Snakes In The Grass

So the other day all the CSU grads are sitting in the office chitchatting about reptiles. The reason we're doing this is that one of us (not me) has a bearded dragon that's supposed to come in to be seen for lethargy.

"Supposedly going to come in," said that doc darkly.
"What; they usually don't?" I said.
"No. Usually they waited too long and it dies before they get here," he said.

Hmm. Bummer, man. But I guess I can see it might be harder to determine if your lizard (which spends 80% of its time basking or lying still) is lethargic, as compared to, say, your Border collie, which spends 80% of its time trying to force you (or anyone with an opposable thumb) to play ball, drive to the stock pens, or throw a frisbee. The other 20% of its time is, of course, spent trying to force the cat to lie absolutely still by force of liberal application of the BC Eye.

Now, this is a little embarrassing to admit, but I didn't actually know off the top of my head what a bearded dragon looks like. Turns out they look lind of a lot like horned toad lizards, one of which we used to have when I was little. Not identical, by any means, but there is a sort of general resemblance in a spiky sort of way. So then we got to talking about Lizards We Have Known And Loved, (some of which were unfortunately suffocated by having a 13# cat sit on them when they escaped from their cages). This led naturally to a discussion of various Snakes We Have Known And Loved Or Possibly Just Been Really Really Scared Of.

On the "scared of" side, we have the rattlesnake. Or at least, I have the rattlesnake. I grew up in an area where it was not at all unreasonable to find Western diamondbacks. When I was in vet school, for instance, I used to love to hike a trail that skirted the foothills for miles. There were numerous places where the trail climbed up into the hog-back ridges that formed the leading edge of the Rockies. There were others where the trail ran along the base of the first ridge, or in the cleft between that ridge and the next, or up along the second ridge. You could choose any of the three - or all, since the trails intersected frequently as they serpentined along miles of Front Range.

One time, I took my little Merrik dog along the trail between the ridges, hiking with a girlfriend of mine. Back in the day, that was an off-leash area, an outside-city-limits trail that had no leash law. I always took a leash for just-in-case, but I'd never needed one.

We'd gone 3 miles out and one back, returning to our start-point. The trail ran through a fairly large prairie dog town near the our start-point, and a small one about two miles later. Merrik was a prairie dog fan in a big way, but so long as we were moving, she could not be bothered to go into the towns, so we'd passed the big town once and were passing the little town for the second time without her showing the slightest interest.

Suddenly Merrik veered toward the nearest prairie dog mound. I frowned; not her usual move. Squinting, I could see she was staring intently at something on the ground, her nose stretched out and sniffing, but I could not see what had so caught her attention.

And then I heard the rattle.

It's an unmistakable sound, and chilling. All the more so when you see the muscular dust-brown body beginning to gather and coil, and your little 20# dog mere inches from the arrowhead wedge of the snake's face.

"Merrik!" I called, my heart taking a leap and beginning to race. She twitched an ear back at me, but withdrew her questing snout not one inch. "Merrik, come!" I yelled sternly. I was afraid to move, lest I upset the delicate balance between dog and snake and encourage a strike, but the pitch and intensity of the rattle was rising, and my anxiety along with it. "Merrik! You get over here right now!" I screamed, heart in my throat. Fear had drawn my vocal cords tight as a bow-string, and my voice hit some peculiar register I'd never heard before. Even to my own ears I sounded strange, tense and pitchy, throttled by terror.

My mind is darting ahead, shuffling through options. If Merrik gets snake-bitten, how long can I run, carrying her, along the trail? Some of it is rocky, some is level; can I run two miles in hiking boots with a 20# dog in my arms? But while my mind is leaping forward, my feet are rooted to the ground, my knees locked against the urge to either run forward to help my dog, or buckle entirely. I try to calm my voice, which right now is so strange and anxious that Merrik is uncertain if she should come to me - or move away, which would take her closer to the meancing coils of the snake.

