Two meetings today, one after the other. In the same meeting room, one hundred and twenty-seven miles away. Which would have been fine, except it was snowing most of the way up.

Eighteen folks at the first meeting, only four female, which is more than it would have been just a few years ago. Sat next to the gal who we discovered shares my birthday at this same meeting two months ago.

I probably should mention I spent 15 minutes preceeding the meeting trying to decide on my next planner. Seems there are some who are embarrassed by my current day planner, and feel I should upgrade.

Heck, I haven't even started patching it up with duct tape yet, like the one before.

So, I will be getting the new "Sporty" model, in black nylon. Complete with two-inch rings, since the inch and a half is clearly inadequate. Which also means it comes with a handle.

And I had just mentioned to the wife this weekend that I needed a purse, to carry the cell phone, camera, and all the other carp I pack around on a daily basis now.

If I'm smart, when the new planner arrives, I'll weed out a bunch of the pages in there. I doubt if the 1988 hunting season summaries are still relevant, nor the boys' high school class schedules. Probably half the phone numbers and addresses are out of date.

But hey, it's still got the dollar bill I won in a bet almost twenty years ago. Actually, I won the bet over twenty years ago, but he didn't pay up until about about five years later. And my handy-dandy pocket guide on "Suspected Poisoned Carcass Handling Procedures" is still in there. (Really!)

What am I gonna do with the little pink admission sticker from Doofus's Museum of the Rockies in Montana?

Aaaanyway, a few points to mention from the first meeting:

When discussing a particular piece of property, the opinion of one of the fish guys was solicited. His comment?

"Fisheries-wise, there's no value there. You got no water, so you got no fish."

And for that expertise, I'm sure he had to go to at least four years of college. I'm not commenting on his opinion here, but rather on the fact that others had to ask him for it, knowing they got no water.

In discussion on the more-rapid than expected expansion of the Yellowstone wolf population... they're at the south end of the Winds, now, including at least one breeding pack. Their territories being what they are, it seems likely that they may be sneaking out into my piece of the desert now and then.

So, it's semi-official. I got wolves. Part-time, anyway. Maybe.

They believe they now know how the large canids have expanded their range so quickly to the south. Seems wolves have been spotted, quite frequently, traveling the well-packed Continental Divide snowmobile trail during winter.

The meeting ended with a round-the-room update on what everyone's been doing the past month. Some chose to discuss their work efforts, others chose to discuss their hunting experiences. Including the boss who took 24 days in the wilderness to get his bighorn sheep. Suspicion is that he could have harvested earlier, he just didn't want to come back to work. He did mention finding chukars living at 11,000 feet, and pronghorn at 12,000.

One fellow mentioned they had only the second-ever woman in their elk camp this month, and it seemed to go "oookay". An opinion delivered with some hesitancy. Which was a mistake, since that second woman was his wife, and she was in the same meeting.

When it was her turn to summarize her month, she included mention that she was one of the few in elk camp to get their elk. "Which is why you might not be invited back next year," was the response.

She also groused a little about not being allowed into camp until after the first week of the season. Someone suggested that perhaps that's when the first woman ever to be in camp was there.

The second meeting was only five of us and more serious. Developing a monitoring and contingency plan for what we're going to do this winter if the southern elk should come down into the desert again, and what we'll do if we see signs of lichen poisoning.

Gist of it all? I'll get to spend a couple extra hours in an airplane every month this winter (my suggestion, but still, oh joy), and probably more than a few trips out on snow sled or four-wheeler.

I can hardly wait.