Just east of Perley Creek, on the fringes of the old Dude Fire burn area, we had turned off-road to the south and picked our way carefully through the thick ponderosa, black oak and juniper for a good half mile 'till we reached the treeline.

About thirty feet beyond the edge of the woods, the earth fell steeply away and began its gradual descent toward the great Tonto Basin, 3000 feet below us and thirty miles to the south. This was the edge of the world, and we could see it all. We made camp.

It was Autumn and the leaves were turning, one of those brilliant mornings, the sun eager to begin its blazing trip across the flawless sky. In the still, crisp air, we had brought out the Mackinaws, not really minding the cold, but rather savoring the changing of the seasons along with our steaming coffee.

This was wood cutting time. It had become sort of a tradition, marking the end of Summer. We would take a weekend, escape to the forest, and find a spot where we could do some camping and wood cutting. My wife would do most of the camping; I'd do most of the wood cutting.

The permit was still easy enough to get from the Forest Service, the wood was still fairly easy to find, the work was hard but it felt good, and we knew the payoff was always well worth the effort: that first romantic evening at home when it was finally cool enough to build a crackling fire.

The day went pretty much as planned. My wife had parked the van right at the edge of the trees, our camp fanning out into the open with a panoramic view to the south. She had dragged the stove, table, chairs, coolers and various boxes around into an orderly and even comfortable arrangement.

I had pulled my pickup and the open trailer about 50 yards back toward the road where I could work on a 70' dead and down ponderosa we had passed on the way in. By mid-day, it had been reduced to forty or so 18" de-barked biscuits, and by late afternoon, to a trailer-full of split cordwood.

I had just finished checking the bar oil on the Stihl saw when I looked up and saw two men clad in camouflage fatigues approaching through the trees. As they came closer, I saw that one of them carried a pair of armored binoculars and a two-foot length of what appeared to be radiator hose. The other carried a camouflage rifle case. I noticed he also wore a side arm.

A brief conversation revealed these guys were hunters, and that this was the last day of the state-sponsored Trophy Hunt for elk. The radiator hose was a home-made elk call. They were in the rifle division, or at least the one was, the other coming along just to help out. Nice guys, really. The shooter was a corporate lawyer from Scottsdale, and the other a colleague from Yuma.

It seems they were up against the gun, so to speak. The hunt ended at sundown, just an hour or so away, and they had tracked this big buck most of the day right up to this ridge. They said he had been running with a couple of cows and some young until about an hour ago when he split from the herd and headed uphill in our direction toward the Rim. They had decided to drop chase, go back to the road and circle around and above to head him off. They figured the ridge where we were camped would be where he would show.

It was obvious by what they said and the way they said it that there was no saying "No" when they asked if we'd mind if they set up in the trees just on the edge of our camp for an hour or so. They moved quietly and stood about thirty feet apart, each hidden in a long, dark shadow cast from the orange sun, now low in the western sky. We grabbed our cameras and took up positions near the van.

When I first heard it, there were a few panic-stricken seconds before I realized what it was. It was an incredible sound, beginning with a high, almost inaudible but then piercing shriek, pulsating, spiraling lower and lower, finally culminating in a long, hollow, guttural moan. The hunter's elk call... what they referred to as "bugleing."

Even more incredible were the distant, haunting sounds we heard over the next several minutes. Something, or someone, was responding to their call. I couldn't, nor did it seem could they, tell if the response was coming from an elk or another hunter. The humor of that possibility struck me, but I said nothing, realizing that I was holding my breath.

I don't know if it was the elk call or the last crimson rays of the setting sun that summoned the Ranger to our overlook, but I felt a surprising sense relief as I recognized the familiar uniform emerging from the shadows. He had surveyed the scene on his approach, and now wanted to see permits for the two regulated activities he had observed, wood cutting and hunting. We each obliged.

This, in effect, broke up the party. We chatted briefly with the hunters, and politely shared their remorse over the day's non-event. In response to their query, we told them we were locals, then exchanged comments about the amazing difference between Payson's climate and Scottsdale's, just 90 minutes south of here. We invited them to stay awhile, indicating that we would soon be building a fire, but they graciously declined. We walked with them to the edge of our camp, wished them well, and shivered a little in the cool darkness as they disappeared into the trees.

Later, over an absolutely exquisite dinner of canned chili and store-bought cornbread muffins, we thoroughly examined and roundly enjoyed the now- hilarious prospect of a bunch of hunters, furtively running around in the woods bugleing surreptitiously back and forth to each other, with no self-respecting elk anywhere within a hundred miles.

We had our laugh at the hunters' expense, then became more serious as we realized that this was the end of a week-long hunt. Maybe there simply were no elk left in the area to respond to the calls. After all, as odd as the elk-calls sounded to us, they really did work, had worked for hundreds of years, otherwise hunters wouldn't be using them. As we prepared to retire to our sleeping bag in the van, I pondered the fate of the unseen herd. I found myself remembering the words to an old Navajo hunting song I had seen on a poster of a flute-playing young brave:

Quarry mine, blessed am I
in the luck of the chase.
Comes the deer to my singing.

I was about half way there when a twig snapped to my left, somewhere close in the trees. I stopped, looked left, then up... at the most magnificent bull elk I had ever seen in my life, staring calmly down at me, not fifteen feet away!

Instantly awake and frozen solid, I could just hear his breathing over my own heart banging in my ears. I got this odd feeling that he had just determined that I was not a threat. I became aware of quiet movement behind him, several smaller, darker shadows, moving away, back into the trees.

He looked slowly back over his shoulder toward the shadows, then slowly back at me. He dropped his head and that massive rack ever so slightly. I don't know if it was a nighthawk that flew in front of the moon just then, or if it was a trick the shadows played on my bulging eyes, but I swear that elk winked at me! And, just one eye! Then he turned and became a shadow himself, leaving me and my non-threatening nakedness shivering in the cold moonlight...

Now, for those of you who are coming up this weekend to enjoy everything except wood cutting and elk-flashing, all we ask is that you drive safely, enjoy and protect the outdoors, and continue to visit us often in this natural wonderland full of beauty, friendly people and immense opportunity.

PS: If you'd like to get an idea of what things look like around here, take a cyber-stroll thru any one of our four Galleries in the RIMages section of the site. Click the button and enjoy!