"Merrik," I say, trying for steady, trying for calm, "you come here, now. Right now. Come."

Merrik glances at me, her head cocked; she knows something is very wrong, and the strangled tension in my voice is not reassuring her. The snake is rattling fast, an ominous buzz. I can see it still coiled, thick and muscular, on the prairie dog mound. A rattler can strike about a third of its length, and Merrik is no more than six inches away, well inside the fatal strike zone; based on its girth I estimate the snake to be at least 4 feet long. I can see its head weaving slightly, as if in indecision; perhaps it's making testing feints, to see which way its target will leap. I force myself to stand absolutely still, vibrating with tension but afraid to move.

"Merrik!" I call sharply, aiming for command, and thank you God, she backs off a step, two steps. "Good girl! Come!" I say, my voice starting to shake, but dropping into a more normal register. Merrik hears the relief in it. She gives me a tentative wag and turns tail on the snake, trotting to my feet.

"Good girl, good little dog," I praise her, kneeling in the dirt of the trail and scooping her to my chest, corralling her while I grope through her fur for her collar. "Shit. Shit. That was way too close," I say breathlessly as I fumble with her leash, my fingers clumsy with reaction. Finally I snap it onto her collar and get shakily to my feet.

"Wow," my friend says. "That could have sucked."
"Yeah," I agree, snuggling my dog and petting her, praising her, rewarding her with voice and hand for coming when I asked her to, despite the fascination of the snake. "I don't ever want to get that close again. I like snakes okay, but I like diamondbacks best from a distance. Like a mile."

A year or two later I was hiking with Merrik along a different stretch of the same trail, about 3 miles north of that spot. It was early, shortly after six. The day smelled glorious, sweet pine and sage and fresh air; the scent of the morning before it is sullied by the dust of the day. The air was cool and soft on my skin. I was hiking switchbacks, climbing the flank of the foothills. I was on a northbound stretch, the early sun lighting the right side of me, casting sharp shadows on the slope to my left. I'd hit my stride and was going along steadily, but of course nowhere near as fast as agile little Merrik. She'd trot along ahead of me, turning to look back every thirty of forty feet; if she lost me around a switchback, she'd back-trail until she saw me, pause 'til I caught up a little, and then trot on.


By then my legs were starting to feel warm and limber, and I was starting to breathe harder with the effort of the slope. The back of my neck was just starting to feel damp under the hank of my ponytail, but in the cool of the day that was delicious, soothing, entirely lovely. It was a clear morning; I could look up the front range for miles, until the hog-back ridges faded into the blue haze of distance. Every twig and blade of grass was outlined with razor-edged clarity. By then it was just on a quarter to seven and I had the trail to myself.


Ahead of me Merrik trotted, her tail waving jauntily above her back. I saw her look down to her right, the down-slope side, for a few steps. Whatever it was didn't hold her interest; she didn't even break stride. But I wondered what she was looking at, so when I caught up to that part of the trail, I looked too.


Below me, laid out straight alongside the trail and less than a foot off it, was a dusty brown column as thick as my arm. A microsecond later I saw the diamond pattern decorating its length, saw the scales shift as the rattler drew a breath. Too cold yet to coil, it hissed, a long sinister sound of warning.


Suddenly I am flying up the trail, taking long bounding leaps with no effort at all. My leg muscles are abruptly full of power, driving me up the slope like I'm Carl Lewis getting ready to do a world-record long-jump. I round the switch-back, leaping up a ragged stairway of exposed rock, fully aware that the next arm of the switchback is only yards from the snake - and that the snake is getting warmer with each passing second. Merrik is runing ahead of me, surprised at my pace, but perfectly happy to gallop up the trail.


