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blizzard warnings - 13:52 , 03 October 2013

heelerless - 21:32 , 18 August 2013

Red Coat Inn in Fort McLeod - 11:38 , 23 June 2013

rushing into the waters - 09:53 , 21 June 2013

choosing a spot - 17:43 , 27 April 2013

2001-04-09 - 3:24 p.m.

a good Monday

Hope you're comfortable with a cup of coffee, because I think this may be a long one. The heeler sisters and I just got back an hour or two ago from a long morning in the desert.

Corky's truck is still there. And it looks lonely, since the little white car is gone.

Ran one of my lek routes for the second time this morning, and all went well. The near-full moon was hanging in the western sky, so I thought the grouse might quit early, but they didn't. It appears a lot of hens were taking advantage of the moonlight, and the leks were quite busy with girls. And how could the boys think of leaving if the girls still want to play?

Saw two "ewww-icks!", even though we never stayed around any longer than necessary to make my three counts at each lek.

Finally gave the heelers a good, long run after the fifth and last strutting ground (they let the truck get too far ahead, so I ran 'em for a quarter mile), and then had to decide what to do. It was still early, and the grouse I just left were still going strong. So do I turn left at the pavement and check a lek or two on the way home, leks I know someone else has volunteered to do, or do I turn right and head farther into the desert and look at a lek or two there?

Easy choice.

Unfortunately, even at high speeds, we were too late by the time we got to the next lek. Nobody around. I got out and walked to the ground to see if it has been used. Yup.

Lots of chicken scat and tracks, and caecal droppings. The caecum is the enlarged appendix (although it would be more accurate to say our appendix is a residual caecum) of birds, and grouse regularly empty theirs, leaving small green cowpies wherever they've been, which quickly turn into small black cowpies upon exposure to air. There were lots of green pies on this lek, probably at least 20 cocks, and we just missed 'em.

Also found the remains of a coyote-killed antelope right on the lek. Nothing but clumps of hair and the rumen contents, eaten sometime last winter. While I was bent over checking this out, 10 feral horses finally got overwhelmed by their curiosity and came trotting up from the southeast. Came within 150 meters trying to figure out what those two coyotes with the jingly collars were doing with the biped. At the same time, had 16 antelope run up from the southwest. Don't know if they were checking out me and the dogs or just came to see what the horses were looking at, but we three groups stared at each other for some time, out there in the middle of nothing.

Noticed there weren't any foals in the horse herd, and none of the mares looked pregnant. It was a tough winter on everybody. We left first, and decided to scout the roads to the west to plan my future mornings. Two weeks ago you couldn't get here because of the snow, last week it was too muddy, and this morning we were raising dust.

Headed northwest to check out one of the main creek crossings. The BLM used to have two four-foot culverts to handle an itty-bitty stream that was dry half the time, and about every fourth or fifth spring the snowmelt would flood the creek, overwhelm the culverts and take out the entire 8-foot high embanked road. Almost dropped into that in the dark on a strutting ground survey long ago. Now I check ahead of time. Since they finally got smart and installed a six-foot culvert after the 1993 washout, the road has held.

And it held this year. There's an old late 1800s cabin at the crossing, with the usual accumulation of old bottles, cans, engines, etc. I see this year someone has added a Honda Four-Trax. A fairly new ATV trashed. I heard the sheep rancher in this country lost almost 500 of the 2000 sheep he tried to winter out here, and now I see he also lost an ATV. The lock-joint pliers they tried to use to get the engine to work are still on top, rusting along with the engine. Musta left in a hurry.

A raven flew out of the cabin, and I peeked in to see they are trying to nest there again. Been using it a lot of years, always adding a few sticks to the nest piled in the corner. Last year they added one stick too many, and the nest toppled. This year I see they are starting over, on top of the fallen refrigerator. Nest is lined with antelope fur. Ought to be a lot of that around this spring. Cabin had a horrible stench to it, not the usual old dust and decay. Finally found the source, on the outside. A pile of beans about two feet high and 20 feet across. Old sheep feed, rotting away in the desert. Glad it wasn't the sheepherder, like I was expecting.

There had been vehicles to this point in the road, having come up from the south, but they all turned back at the drift across the creek. Looks hard enough to hold a truck. It was.

For the next 15 miles we were the only visitors to have been in this country since October. Virgin road.

In these clay/loam soils, the freezing and thawing through the winter lifts the soil, leaving it high and dry when the ice melts. It feels like you're driving through mud or wet snow, but all you're doing is leaving ruts in the dry powder. I've been places in the spring where my feet sank more than four inches into the dry dirt. The ruts will disappear when the soil settles with the first hard rain, but today we left miles of tracks.

We stopped at the top of Cyclone Rim. Once again we're on the Continental Divide, almost fifty miles from yesterday's stop. And today it's perfectly clear. And freezing cold. The Wind Rivers are just 30 miles further to the northwest, their alpine peaks totally blanketed with snow. Continental Peak and the Oregon Buttes are just 15 miles west, also covered with snow. We play in a snowbank before moving on. The maskless heeler is thirsty, and scrapes frozen snow off with her fangs. Ouch. I kick some loose for her to eat, which soon becomes the usual game of "you kick the snow and we'll bite it."

We went on west to Scotty Lake and Picket Lake, both mostly frozen with a few dozen migrant ducks swimming around on the gaps of open water. Even too cold for them to take wing.

Finally got to my farthest strutting ground. By road, about 101 miles from home. Probably only 80 air miles. The roads are OK, I can get here any morning I want to without getting stuck or falling in a ditch.

We're only a mile or so from one of my most favorite places on the planet. And can't get there because of a muddy creek. If it weren't so cold, I would walk there. Done it before from this spot. It's an easy hike, and well worth the effort. But we have no food, and have already drunk half our water. And the clay hills are covered with a dusting of snow. Would be a muddy mess.

There is a thin shim of ice hanging over the creek, and I hear the ice crack and fall from the warming sunlight as I approach. Found one crystal of ice extending more than a foot over the water, and then spreading like a palm frond. Gorgeous. I know I don't have time to get back to the truck for the camera, and the light and crystals would never show anyway. Gorgeous.

I jumped as a 30-foot length of the ice collapsed into the creek. The ground is not dry this high, only frozen. And this frozen world is melting fast. I can feel the mud melt under my boots. We go home now.

I don't know if there's strange magnetism there or what, but now there is another car, a gold sedan, broken down by Corky's truck.

To top it all off, the wife came home for lunch, and was still there when we got in. And only three emails, none of which I have to deal with. A good Monday.

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