On Noise: Fort Pierre National Grasslands, South Dakota

Prairie sunflowers at dusk in the Fort Pierre National Grasslands

September 2

I chose to make the National Grasslands a stopover primarily because they were recommended by my travels with Harry guide: Doggin' America, 100 Ideas for Great Outdoor Vacations to Take With Your Dog, as alternatives to Badlands NP, which is among the least dog friendly of national parks. Since the primo national grasslands at Oglala and Buffalo Gap (black-footed ferrets---eek!) took me a bit out of my way, I opted for Fort Pierre NG which is about a 45 minute drive from the relentless I-90.

So I got my map at the National Grasslands visitors center in Wall, SD. Have you been to Wall Drug? There are signs dotting I-90 advertising anything from ice cream to 5 cent coffee to their famous free ice water. Maybe this means I am officially NO FUN AT ALL but the sight of this:

Wall Drug Store.

did not inspire me to linger. I was looking for the quiet and solitude of the prairie. The ranger at the visitor center provided very useful advice---I would be dispersed camping in the Grasslands and it helps to get some inside information about where that might be possible and practical. The roads would be dirt and there would be no facilities. Pull into a nice spot and it's yours for the night.

I have to give some kudos to Google maps in this one. She guided me perfectly along the unpaved, rural numbered routes to the pond I was seeking (or at least I think it was the pond I was seeking). In the middle of prairie, pond side in the setting sun encircled by wild sunflowers, not another sole in sight, the air abuzz with dragonflies, I was in a state of purest bliss.

Our site pondside at the Ft. Pierre National Grasslands

Prairie sunflower

Northern leopard frog lingers placidly in the elusive
peace under Pagoo's shade.

Pearl crescent adds to wildlife bliss

The twilight view from my loft in Pagoo. 

My first observation ever of the monarch mimic viceroy butterfly.
Good disguise, right?

The only sounds were the hum of crickets and the lapping of the pond against the cattails. I popped up Pagoo, set up my camp chairs and leaned back in a state of utter relaxation. Then, far along the fringes of my consciousness, I heard a distant rumble. The rumble grew and was soon accompanied by a traveling cloud of dust---a minor annoyance soon to pass. But it did not pass, the rumble became the grind of a semi-truck and the dust cloud echoed its 18 wheels. I sat disbelieving in my chair as if tied to a train track with a locomotive on an inevitable collision course. The dusty plume drew ever closer until its destination was no longer in question. At my quiet pond in the middle of vast prairie where I was the the blissful sole camper, arrive a double length dump truck carry a load of gravel for the road at my very bumper. The truck circled around and spent 15 minutes angling into the proper alignment with the road (with full seizure inducing volume on the reverse warning beep). All I could do was stare in horror, mouth agape, holding Harry's collar so he didn't bolt in terror. Once aligned the driver emerged and with a big toothless grin asked if I was catchin' any fish. His smile and cheerful tone were so genial, it calmed my rage a bit. From my camp chair I replied I was not fishing. 

"What are you doing then, if yer not fishin'?" 

"Enjoying the peace and quiet."

*Pregnant pause*

"Oh. I'm interfering with that then."

"How many loads to you have today, hmm?"

"Just the one. You'll be back to your peace momentarily..." 

I nodded and returned his smile. Had it been another answer, I'd have packed up Pagoo and Harry and left. It was a profound disturbance to the depths of my soul. I have found it nearly impossible to avoid the sound of the engine. I am not backpacking into the wilderness, I get that. While it has been frustrating to hear the sounds of interstates, generators, other people's music and highway construction (all night with the reverse beeping at one campsite in the palisades outside Sioux Falls--I had to wear the ear plugs mercifully left over from sleepovers with my last snoring boyfriend), I accept the proximity to the noise pollution inherent to the road trip and camper camping. This intrusion into my peace at this distant prairie pond etched a wound of indignation into my soul. So now wherever I go I notice. We are rarely free of that gasoline powered hum. 

There was one time, nearly a decade ago, when I escaped and found true quiet:

How I learned of quiet

It happened there, on the edge of the Bering Sea,

perched on one spiny knob

of the great Aleutians backbone,

curved like a beachcast fish between

the long skirt of the Pacific

and the untamed  arctic.

It was a quick lesson—

that I had never before known silence—

only the ever-present drone:

metal on metal,

internal combustion,

swarms of invisible waves

that our messages and voices have become.