When I feel I've put enough distance between myself and the diamondback I slow to a shaky walk. Merrik and I are both panting - but she is grinning happily, and I'm feeling a bit white around the lips. I scan the trail ahead carefully; the snake had been laying at the sedgey verge of the trail, in vegetation no more than 8 inches tall. Ahead I have pinyon pine, ponderosas, wild rose, sage and prairie grasses; the trail is shadier and the vegetation higher. I might be wrong, but it's been my expereince that rattlers prefer rocky or open areas, and certainly they'll warm up faster in the sun than in the shade. My racing heart starts to slow. I draw in a deeper breath, feeling the jangle of adrenaline start to smooth out.

Ahead is an open benchy rock with no good snake hidey-holes, shaded by a large ponderosa. I call Merrik to me, check carefully for lurking rattlers, and sit. I pour water into a baggie for her and hold it open so she can drink. I sit in shade, letting the cool of the stone seep through my Levi's and into my flesh, and I take out my journal and my camera. The town is spread below me. The trail is still deserted. Merrik perches at watch beside me, her little raspberry pink tongue hanging out as she pants happily. She surveys the landscape with her one remaining eye bright and shining through the silky silver waves of her bangs. I scribble in my journal, drink, try (and fail) to catch a photo of a red-tailed hawk gliding overhead.


Call me crazy, but I decide to find an alternative route back down to my car. I decide I'll hike along the trail that runs just below the ridge, hike south past the parking area, then descend and pick up the lower trail and loop back north to the parking area. There. That won't take me anywhere near the giant rattler.

It will, however, take us right on past his younger, smaller and much more lively cousin. Which unfortunate fact I discover right about the time I walk abeam of him as he suns himself on a ledge about level with my shoulder. Oh, goodie. I'm nearly face-to-face with a pissed-off diamondback. Thank God I didn't use that handy ledge to set my camera on whilst doffing my pullover.

After discovering that I can, indeed, do the Carl Lewis impersonation on a downhill slope - and without crashing face-first amongst the rocks or ripping out both my cruciate ligaments, much to my surprise - I am starting to feel a little demoralized. I mean, how is this fair? I've gone to all the trouble of getting up at the thin edge of the day so I can have a nice, peaceful hike, maybe an all-morning ramble through the foothills with my little dog. And here it's been only two hours and I've encountered two rattlesnakes. What's up with that? And since this seems my day to be a diamondback magnet, how many more do I feel like meeting up close and personal?

I park my rump on a carefully-inspected rock standing at a trail fork to ponder this question. Maybe there aren't aany more up here. Maybe I've just been unlucky. Maybe it's becuase I was the first one out and about, rousting snakes. Maybe there is a benefit to going later in the day; the trails are more populated, but (no doubt as a consequence) have fewer snakes. I glance up. Case in point: here come some hikers now. They nod cheerfully at me, a young woman and two young men.

"How's it going?" one of them says. Before I can reply he waves at his back-trail. "We just saw a rattler that way, so you might want to go another way."
Crap. "I just saw one up there on that rock ledge," I say, pointing.
"Daaaaaang," says the girl, drawing it out. "We were going to hike over the ridge to the reservoir." She sounds disappointed. I shrug.
"Might be gone by now," I say.
"Do you think so?" she asks hopefully. I make a face.
"Not really," I say.

They look at each other. Without another word they take the only remaining trail option, leading down the ridge. I give them a few minutes out of politeness and then follow. They intersect with another trail and veer back up, taking the longer (but hopefully less snakey) way around. I decide I've had enough of the adrenaline squeezes for the day and continue on down the trail and back to my car. We can hike another day, a day when I am not such a magnet for pit vipers.

Apart from the venomous aspect, I actually find snakes rather appealing. The smoothly laquered feel of their scales is rather pleasant, as is their intricate overlap, a pattern similar to that of bird feathers. Some of them come in absolutely gorgeous colors or snappy-looking patterns. I have a particular fondness for the whip-slender, vividly green insect-eating snakes you can find in northern Colorado - partly because they eat insects (cool by me) and partly because they are so vibrantly, brilliantly green. Parakeet green. New-leaf green.

