Snow tore thick strips of fatty bacon from the packet, laying them carefully on the griddle. The gas burner hissed beneath them, and the smell of sizzling meat filled the small mountain hut. He leaned against the counter, spatula in hand, and gazed out the window. Beyond the frost-rimmed glass, the mountains stretched endlessly, their jagged ridges dusted with the last breath of winter. He lifted the spatula, pointing toward a sharp crest in the distance.
“See that ridge?” he said in that slow, gravelly New Zealand drawl. “Killed a bull tahr up there once.”
His blue eyes, sharp even with the years behind them, traced the line of the ridge as if reliving the moment. For a brief second, he wasn’t standing in a warm hut flipping bacon—he was back up there, rifle in hand, wind screaming through the valleys below, boots gripping the loose scree as he stalked the animal that had defined his life. He glanced back at us, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe we’ll have the same luck.”
Snow’s family had come to New Zealand generations ago, and they came as hunters. It was in his blood. He would tell you, in his blunt, matter-of-fact way, that he probably spent more time hunting than he should have. But if you asked him if he’d do it all again, if he’d trade the endless miles, the bone-deep exhaustion, the years spent chasing Tahr through these peaks, he’d only nod.
“Yeah… probably would.”
The mountains are where Snow belongs. They rise around him like the pages of a story he’s been reading his whole life. If you saw them—sheer, wild, untouched—you’d think you had stumbled into Middle-earth, Tolkien’s landscapes made real. And Snow? He moves through them like a man who has never considered another way of living. Even now, well into his sixties, he put all of us to shame, hiking the ridges as if they were sidewalks. The high-altitude air that left our lungs burning seemed to fuel him. This was his element, his church, his legacy.
He waved a hand toward the vast expanse of peaks surrounding us. “Take the red deer away. Take the Tahr away. What’s left?” He let the silence hang before answering his own question. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”
He turned back to us, his expression firm, the weight of years behind it. “Why not fill the landscape with Tahr? If we manage them right, the ecosystem’s no worse for wear, and we get to experience these mountains the way they should be experienced. Who else would come here if there were no Tahr? Only sheep farmers.” He paused, then let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-sigh. “Wouldn’t that be tragic? That we couldn’t introduce our mountains, our culture, our people to the world through this incredible, dare I say, lion-goat of the mountains?”
He let the thought settle, then shrugged on his pack. There was a slight hitch in his step now, a reminder that even the hardest men aren’t immune to time. His hair, once dark, now matched his name, and the deep lines on his face spoke of more sunrises than most men will ever see. But despite the years, there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
“I’ll fight to my dying breath to protect Tahr,” he said. He pulled his hat from his head, rubbing at the ache in his neck, then repositioned it with a determined nod. “I’ll fight, and fight, and fight.”
Then he turned, adjusting his pack, and started walking.
“You boys ready to see why I love them so much?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He just started moving, setting a steady pace up into the steepest mountains we’d ever climbed. Five hours up. Three hours down. At some point, the exhaustion became a constant hum in the back of our minds, overridden only by the sheer enormity of where we were. The peaks swallowed us whole, and when we collapsed on the side of the mountain to eat, we could only stare at what lay before us—endless ridges, deep valleys, the kind of view that makes you feel both insignificant and invincible at the same time.
That’s when we smelled it.
A deep, musky scent drifting through the air—earthy, wild, unmistakable. It clung to us, soaked into our clothes, our packs, our memories. The tahr’s skin, rolled tight in Snow’s pack, was bleeding its scent into everything we carried.
Snow saw us noticing it and gave a knowing smile. “Don’t wash your jacket.”
We looked at him, confused.
“When you’re home, six months from now, pick it up, bury your face in it, and take a deep breath,” he said, nodding toward the mountains around us. “It’ll bring you right back here.”
Then he lifted his gaze to the sun, closed his eyes, and for a moment, you could almost see it—hundreds of days spent in these peaks, a lifetime of hunts, all playing like a reel behind his eyelids.
Because for Snow, it was never just about the hunt. It was about something deeper. Something that clings to you, the way the mountains cling to men like him.