Silence sleeps in that Aleutians bay.

Its secret is not the absence of sound

but its authenticity:

meeting of wave and rock

whir and plop of the puffin,

earnest breath of the minke—

she circles my perch on an offshore rock,

cry of the otter pup as his mother

dives where he cannot follow,

crack of the crab

when she surfaces.

Beneath it all a pulsing hollowness

cradles these fine things.

All of it draped

in the smell of the tundra,

its breath of sweetgrass and lupine.

We have no peace in our make-believe lives

It is the lucky among us who can still hear

the gull,

the nighthawk,

the sound of rain

beneath the harshness of the world—

so eternal we no longer notice it.

I know I didn’t,

until I was introduced to quiet

on Adak on the Bering Sea.

Listen for the true quiet. If you find it, feel blessed. It's a rare thing.

Sacred and Profane: The Black Hills

Custer's camp in the Black Hills in 1874 

September 1-2

At the gift shop at Devil's Tower I bought a copy of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, Dee Brown's 1971 account of the devastation of the North American tribes as the advancing citizens of the new United States of America moved ever westward in the name of Manifest Destiny. As I traveled through the Black Hills from Montana, Wyoming and into South Dakota, I continually saw the names of places and people from the pages come alive before me: Red Cloud, Custer, Crazy Horse, Little Bighorn, the Yellowstone River and its tributaries the Tongue and Powder. Its hard not to see ghosts at every turn, imagine battles waged and journeys traveled across the very ground I now traverse with speed and ease.

So named because their Ponderosa Pine covered peaks look dark from a distance, the Black Hills (or Paha Sapa in Lakota) are a small, isolated mountain range rising up from the Great Plains. The Black Hills hold spiritual significance for a number of tribes, but the Cheyenne and the Lakota have the best documented and extensive historical record of their cultural connection to the place and continue to maintain some of those relationships in modern times (see Devil's Tower post).

The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868, granted ownership of the Black Hills to the Lakota, Yankton and Arapahoe tribes, but the discovery of gold in the hills soon after lead to the flagrant violation of the treaty, the Black Hills War and eventually the seizure of the land by the US government in 1877.

"Two lovely legends of the Lakotas would be fine subjects for sculpturing -- the Black Hills as
the earth mother, and the story of the genesis of the tribe. Instead the face of a white man is
being outlined on the face of a stone cliff in the Black Hills. This beautiful region, of which
the Lakota thought more than any other spot on earth, caused him the most pain and misery.
These hills were to become prized by the white people for reasons far different from those of
the Lakota. To the Lakota the magnificent forests and splendid herds were incomparable in
value...If the Lakotas had been relinquishing any part of their territory voluntarily, the Black
Hills would have been the last from the standpoint of traditional sentiment...
How long the Lakota people lived in these mid-west plains bordering the Black Hills before
the coming of the white men is not known in tribal records. But our legends tell us that it was
hundreds and perhaps thousands of years ago since the first man sprang from the soil in the
midst of these great plains....So this land of the great plains is claimed by the Lakotas as their
very own. We are of the soil and the soil is of us. We love the birds and beasts that grew
with us on this soil. They drank the same water we did and breathed the same air. We are all
one in nature. Believing so, there was in our hearts a great peace and a welling kindness for
all living, growing things."  --Luther Standing Bear

Yes. There are many ghosts. One of the first towns to spring from the Black Hills in answer to the goldrush was the infamous Deadwood. Unrecognized due to its violation of the 1868 treaty, the town boomed nevertheless, unencumbered by such things as laws and government. I have been a devoted fan of the HBO series of the same name, with its Shakespearean, expletive heavy dialogue and complex characters based on real historical figures. Such  was my introduction to the history of Deadwood via Netflix. I once had a discussion with a friend about the portrayal of historic events in movies and television. He was vehemently opposed to the corruption of truth in the interest of artistic license, but I argued that one should never assume what was being portrayed was factual and that, if the story evoked an interest in learning more, that was a good thing. I'm not entirely confident in my position and, of course, the underlying assumption that viewers will filter what they see with skepticism, is probably faulty. But I digress. I came to Deadwood to visit Wild Bill Hickok (who was murdered there), Calamity Jane, Seth Bullock, Charlie Utter, Al Swearengen and the places they had lived and died.