I happened to see one of these one morning on a hike (with a different girlfriend this time). It was relatively early ans still cool. I was hiking in point and saw the slender drape of the snake ribboned gracefully over the branches of a shrub by the trail.

"Oooh, look! Pretty!" I said, pointing it out to my friend, who promptly screamed and jumped off the trail. I turned to look at her in bemusement. She's a level-headed, competent, cheerful sort, and this was most unexpected.

"Sorry," I say, rather contritely. "I didn't realize you were afraid of snakes."
"I'm not," she says, shaking her head and laughing a little at herself as she climbs back onto the trail. "I just wasn't expecting it, that's all."

"Oh, okay" I say. "I won't make you look next time." We pass the snake - still drowsing in the cool morning, waiting for the sun to warm him for another day of hunting crickets and grasshoppers. We resume our hike, chatting sometimes and others not. It's a pretty morning, warm and peaceful, and I'm enjoying myself, the hike, the morning, the companionship. It's twenty minutes later that I see another green snake, this one laying in a bare patch a few feet from trailside.

I won't say anything this time, I resolve, not wanting to startle my hiking buddy. I stride right on by - and she screams and jumps off the trail.

I turn to look at her, trying hard to keep from grinning, but my eyebrows can't be stopped from climbing my forehead in inquiry. Well? I am asking her. I didn't say a thing this time, and you still screamed. What's the right move here? Point them out, or don't point them out? I am pressing my lips together to keep from laughing, but it's a wasted effort. She's laughing at herself.

"Okay, I know," she says, shaking her head. "Just point 'em out, I guess, and I'll deal with it."

It may - or may not - be worthy of note that Merrik barely even glanced at the green snakes. Evidently snakes are only interesting if they might actually, you know, kill you.

I don't know. It's no doubt cowardly - and perhaps embarrasing, that I am less bold that a 12-year-old, one-eyed, twenty-pound poodle cross - but I'm going to have to say that when it comes to face-to-face encounters with reptiles on the trail... I think I'll go with the boring ones, thanks.

Adventures At Sheep Camp: Shutting It Down

Maggie's physical therapy was progressing. She could flap her hand through about a third of her normal range of motion, and it didn't point so far to the side any more. She got a new splint - less angulated laterally - and more exercises from the physiotherapists.


I, in contrast, was getting stronger leg muscles, but my knees were starting to be a problem. In the main they don't trouble me much, but the constant up-and-down of hiking the Mesa - and the hard, shaley surface - was beginning to tell. The downhills were the worst, with the constant pounding, and I went down any number of steep grades on my rump, sacrificing the seat of my Levi's to spare my joints. This worked well enough, although it was a dusty option; however, even the mighty Maggie resorted to it sometimes. It made for some interesting pictures; there was one, taken with the camera timer, of Maggie and I leaning against a fence rail, both our seats completely crusted in dirt. Oh, well; it was expedient, if undignified.


One day when Maggie was busy with the doctors, I farmed out to another researcher, one out of Rifle district that was doing stream-flow analysis. This seemed like an interesting enough diversion; something I hadn't done before, at any rate. We drove out to a high mountain meadow that was hammocked between two saddle-back ridges. It was a lovely spot. The ridges were crested with the rough red rock of the area, the ridge-flanks were clothed in deep green pinyon and the silver-green shimmer of aspen. We swished through thigh-high grasses scattered with wildflowers. Hummingbirds and butterflies darted across our path, and the sky was a deep, rich turquoise overhead.


Our stream wound down a rocky bed, heavily thicketed with aspen and cottonwood and the dense, springy canes of willow and Russian olive - invasives to that part of the world. We bushwhacked through the tough, resilient undergrowth to the stream-bed - which was completely dry.


