well-trodden trail. their eyes are, well, goat-like — analyzing, interrogating, yet blank and reflective. maybe you see in the mountain goat what you want to see - or maybe that’s just my anthropormorphizing gaze. but i’m not one to overly-romanticize things. (ok, I am, but I’m working on it.) A mountain goat is just an animal - one that is born, eats, and dies in the hills. and so am I - so I suppose I feel kindred to them. we ramble, knobby-kneed and eager, over alpine boulders and meadows. we stare, blankly, into the woods, and sometimes it stares back. we’re vegan. we wear wool sweaters. pretty much, I took a hike today and met some pretty phenomenal mountain goats. and the mountain goats are a pretty phenomenal band. and it’s pretty cool to share a planet with something you don’t understand at all, but are sure that you love.
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October 2020
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