As I dropped down out of the hills and got my first view of the town, I became so excited. It look every bit as had imagined it: narrow streets lined with tall frontier style building of brick and wood vanishing into a pine-covered gulch . It was only after I was immersed that I could see what a close up look afforded me---it's a historic wonderland dressed in the trashy attire of a casino.

Deadwood: charming at a distance

In 1989 Deadwood became the only place in the US outside of Nevada and Atlantic City to legalize gambling. Some sources point to gambling as the savior of the town, but it has saved it by pickling the historic buildings in a brine of turpitude. The National Park Service in its assessment of the threats to historic landmarks lists "development and visual integrity" as the greatest threats to Deadwood's historic district. You won't see much evidence of the casinos in my photos, I tried to crop them out where possible.

I opted to splurge for a room rather than camp, and chose my lodging wisely---I stayed at Deadwood Dick's in downtown, a hotel built in the late 1800s and owned and operated for 30 years by Dave and Mary, who spent many winters vacationing in Cambria!

Deadwood Dick's Hotel: one stop shopping for lodging
greasy food and antiques.

I wish the rooms were still $2.00

In a sea of casino hotels, Deadwood Dick's was the coolest and most authentic place in town with narrow, brocade-carpeted hallways leading to funky but clean and comfortable rooms, and the original Otis elevator that required a lesson from Dave to operate. Harry never quite trusted that thing.

Please don't leave me in the moving cage!

What's happening to the wall?!

After checking into our room, Harry and I head out on a self-guided walking tour of historic Deadwood. Even though it's raining and we are walking a gauntlet of sketchy looking people hanging outside of gambling joints, we manage to see a few of the sites of the town's more notorious events.

Saloon where Wild Bill was murdered during a poker game
by Jack McCall, who was acquitted at trial in Deadwood
 but later convicted and hanged in Yankton.

Location where Jack McCall was apprehended

Nevertheless, by dinner time I had my fill of the new and "improved" Deadwood, and got some take out to each in my cool room under the watchful (and slightly creepy) eye of the Wild Bill photograph hanging across from my bed. Whatever. He's kind of hot.

James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok 

The next morning started with breakfast and coffee made by another former San Luis Obispo county resident, who ran a coffee house on the same block as Deadwood Dick's. Up to this point, no one I met on the road trip had heard of Cambria. Within two days, three people one block apart, in the middle of the Black Hills, know and love Moonstone Beach.

Harry at the hitchin' post while I go for coffee

Then we are off to the Mt. Moriah cemetery where, perched on a hill overlooking the town, some of Deadwood's rock stars are buried.

The gates of Mt. Moriah 

The steep hike up the hill to the cemetery virtually eliminates all tourists not loaded into the tour bus. So up the hill I trudge, sadly without the forbidden dog, to hunt for the graves of Wild Bill, Calamity Jane and Seth Bullock. Harry would so have enjoyed that. Since the tour bus has just unloaded at Bill and Jane's site, I say "nope, nope" and climb first the highest hill to the grave of Seth Bullock, hardware store owner and eventual sheriff of Deadwood. Arguably the most revered of townspeople, he is buried on a hill with a view of the memorial he built to Teddy Roosevelt, with whom he had a strong and enduring friendship.

Grave of Seth and Martha Bullock

The view from Bullock's grave toward the Roosevelt Friendship Memorial

I never did get a good ponder at the gravesite of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane as some sort of impromptu speech by a visiting representative of one of the more vehement religious organizations prevented me from lingering.  Not sure why he chose this grave site to make his point, although I didn't stick around to learn what point he was actually coming around to. I took a quick snapshot and fled.

Quick pic under duress of the resting place of Wild Bill Hickok and
Calamity Jane, who wished to be buried next to Hickok.

There are more than a few tricky moments when visiting the Black Hills if you care to think about the history much. Here I am in Deadwood, hero-worshipping outlaws and others who settled this town with blatant disregard to agreements with people who had lived, died and worshipped in these hills for millennia prior. The story of the devastation of North American tribes is laden with heartbreaking cruelty, treachery, betrayal and even a systematic repression on the part of the US Cavalry of demonstrations of mercy within its ranks. But I am happy to be living in this country, free to drive about on highways and comment on the misery of others far removed from me. Would I have wanted events to have turned another way? It's easy to be outraged. Not so easy to to induce or even desire change. As Pagoo points eastward to the National grasslands, I leave Deadwood and the Black Hills behind with a confused knot in my stomach and an unsettled heart.