"Well, this ought to be easy," I muttered. No water equals zero flow rate. Never the less, my fearless leader handed me the tape measure and took the end of it, tromping upstream the required 50 feet, and marked her spot. Normally she would drop a marker and I'd count off the time it took to reach me, thus determining the flow rate of the stream. In this case, there was nothing to measure - except the distance between the two researchers. We bouldered up the stream bed a little way, marked off our 50 feet again, observed the zero flow rate, and recorded it. I gathered that normally there would be three observations made and those three averaged to get the overall rate of the stream, but strangely, we called it good after two. Go figure.


Oh, well. It was a pretty walk on a lovely sunny day in the Rockies. What could be better than that?


Well, one thing: I could have had hiking boots that did not feel like they were made expressly for me by Torquemada as a torture device. The footwear, I will admit, was my fault. I'd noticed, in all my hiking on the Mesa, my lightweight hikers were not really equal to the terrain. They lacked any sort of shank in the foot-bed, which is great for light trail hiking: Such hikers are lightweight, comfortable, and cool. However, in the steep, loose-shale terrain of the Mesa, they offered too little in the way of ankle and sole support, could not be kicked toe-in to the shale for better footing, and did not provide any sort of platform to step up on, should you get an adequate toe-hold.


Consequently, I'd phoned my mother and asked her to ship me my heavy duty, steel-shanked hiking boots. Dutifully, she'd sent them, and I'd donned them that very morning for our foray into stream-flow analysis. It turns out, however, that somewhere between the ages of 18 and 28 my feet had made a few changes of which they had not bothered to inform me. As a result, my perfectly-broken-in, uber-comfy heavy hikers were now keeping company with items like the iron maiden and thumb-screws, in terms of their physical comfort.


Ah, well. It was easy hiking, and ultimately not that big a deal. I'd just have to get another pair of heavy hiking boots and break them in, that's all.


We bushwhacked back out of the stream bed thickets and into the hot sunny day, swishing through the tall grasses on our way to the rig, thence to drive to another stream. I was watching brilliant blue darning needles darting over the grasses when a sudden breath of wind lifted the hair away from my neck. I glanced up; the breeze was cool and soft-edged, sweet with the scent of rain. As often happens in the mountains, there was an abrupt darkening of the sky as a sudden storm materialized over the saddlebacks.


No worries. I like rain just fine, and I dearly love the smell of it on the wind.


A flash of lightning flickered inside the slatey belly of the clouds. Automatically, I counted: eight seconds, then the sullen roll of thunder. I made that as being a bit over a mile away. I glanced at my fearless leader, currently crouched at half-height, waiting tensely for the rumbling to die.


Hmm. We are in the lowest part of the saddle, with high, treed ridges on either side, and occasional large ponderosas and cottonwoods scattered here and there about our meadow, even the smallest of which is easily twice our height. I'll grant you it's not impossible that we might be hit by lightning, but given that the storm is a good mile distant and we are only about 300 yards from the rig - and also far the shortest things in the meadow, except for the wildflowers - I kind of think we're reasonably safe. None the less, I dutifully pause behind my companion twice more as she crouches with each dull flash from within the clouds. These aren't ground strikes, and I can see the clouds being borne left to right before us; the storm is no closer to us, and we're a lot closer to the truck. I'd be more concerned if there were ground strikes - the electricity of a grounds strike can travel through the earth and up into your body - but my feet are insulated by my rubber soles, and as yet not a drop of rain has fallen on us. About round three my companion looks at me like I must be crazy. I smile at her. This does not seem to reassure her.


Unsurprisingly we make it to the truck without incident. I glance over; my companion does seem sincerely relived, blowing out a tense breath when she slams the door of the rig. She glances at me; she looks slightly rattled. I keep a poker face; I'm not sure if she's excessively nervous, or if I'm excessively foolhardy. Either way, I figure neither of us is going to convince the other to her point of view.


"We're going to bail on the other stream today," she says. "I'm not going to hike around in a lightning storm."


"Okay," I agree with equanimity, settling into the bench seat and gazing out at the day, now sharp with contrast in the changed light. Everything seems razor-edged, vivid, somehow more three-dimensional than it was an hour ago. I love that; I wish I knew how it is that a simple change of light can make it so.


