Wilderness Time

Washakie Wilderness, northwest Wyoming

At the end of our summer work in Wyoming, the Guy gave me what may rank as the best birthday present ever: a pack trip into the Washakie Wilderness, part of my old fieldwork area in the Absaroka Range southeast of Yellowstone National Park. Just the two of us, his four horses (two for riding, two for packing), and a stretch of glorious days away from cell phones, internet, news, and other humans. (We did see three other people on our last night as they rode by our camp.)

I haven’t been on a backcountry pack trip in decades, since the years when I traversed these mountains in my work for the Shoshone National Forest, before graduate school and meeting Richard and Molly. Who–bless their hearts–did not have the same need for time away in wild places as I do. As I write in Bless the Birds: Living With Love in a Time of Dying, my forthcoming memoir:

We managed just one family backpacking trip, a weekend outing to the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area, for my birthday that fall in West Virginia. Richard and four-year-old Molly were so miserable that I took pity on them after the first night, and we packed out. On the way home, we stopped for “real food,” in Molly’s words, and Richard’s favorite dark-roast coffee. I never tried backpacking with them again.

For me, this trip into the South Absarokas, home to more grizzly bears, wolves, and elk than people, was a dream–and another step in reclaiming the part of myself that I had set aside during my nearly three decades with Richard and Molly. I never expected to get back into the wild country I learned so well over the miles of hiking and riding for my work back then, and came to love so deeply that it has been the home of my heart ever since.

When the Guy and I first started talking about taking a backcountry trip last winter, we imagined something more ambitious, a through-ride that would trace the route of a solo backpack trip I took in my mid-twenties, cutting through the Thorofare Valley in Yellowstone. But as the time for the trip got closer, we scaled back those plans, deciding that for our first pack trip together, it would be wise to plan a shorter and less rigorous route.

Me on Cookie, ponying Sal, on a wildfire-smoke-hazed day ride into Dundee Meadows.

So we did some day-rides into the mountains to hone our skills and to get the horses in shape. Then we picked a drainage were we could ride in, establish a base camp, and explore from there. We scouted the area first, riding the trail we would take, and found a meadow that looked perfect for our basecamp: big enough that it offered abundant native forage for the horses, a creek tumbling through, and several good sites for our tent and cooking areas (which needed to be far apart so that we were not sleeping next to anything that smelled like food).

Once we knew where we were headed, we went into trip-preparation mode: pulling together maps, food, emergency supplies, and pack gear; we checked the tent, and pulled together our sleeping bags and pads, and personal gear. The Guy inspected the pack saddles and supplies, and did a test-pack of the panniers and bags, and weighed everything to make sure we weren’t giving the horses too much to carry. The night before we were to leave, we loaded the gear into big horse trailer.

The next morning, we fed the horses early so they would have time to finish their hay before we left, and then finished preparing. We were on our way by the time the sun began to warm the late-summer air, and reached the trailhead at mid-morning. It took about an hour to get the horses saddled, the packs on and lashed down, and then we were off, riding up the valley toward the distant peaks and high plateaus, and away from people and wifi and cell phone reception.

The view from near the trailhead. We were headed toward the far peaks.

At first, the horses were jumpy, starting at deadfall, and hopping sideways when some ducks took off from a nearby pond in a rush of feet slapping the water’s surface. But pretty soon we all settled into a good trail rhythm. The sun was warm, the breeze cool, and the forest smelled of pine sap interspersed with musky threads of other animals.

The lake on the trail in–no roads, no cars, no pings. Just the breeze in the pines, the ducks in the marsh, and the horses munching grass.

We stopped for a snack near a lake with a marsh full of birds, and lupines, pussy-toes, and other wildflowers blooming in the forest. The horses grazed the lush grass hungrily, and when we rode on, they were all still munching. I led our small string on the way to the lake, and the Guy took the lead from there on.

Onward toward camp. (The green panniers are grizzly-proof food containers, and I can attest that they are difficult for people to open too!)

We reached the meadow where we planned to camp by mid-afternoon, unsaddled the horses, arranged the tack on a log where it could air out, and then set up the highline for the horses, the overhead line where they would be secured at night.

The tack log…

 

Horses on the highline…

Once the horses were settled, we ate a late lunch, pitched the tent, set up our camp kitchen area, and relaxed in our camp chairs in the shade of a big lodgepole pine tree. I wrote and the Guy meditated, and then studied the maps. We both absorbed the quiet.

Camp journaling…

Around dinnertime, we unhooked the horses, put hobbles on their front legs, and let them graze the meadow, keeping an eye out to make sure none hopped far enough to get to the trail. The Guy got out the stove, boiled water from the creek, and I “cooked” dinner, pouring boiling water into a pouch of freeze-dried Thai-style chicken dinner, and adding some fresh vegetables. Ten minutes later, we shared a surprisingly delicious hot meal as the pink light from sunset faded from the peaks and then the clouds, and the moon sailed across the evening sky.