Dogtown: Devil's Tower, Wyoming

View from our camp of the tower, the tower carving Belle Fourche River,
prairie dog town (beyond river) and approaching thunderstorm.

August 30-31

My interlude between the sublime Yellowstone and the mystic Black Hills was an ordeal of elevation and weather. Sometimes the apparent shortest distance between two spots on the Rand McNally can be fraught with invisible ordeal. My goal for the day's travel was a campsite high in the Bighorn National Forest. It seemed like an easy three hour drive but, in part, due to my aversion to the limitations caused by making reservations, I was caught with my figurative pants down

The route started out on a positive note by taking me out through the northeast gate of Yellowstone, through an alpine wonderland called the Beartooth highway, which had been enthusiastically (and deservedly) recommended to me by a number of fellow travelers along my route.

Stormy day on the Beartooth Highway, Montana

Beartooth Pass Summit via Beartooth Highway, 10,947 ft. 

American pika, Beartooth Pass

Down from Beartooth, northeast to Billings then back south, across the Bighorn River, up and into the mountains and a choice high elevation campsite. Things for which I was not prepared: a raging thunderstorm right over the mountains; the pitch of the climb and Pagoo's reaction to it (base speed = 25 mph); Harry's stress reaction to the lugging low gear; and lack of available campsites absent a reservation. So a stressed out beagle and I climbed a 10,000 foot mountain only to descend the other side and limp into a grubby campground in Dayton, MT after dark.  After checking in to the patch of grass that was my campsite with scary Ma and Pa Dayton, the owners of the campground, Harry and I pop up Pagoo and bundle into bed. As I look up I see moonlight streaming in unobstructed through the roof---I have lost a vent cover. Mercifully, my bedding remained dry, duck tape is close at hand and I had suffered no greater mechanical issues during the ordeal. On the scale of rough days, probably pretty mild (not that I want to tempt fate--I suffered! Suffered, I tell you!).

Dayton may not have been my first choice for an overnight stay, but it did place us very near the doorstep for our next destination: Devil's Tower. Made famous by its integral role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this strange rock formation looms alone in the landscape and is visible for miles as we approach.

The place has an aura of deep mystery and I find it nearly impossible to stop staring at the tower. Harry finds it completely impossible to stop staring at the prairie dog town that fans out from its base.

Squirrel!

As we pull through the entrance, quickly stake out a campsite with a view of the tower, the Belle Fourche River and the 40-acre prairie dog town, all the misery of the prior day's travel evaporates. This places feels like a tonic, which is not surprising considering its cultural and spiritual relevance to more than twenty North American tribes. There are several myths regarding its origin, my favorite being the Kiowa legend where seven little girls escape a bear attack when the tower rises and carries them to the sky where they become the Pleiades.

After some quick exploration and an assessment of dog friendliness (not very), Harry and I are eager to have a campfire, a task at which, with the exception of my first days in Mendocino, I have utterly failed on this trip. Tonic or no, there is to be no exception here. Just as the fire lights, a thunderstorm that had been looming for hours hits in full force and drives us into Pagoo. Fortunately the view is beautiful, the sound of rain and thunder thrilling and Pagoo proves to be a snug and dry shelter through the storm.

The next morning, we awake to sunshine and the prairie dog town is becoming active as the ground warms. I have hesitantly told a few friends that I long to see a wild prairie dog town, hesitant perhaps because I am so openly disdainful of the obsession of California tourists with our overfed ground squirrels. Maybe they are ubiquitous and ordinary to those from the plains states but, if you must pick favorites amongst the Sciuridae, this squirrel is a rock star. The benefit of their colonies to over 150 other plains species imparts to the humble prairie dog the designation of keystone species. New research suggests a surprising complexity to their communication, in particular as it relates to potential threats to the colony. The roadside dogs beneath Devil's Tower are habituated to people and conspicuously indifferent to beagles in cars. Harry could barely contain himself and quivered with excitement at every movement. The result is any easy photographic window into life in the dogtown and your dose of keystone squirrel for the day:

40-acre black-tailed prairie dog town, Devil's Tower
National Monument, MT

The town is alive with vocalizations

First a greeting...

....then a scuffle

The jump-yip. Scroll down in this article to read about the newest
theory behind this characteristic behavior.