We trundle along the dirt road, throwing up plumes of dust in our wake, despite the dampening humidity that is beginning to settle the air. After a few minutes scattered drops of rain begin to strike our windshield. The scent of rain on the dusty road is rich and intoxicating. I crank my window open a few inches, inhale deeply, and relax with a sigh.

"Sorry to waste your day," apologizes my companion.

"Not a waste," I smile, letting the beauty of the day fill my senses, buoy my spirits, saturate me to my soul.

I had one last adventure waiting for me out in Western Colorado. There was a mountain goat census scheduled while I was on Maggie's project. This involved driving to the site, some way distant, and then up the mountain to ten thousand feet. From there we hiked up a little higher, then struck out into the craggy granite fields along the steep sides of the mountain. We went in pairs, with binoculars and field notebooks, our only goal to spot and count goats. I paired up with a slightly grizzled DOW veteran, a sturdy, calm-tempered fellow who looked like he could reasonably scale a fourteener before lunch every day. His easy temper was restful, and I hiked out in his wake in a cheerful frame of mind.

It was cold up on the mountain; a faint drizzle fell intermittently, and a low chill haze hung over us, only twenty or thirty feet over our heads: The belly of a cloud settled on the flank of the mountain. Every so often a thin veil of fog would shred off the bottom of the foggy grey ceiling hanging above us, drifting by above our heads, hinting at invisible air currents. The terrain was composed partly of narrow game trails winding between sharp granite outcrops and mats of small, tenacious alpine plants; these were luxurious compared to what I was used to on the Mesa, in part because stepping on them did not cause them to shift downhill. Less luxurious were the long stretches where the trails disappeared entirely, and we found ourselves traversing large rocky seas of broken granite, lichened and sharp-edged tumbles of stone stacked haphazardly wherever gravity dictated. The footing wasn't really all that bad - the stone was rough, so traction was good - but sometimes a rock would shift unexpectedly underfoot. Furthermore, my leader was longer-legged than I, and the size of the boulders was challenging for my shorter stride and sore knees. Still, I would catch up when he paused to glass, and would spend a few minutes glassing as well, covering slopes he wasn't.

That strategy worked pretty well until I stepped on a bit of rock that tilted abruptly under my boot, twisting my right knee. I caught myself with one hand, and the granite rocked back into place with a sharp, echoing clack that made my leader pause and look back.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yes," I said automatically, taking a step. Shit. "No," I amended, leaning down to rub at my knee. I tried another step. My knee sent a sharp, lancing pain up my leg and I winced, grimacing.

"There's a great glassing spot just around the side of the mountain. What do you think?" asked my companion.

I looked ahead at the terrain ahead, trying to judge it with my eyes. I might make it around the bend... but then I'd have to make it back again. I looked back the way we'd come.

"Doubtful," I said at last, meeting his eyes. He nodded philosophically.

"Think you can make it back on your own from here?" he asked.

"Sure," I nodded. "I'll just go slow. You okay on your own?"

"No problem," he said.

"Sorry," I told him. He shrugged, smiled.

"Happens," he said, and watched as I turned gingerly around, sorting out my balance on the tumbled stone and taking baby steps. "You'll do," he said, and I heard the muffled clicks of the rocks as he began making his surefooted way over them.

It was impossible to get lost; far below me I could see the gravelly stripe of the road, the matchbox shapes of the vehicles parked along the side of it. I had only to traverse back across the rocks, pick up the serpentine of the game trail again, and follow it to the main trail. From there I could walk back down to where the vehicles were parked a half mile or so below.

