Sounds I was listening to at 08:18 this morning:

The annoying buzz of the engine of a low flying airplane. If they don't climb soon, they're not going to clear the mountains.

The excited barks of cow and calf elk. There were 80-some of these ungulates feeding on the open slope to our right, but as we drove up the rim above them, they all quietly slipped up the timbered draw and then made mad dashes across the open hillside to enter the large expanse of pines in the valley in front of us. Only when they had made the cover of the dense trees did they start calling out to each other. But now, as the plane passes over, I hear elk calls from the trees on our left, as well. Either the herd fanned out in the timber, or there were other elk in there that I did not see.

A few times, I heard bugling from one of these fellows mixed in with the cow talk.

I heard a feral horse whinnying. There had been three or four that stood on the ridge on our left and watched us as we drove by. But now the additional passing of the plane has been just too stressful, and one calls the others to dash up over the top and out of sight.

A chickadee calling from the pines on the right, that the elk have just vacated. The mountain species of chickadee.

Four or five Clark's nutcrackers complaining to themselves, or the rest of the world, as they follow the elk to the western grove.

Just a hint of wind whispering through the pines. It's been a calm morning, this mountain draped in fog as we worked our way up the rocky roads to this bench. The sun's out now, and the wind is just beginning to start its day.

Two heelers panting in my right ear. Yeah, I let them out to drag race while the elk were passing before us. The elk ignored them, and the canids never knew the elk were there. But we're all loaded up again, ready to get back to work classifying antelope.

Time to go.