Feeding any wildlife, and prairie dogs in particular, is forbidden in the park. Of course, there are always the idiot rule breakers that don't care about the well being of either the wildlife or their children:

Family feeding cheetos to prairie dogs

I tried to get the ranger to come scold them but was instead encouraged by the park dispatch to take the law into my own hands. No problem---deputize me. When I asked the mom if she knew that prairie dogs carry bubonic (sylvatic) plague, she said she did, and handed her child a cheeto to hand feed the cuddly little disease vector. So I had to say the ranger was on his way---and so they bundled their charming family back into the SUV and sped off to braid bison tails in Yellowstone. My misanthropy and general lack of respect for the common sense of the general public remains intact.

Too many cheetos?

Under the watchful eye of Devil's Tower I was able to check another species off my road trip bucket list. The strange tower, mythic energy, warm meadows alive with keystone business and empty campground were all the perfect remedy to my stressful transition out of Yellowstone and a mindful introduction to the numinous Black Hills.

Devil's Tower through the interactive art piece, Sacred Circle of Smoke by
Junkyo Muto

A Desire for Wolves: Yellowstone, Part 3

Wolf watchers at Slough Creek, Yellowstone NP

August 28-29 

I greatly desired to see wild wolves. My friend Lilian, my mentor on all things Yellowstone, had been the supremely fortunate recipient of the experience of watching (and photographing) a pack of wolves hunt and kill an elk in the Lamar Valley. Upon hearing her telling of it, my heart simultaneously leapt that such an event could still unfold before the eyes of humans, and pulsed green at the sheer rarity of it and the luck involved in being there. What I learned in Yellowstone in my quest for wolves, was that a little help from others goes a long way toward making the seemingly impossible, possible. Now before you get too excited, I did not witness an elk kill. But, by the end of my three day search, in the final hour, I found my wolves and felt the voice of the wild sing through my bones.

There are rules for seeing wolves in Yellowstone. The primary among these goes against the core of my beliefs and feelings about viewing wildlife. My emotional attachment to the opposition of this rule would have ultimately derailed my entire experience and I'd likely have gone home unsatisfied. You see, I want with all of my being, to avoid this:

Not my photo (Rich Landers Photos)

And when it comes to finding wolves, If you are lacking expertise and a radio antenna, this is exactly the trail sign you must follow.

My first day of dedicated wolf hunting began early. My advance research had been minimal, but I knew some key things: the wolves were most visibly active at dawn and dusk, and I had a list of locations where they might be seen. I was also aware that I needed to look for spotting scopes and telemetry antennas---maybe that goes without saying given my professional history---but I was not thinking at the appropriate scale. I made a pass west from my campground at Pebble Creek towards Tower Junction (in purple, map). In passing Slough Creek I see a massive parking jam, filling the parking lot and overflowing onto the road. "Yikes, that's a popular trail!" I said to Harry with a shiver as I gave Pagoo some extra gas to get by. I turned back to the east at Tower Junction, passing the Slough Creek circus again with a glance of disdain. You probably get where this is going.

I end up nearly back at my point of origin when a perfect fit for my search image connects with my eyeballs: a lone man in a ranger green jacket with an antenna. Score! I pulled over next to his vehicle and briefly wrestled with a moral dilemma. Those who have known me for the last decade or have ever tracked wild sea otters in California can imagine my predicament. Do I really have to pull my truck up next to this guy, tap him on the shoulder and ask him what he's tracking? Is there some kind of karmic punishment at work here for 13 years worth of resentment of public intrusion on my workspace? It was agony, but I got out of my truck and approached him. 

"Do you know where I might have a chance to see wolves?"

"Yes. The pack has been active at Slough Creek all morning..."

Dammit.

As it turns out, I had hit the wolf expert jackpot. I had found Rick McIntyre, a biologist with Yellowstone's Wolf Project who had been working with the wolves since the inception of the reintroduction that took place in 1996. To add to my karmic spanking, he was genuinely nice and helpful, and seemed unbothered by my intrusion.

"I passed by there because I wanted to avoid the crowds."

"The crowds follow the wolves, so I suggest an alternative strategy."

Dammit. 

By this time it was late morning. Rick confirmed that there was little chance of a wolf sighting until they became active again at dusk, readying for the night's hunt. So Harry and I pursued the other denizens of the Lamar Valley through the afternoon, then, as dusk and the wolfen hour approached, parked Pagoo in the now empty parking lot of Slough Creek and waited.