By the time I made it to the main trail, it was raining in earnest. I had my DOW ball cap fending the rain off my face, the hood of my Gore-tex jacket pulled up over the top of it to keep the rain off my neck. Under my jacket I had a polar fleece pullover, and I'd zipped my Gore-tex up when it started to rain, so I wasn't really cold; still, I could feel the chill pressing down against my shoulders, nibbling experimentally at my skin, seeing if it could get a deeper bite. My hair spilled out from under my hood, hanging in spiralled rat-tails over the zipper of my coat. My nose was cold and my knee ached, sending me small sharp stabs of irritation at every step, but my main problem was that I felt bad about bailing off the mountain. I hate letting people down. On the other hand, I was pretty sure that not bailing would have meant that the other researcher would have had to babysit me, and maybe help rescue me off the mountain. Of the two, that was the worse option, so I'd just have to live with the guilt.

By the time I made it back to the vehicles, most of the other goat scouts were arriving as well, driven off the mountain by worsening visibility. Several - including my companion - had spotted goats. This he informed me of when he caught up to me.

"There were four of them, two nannies and two kids, right around the bend," he said.

"Dang it!" I exclaimed. He smiled.

"There'll be other goats," he said. "No sense pushing it and breaking your neck trying to be a hero."

Well, no. But still: It would've been really really cool to see them in the wild.

On the other hand: I could've been shades of Maggie falling off a cliff, big concussion, broken bones, luxations, lacerations, death, destruction, war, devastation and horror. Or something like that.

It wasn't long after that that I needed to go back to the U and pick up the reins of my own project. Maggie still needed some help in the field for another three weeks or so, but she tag-teamed out a few more volunteers to bridge the transition. My own transition back to civilization took nearly that long; I had the worst time adjusting to sleeping indoors after that. It seemed dreadfully confined and claustrophobic. On my way back to the Front Range I stopped for two nights at a friend's place in Denver.

Me: D'you think it'd be okay for me to roll out my sleeping bag and sleep in your back yard?

Him: It's central Denver. The fence is only four feet high. There was a major drug bust two blocks over last night. What do you think?

Me: Ummm... maybe?

Him: You're an idiot.

Okay, I guess that'd be a "no".

Oh, well. I did eventually regain my ability to sleep indoors - a lucky thing, considering the weather in Alaska. I'll never lose the pleasure in sleeping out, though - that's something that either lodges deep in your being, or else exists there already - and once awakened, never really goes completely back to sleep. An unexpected discovery, but not an unwelcome one. There were a lot of little discoveries like that: Little atavistic reminders that for all our civilization we are at the heart of it not completely tame. It may take a few days, but our brains are all too willing to shift from navigation by street sigh to navigation by terrain, from schedules on clocks to ones on daylight, from searching for what we expect to seeing what is really there, right in front of our eyes, undetected because we have not yet learned the search image for it. Because we have not yet learned to relax our gaze and let our brains make sense of it for us without us forcing it, controlling it, leading it into being.

I wonder, now, thinking about this, if that is not where I learned some of the skills that stand me in such good stead as a vet: The willingness to see what the animal is telling me, rather than forcing it to conform to what I expect the diagnosis to be; the willingness to subordinate my expectations to the truth, to follow where the case leads me instead of letting my intellect try to lead it where I think it's going to go. Maybe I had those skills before, in some form, and I just noticed them on the Mesa.

Either way, I owe Maggie some thanks for letting me join her in her adventures at sheep camp.

Adventures At Sheep Camp: Learning Lessons

When last we saw our heroines, they were spotting Bighorns on an arid, sunny ridge atop the Mesa.

We only stayed up on the Mesa for a few days on that particular trip. After buttoning down our base camp, we hiked back down to the rig, drove back to town and retrieved our dogs. At that time I had a little dog named Merrik, a little poodle-terrier mix. She resembled Toto on stilts: she had a loosely-curled silver-grey outer coat, a dense, velvety and inky black undercoat, shiny dark eyes, big pointy bat ears and enormous charm. She was deep-chested and wasp-waisted, and had a surprisingly graceful, gazelle-like neck (only visible when she'd been clipped, since in her long-haired state she had an enormous ruff of grizzled coat around her neck). Maggie had an English setter, silky-eared and sweet, a restful dog.

