Where They Play Discovered

Last night about 5:00 PM I was making the last mile to my destination. The two lane was empty. I hadn't seen another car for several miles. The country was broad and vast with clear skies, crisp air and broad grand vistas of rolling prairie, pinon studded hills and snow-capped mountains in the near distance. A movement caught my eye ahead and I slowed as a red fox stepped onto the road, glared at the interloper and then flounced across and into the field to resume his daily routine.

At my friend's house, we sat sipping an adult beverage looking over his newly cut pasture just beyond the barn where ten "gliders" were munching on their evening hay. Horses whose gait is so smooth across the mountain trails that the ride is a glide, they were sleek, healthy and happy. A quarter mile across the pasture the tree line delineated the Lower Snake River meandering past. Water level was a bit low as snow runoff had long ended so the trout weren't very active, but the beauty was incredible.

A movement caught my eye and I misidentified the brown backs in the distance as a pair of mulies. They rose and I realized either I was about to see a pair of deer walk erect or I was viewing something else. It was a mated pair of Sandhill cranes. Large and beautiful in flight, ungainly on the ground and with a strange, raucous call they live in the fields nearby and can be seen most of the day.

As the sun lowered in the mountains, the air turned crisp and two mule deer bucks in velvet stepped out of the river grasses into the field. Broad beams and good spreads made either a potential trophy in coming years. Now they were safe and content.

Back over my shoulder toward the country highway and across the main pasture a small herd of pronghorn grazed, overseen by a dominant buck with a reasonable but not remarkable set of horns.

When the darkness fell there was not another light to be seen except for the barn light in the distance of the nearest neighbor. The horizon displayed 360 degrees of total darkness with the only illumination coming from the half moon. A strange light showed in the east and we wondered who was out there, but it soon rose and revealed itself to be Venus climbing into the night sky. Peace reigned.

Tomorrow there will be a vintage tractor ride from Savory WY to Encampment. About sixty tractors, minimum age 50 years will "ride the divide" across the Continental Divide. Pure Americana!

I'd like to bring the Messiah here for a beer. Maybe he would understand that the environment doesn't need as much saving as he thinks.