It wasn't long before a man with a spotting scope made his way up the path to one of the lookout spots. I was just grabbing my binoculars to follow him when he excitedly gestured for me to come up. I paused for just a second---this guy didn't know me, was it that obvious what I was waiting for?
But as I approached he uttered the magic words: "I think I have a wolf here!" And this is how I met Dennis Rowe, wolf lover, seasoned Yellowstone devotee and my guiding angel of wolf discovery. For quite a while, it was just Dennis and me at Slough Creek staring intently through his spotting scope (Yes, he joyfully offered his scope to me) at a black blob that we hoped was a wolf with a radio collar. He was just explaining how difficult it could be to see the grey wolves as they are so well camouflaged, when a brown patch of dirt next to the black blob rolled over and stretched it's long legs in the air. I happened to be hogging the scope at the time (really wishing for a Questar) and I yelled "A grey one! A grey one just rolled over!"  The candidate for black wolf then lifted his head and stretched his collared neck out long. I'd seen my first wild wolves.

My best wolf picture (don't laugh). If you zoom in
you can see the black outline of a bedded wolf at the center in the flatlands

Shortly after the excitement of the grey wolf roll, the crowd, drawn by the sight of a spotting scope on the ridge, began to gather. Dennis gave each one a look through his scope and a run down of all the wolf activity for the day. He has been journeying to Yellowstone from his home in Colorado several times each year for 15 years. It is a pilgrimage rooted in his passion for fishing the park's great rivers, but it became a love affair with wolves--and not just the wolves themselves, but the process of sharing them with others. Dennis is admirably generous with his knowledge, scope and wildlife stories. You can read his journal blog about his days in Yellowstone here. 

And so a bit of a wolf party grew. Not much was happening with the wolves but the party on the ridge was rockin'! We moved from one location to another to check for activity in another pack (the Lamar Valley pack near Soda Butte) and quickly another wolf hungry entourage built up around us. 

Dennis Rowe points to where the wolves were seen the
day before to a wolf seeking visitor.

We waited until dark for the Lamar Canyon alpha pair (with their seven pups) to make an appearance at their rendezvous spot---the site where the pups and adults meet after hunts once the birthing den has been abandoned. I returned to my campsite wondering if that rolling grey wolf was the only I'd ever see. That night, tucked into Pagoo's cocoon, I dreamed of wolves and elk playing out their ancestral battle at the margins of that silver river.

Irish Elk Pursued by Dire Wolves by Zdenek Burian

On the morning of our last day at Yellowstone, Harry and I packed Pagoo up as early as we could muster. Seeing no one at Soda Butte I headed for Slough Creek once again. The crowd was there and I hooted in triumph and optimism. Harry, forbidden from the ranks of the watchers of his ancestors, curled up in the back seat in resignation. And so I trudged up, moving against the current of my misanthropic nature, to the crest of the hill where a row of spotting scopes and Coleman camp chairs waited to introduce me to the Junction Butte pack.

Guide to the Yellowstone wolves, 2014
For more on the Yellowstone wolves, click here.

The Junction Butte pack consists of the alpha pair (one black male--my black blob from the prior day, and a grey female) , three subordinate adults and sub-adults and three 4-month old pups. The adults (each radio collared) are settling down from the night's hunting activities, but the pups and subordinates are active and engaged by the confident approach of a huge bison bull. As the bison plods past, the pups begin a tentative stalk, following closer and closer until the bison turns and, with a quick toss of his massive head, scatters the stalkers. I am absorbed for an hour, stealing between borrowed scopes and binoculars, reminded of how completely engaging the everyday activities of wild animals can be. Why is that, I wonder? Is it a deep acknowledgement that our days are often consumed by tasks that, under the slightest degree of soul scrutiny, are disclosed as meaningless? To watch these pups interact, centers me and reassures me that the important game of surviving is still in play in an authentic way in this world. And it is reassuring as well, that the others on this hill are just as eager to be distant witnesses and, like Dennis, share the privilege. I feel a fellowship with them.

Just before I pack up to move on to my next destination, the sleepy alpha male, 890, raises his head and howls. I see it happen a split second before it reaches my ears and raises every one of my hairs to attention. In those ancestral dreams, I may have shivered in fear at that sound. Today, I am safe on my distant hill, but am reminded how recent and fragile is the safety of Homo sapiens in a valley like Lamar.

Wolf study, Robert Bateman