Sunset from camp…

Before dark, we hooked the horses on the highline, and then we each brushed our teeth, took one last foray into the woods to pee, and headed for the tent and our cozy sleeping bags.

And so our days went: Up with the sun, set the hobbled horses to grazing, make breakfast, decide on the day’s ride, catch the horses, saddle up with lunch in our pommel bags, and hit the trail. Back by late afternoon, set the horses to grazing, relax in our camp chairs, make dinner, hook up the horses, and crawl into the tent and curl up together.

One morning we woke to rain pattering on the tent, so we didn’t start our ride until ten, but we still had time to explore the big meadow at the head of the valley (the photo at the top of the post) and the smaller meadows above it, green and boggy and filled with elk sign–wallows, scat, and tree-bark scars where the bulls scrape the velvet from their antlers. We rode past the end of the trail, forded the creek multiple times, ducked under branches and worked our way around deadfall timber as far as we could go, just seeing what was there, and then headed back to camp.

Another morning we got an early start and took a steep trail that zigzagged up a side valley, climbing up and up and up and up through the forest, and then traversing a narrow ledge of trail high above the cascading creek. “That’s real mountain riding,” commented the Guy when we were safely past a particularly vertiginous stretch.

We stopped to let the horses graze in a sedge and hairgrass meadow surrounded by dead whitebark pine trees (killed by white pine blister rust, an invasive pathogen). I commented that this was prime grizzly bear habitat despite the dead forest. Just above the meadow, I spotted one of the largest piles of grizz scat I’ve ever seen smack in the middle of the trail. We stopped to look, and reassured ourselves that it wasn’t that fresh–only later did we admit to each other that it had probably been no more than an hour or two old.

“Size nine grizzly-bear poop,” the Guy said, comparing it to his boot!

We rode on, listening and looking for bears, and saw none. Just more piles of scat, berry bushes everywhere–raspberries, elderberries, gooseberries, and currants; and a several-month-old kill of an elk calf, with not much left but some pelt and scattered bones with tendons attached. I’m pretty sure that big boar grizzly who left the poop knew exactly where we were. We rode with all senses alert, in the knowledge that we could be lunch if we weren’t careful.

That trail took us high into an alpine basin above tree-line, where we stopped for lunch and let the horses nibble alpine turf while we ate. A golden eagle soared above the high ridges, and a peregrine falcon whizzed by on the hunt. Far in the distance we could see the next mountain range to the south. The wind whistled among the rocks, and storm clouds began to built overhead, our signal to head downhill.

Lunch at about 10,000 feet elevation…

That evening it rained and then hailed, pea-sized pellets hurled on chill winds. The next morning, we woke to frost on the meadow. We ate breakfast as the horses grazed, and our tent dried in the sun. Then we packed up and headed out, the horses frisky because they knew we were on our way back to the trailhead.

By the time we reached the truck and trailer, the weather had shifted and the wind was gusting hard, and we were ready for a shower and a good dinner. The next morning, snow dusted the peaks above where we had camped, a foretaste of fall.

Cathedral Peak rising over our meadow camp…

I call that trip my birthday present because the Guy provided everything: his horses, the packing gear, even the food. All I had to do was show up with my personal gear, ride well, and be good company.

And because it brought me something I had forgotten how much I needed: time away from the hustle of the human world, the bad news that deluges us every day, and the pressure to respond to every signal in our culture of instant communication. For those days in the wild, my system returned to solar time, and my senses tuned to the weather and the shape of the landscape, the sound of elk bugling and the smell of bears.

(On my actual birthday last week, the Guy gave me another perfect present: an increment core for sampling trees, but that’s another story.)

I came away from our wilderness time tired but happy, feeling competent and alive. The trip reminded me of what matters most: living with love and kindness, and practicing stewardship of this Earth and we who share it. I needed that time to refresh my spirit and strengthen my heart for whatever comes.

Pleated gentian, one of my favorite fall wildflowers in these mountains….

Field Trips: Seeing Home Through New Eyes

For the past three weeks I've been crazy-busy even by my standards: Not only is my house renovation project going full-tilt-boogie, I'm working on a new book (more in another blog post) plus a feature article for Wildflower Magazine, and I've been caretaking TAC, a retreat center outside town.

The latter involves two trips a day to the center to feed two cats in two different residences, check on two guest houses, water gardens, and tend a few guests, plus help prepare for an event. The older cat puked in the house a few times, the traps caught mice, we got two inches of rain in about ten days, so for a while there was water everywhere; and a boiler pump in the main house failed during Memorial Day weekend. I raced out to the center at ten one night to shut off both the pump and the boiler. Never a dull moment… 

So when my friend Tom came to town to visit from North Carolina, I jumped at the chance to use what spare time I had to take a few field trips and show him a part of the world he'd never seen. 

