Mountains, marmots, and point-of-view

John sees a marmot first on the side of a lower slope in Mount Rainier National Park. It looks like a cat, he says.

A cat? I look at the green slope with a few last purple flowers – maybe lupine – but I don’t see what he sees. I don’t doubt him, but wonder if he’s seeing something else, like a bobcat. It’s what makes a hike, writing, and even a relationship more interesting—not seeing things in quite the same way.

John is steadfast. Well, it looks like a cat.

I squint and stare where he points. Though it's been a dry season, grasses bend in the breeze and the trail is lined by mountain bog genitian, its compact blue buds about to flower. I never see the cat he mentions.

We take a trail that curves higher with tighter turns. Hikers on this temperate day spread out to different routes, our numbers thinning the higher and rockier the slope. We head toward a trail called Skyline for a mountain view I remembered the last time I visited, my view skyward rather than grounded.

Around a rocky bend of the trail, a spot of brown ambles across the mountain meadow. I catch the eye of another hiker – a marmot, she says. The gopher-like animal, thick coated and gray tinged, swims through the last of the flowers and tall grass. It’s my turn to have John stop and look.

John sees the marmot, too – no mistaking our shared vision, even though we'd both describe it in different ways. It’s what I saw before, John says, the cat-like creature he alone spotted.  

The marmot ignores us and heads downhill, unconcerned with four hikers on the trail. The area's rodents, marmots among them, are some of the most productive members of the landscape, according to the park website, taking up residence in the subalpine meadows and co-existing well with visitors, who become part of their everyday. I want to take a picture of the marmot, but I want to watch him even more, the glacier-striped mountain becoming a backdrop for now.