Yesterday, I talked about a black bear.  Today I mention the marmot.  A resident of the alpine ecological zone, the land beyond the trees, a land of tundra, rock, and flowers, the marmot spends all summer looking for food with which to sustain him/herself through the long mountain winter.  By the time snow falls, any time after the end of August, the average marmot looks enormously fat.
     Although I've seen many, many marmots in my days, I came across one on my most recent trip that exceeded all of my expectations for how marmots look.  It was the largest and fattest marmot I had ever seen.  Initially, I thought it was a wolverine.  But no, it was a marmot, hearty and hale, perfectly adapted to this rugged environment, singularly bent on stuffing his/her face every moment of the lengthy mountain summer day.
     I love this land, the land of rolling tundra and snow covered rock, but without my mountain gear I could not survive it.  During the day, the warm summer day, I'd be fine. Come night, however, I would be very cold, even freezing, with little access to food. Absent a compass and map, I'd be lost, wandering over peak after peak, not knowing precisely where I was.  Life would not be easy.
     The marmot doesn't worry about any of this.  It is beautifully designed for the alpine landscape.  The tundra, snow, and rock are its home.  How wonderful it is, then, that we homo sapiens, ostensibly wise and clever tool making animals, must bow before the superiority of creatures much smaller and intellectually dimmer than we.  We pride ourselves on our greatness, we revel in our achievements.  Really, however, in the end, we are no more than highly intelligent creatures without a permanent home.