One afternoon we drove down the South Fork Road, a paved and then gravel road that dead-ends where the South Fork of the Shoshone River issues from the mountains of the Washakie Wilderness. That valley, wide at its northern end near town, narrows to a gap in the Absaroka Range that has drawn me ever since I remember. I lived at the Forest Service work station near the end of the road one late summer and fall, a momentous period when I began to understand who I am and what I bring to this world.

In the background rises Carter Mountain, a long and high ridge that bounds the South Fork Valley on the northeast; those flowers in the foreground are Rocky Mountain iris (Iris missouriensis).

A few years later, when I was figuring out my then-new relationship with Richard and Molly, I set out from the trailhead at the end of the South Fork road, and walked solo through the mountains, emerging six days and 80 footsore miles later, my pack and spirits considerably lighter. 

On that afternoon field trip with Tom, we stopped to admire the spring-green valley and its wildflowers (including the Rocky Mountain iris in the photo above), and scattered pronghorn grazing on sagebrush and new green grasses. We also counted several hundred cow elk in the hay pastures along the river.

Upper South Fork: I have walked and ridden over this valley and these mountains, inhaling their scents, cataloging their plants, and memorizing the shapes of rock and leaf and wing and hoof. 

Seeing the valley through Tom's eyes on that leisurely field trip reminded me of what a magical place South Fork is. The high mesas, still snow-spotted , the deep canyons incised between them, the tall and twisting sagebrush along the river, the wildflowers… Some places etch themselves in memory, and no matter how long passes between visits, still welcome you back with a kind of cell-deep familiarity. South Fork is that place for me, the heart of the country I call home, a landscape as much a part of me as I am a part of it. 

Another afternoon, we explored McCullough Peaks, the shale badlands east of town that are wild as the high mesas around South Fork, but on a smaller scale.

McCullough Peaks in spring-green finery

We saw one of the herd of feral horses who run free there, plus more pronghorn; plump sage-grouse hens, horned larks, lark sparrows, and other grassland birds; dozens of kinds of wildflowers, and by Tom's count, at least four rainbows (I didn't count: I was driving). We also braved some fierce mud, but we and Red slithered back to the pavement just fine at the end of the drive, exhilarated by our immersion in the nearby wild.

Indian paintbrush (Castilleja angustifolia var. dubia) and big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) in McCullough Peaks

On Monday, I took a whole day off and drove Tom on a big circuit of some of the most dramatic landscapes my home territory offers outside Yellowstone (which he had toured on his own the previous two days). We headed north to Red Lodge, Montana, and then followed US Highway 212 south up Rock Creek and over the Beartooth Plateau, the largest contiguous alpine plateau in North America. 

The Beartooth Highway, an All-American Scenic Highway, switch-backing up the wall of Rock Creek to reach the plateau top.

Tom marveled at the switch-backing road as we ascended the near-vertical wall above Rock Creek, and then goggled at the sweeping views from up top, the dramatic glacier-carved geology, the crazy skiers hurtling down snow-filled chutes, the drifts walling the road in places (at 10,000 to 11,000 feet, winter lingers on the top of the plateau ), and the miniature tundra wildflowers, some just an inch or two high, dotting the wind-blown expanses. 

Spring comes slowly to the alpine tundra at nearly 11,000 feet elevation near Beartooth Pass on the plateau.

Looking south from the Beartooth Plateau at the peaks North Absaroka Wilderness.

We followed Highway 212 off the south edge of the plateau into the North Absaroka Range east of Yellowstone, took a detour to tiny Cooke City for huckleberry ice cream bars and a stroll among the historic buildings. After that break, we turned back east and followed the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River downstream toward its dramatic canyon, passing Sunlight Basin, a long valley that cuts into the heard of the North Absarokas. We turned aside at Antelope Mountain to take a Jeep road as close as we could get to the edge of the canyon. (That's Red near Antelope Mountain in the photo at the top of the post.)

After crossing Sunlight Creek, we took the switchbacks up and over Dead Indian Pass, and back to the Bighorn Basin. The name of the pass between mountains and plains most likely honors Chief Joseph and his band of Nez Perce Indians, who fooled the US Army by descending from that ridge into the near-impassable Clarks Fork Canyon in their attempt to escape to Canada in 1877. (The Army caught them a month later, and "escorted" the 700 Nez Perce and their 2,000 horses to captivity at the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho, a story that hurts my heart.)

The view from the top of Dead Indian Hill toward the plains of the Bighorn Basin, where the Army waited for the Nez Perce.  
By the time we got home Monday evening, I was worn out from that long but glorious field trip. And Tom was hooked on the beauty of northwest Wyoming.

Looking at the photos I shot on our various field trips, I am struck by two things: First, how fortunate I am to to be able to spend time in this extraordinary country. And second, how much these wild mountains, valleys, and sagebrush basins shaped who I am, how I live, and my vocation of writing and healing this world. 

Especially South Fork, the valley which opens wide its arms and welcomes me like a lover, suffusing my cells with that unmistakable combination of comfort and sheer joy that says simply, "home."

The South Fork Road, arrowing my heart home…