Back at the bunkhouse we showered and changed into clothes that weren't grimy with Mesa dirt and sweat and insect repellent. We were in town for a couple of days, and then we collected the first of our volunteers: A a married couple, locals. I forget now how they ended up on Maggie's radar to volunteer, but they were capable, pleasant, useful sorts, practical and down to earth. They stayed with us for two days, plus the hiking-up day. The husband, an experienced hunter and camper, put his back into our latrine site, excavating a large rock that had been foiling me, and the wife cobbled together something a little tastier than we'd managed for dinner: I don't know what it was called, but there was broccoli, and cheese, and some kind of sausage. It cooked up in one pan, and it was perhaps the only time we cooked up on the Mesa (at least so far as I recall.) They took turns leading our spotting forays, reading the topo map and scoping out good glassing sites. We spent one afternoon perched in a row in the shade of a big pine only yards from a 300-foot drop-off, passing the scope between us: taking turns peering between the needled branches at a small group of sheep, basking on the sun-struck shoulder of the ridge opposite. The air was hot and still, and small trails of sweat rolled slowly down my neck. Every so often a faint, hesitant breath of a breeze stirred the oppressive air, prompting Maggie and I to shed out hats and push our hair up off our sticky napes. Small butterflies drifted by from time to time, and the ever-present gnats managed to find us, biting and stinging - but even so, it was a pleasant way to spend a day, breathing in the heat, the resinous scent of evergreens, the smell of sage and dust.

The sheep weren't the only thing to see on the Mesa. There were elk and deer, cougars and bears (of which we only ever saw scat), and birds of all descriptions, including a surprising number of hummingbirds. And of course there were plants - aspen and evergreens, shrubs and flowers. When bored, Maggie would regale me with species names of the local plants, or pick some bit of vegetation and make me identify it. As an undergrad, I'd majored in biology, with a concentration in immunology. She'd majored in forestry. Consequently, I knew more about T-cells (a fairly useless subject, up on the Mesa) and she knew more about the local flora (much more germane). I was pretty good on the genus and species names of the fauna, but I could not tell a grass from a sedge when we started, and while I knew which were pines and which were spruces, I couldn't say why this one was spruce and that one pine.

It was an enjoyable adjunct to the hiking, but one thing about Maggie: You knew there was going to be a quiz later, so you'd better be paying attention. At any time she might pluck a strand of some grass-like thing at your feet and demand that you tell her if it's a grass or a sedge, or insist that you shake hands with the evergreen to your left and tell her if it's a fir or a spruce. (In case you should ever need to know this, just remember: Sedges have edges, and while firs are friendly, spruce are spiny. Oh, and if you should have to identify a Doug fir, the scientific name is Pseudotsuga menziesii. I know this is likely to come up at your very next cocktail party, so take note.)

After the married couple left us, we had a volunteer from Germany who we called Pooh-Bear. We also called him TimberBeast, because things that Maggie and I would go around, he would just hike right over: Rocky outcrops, downed trees that were level with the button-flies of our Levi's, what have you. Maggie and I: trudge around the obstacle. TimberBeast: Plant one foot on top and step up on it like it's no more than 6 inches off the ground.

Pooh-Bear had other skills. His first evening on the Mesa he took our spotting scope and tripod, fiddled around for approximately 90 seconds, and then invited us to look. We did. He had Saturn perfectly lined up in our sights. Through the spotting scope, the colors were washed to ivory, but despite that, it was in some way like looking at the Bighorns through the scope: Somehow much more immediate and real than seeing it on TV or in even the most detailed photographs. It's as if seeing it in person, even through the remove of the scope, somehow imparts the emotional reality of the thing, not just the intellectual reality. We already knew there was such a thing as Saturn; we'd seen close-up pictures, learned its name in grade school. But now we have the emotional knowledge of it; seen it hanging in the sky, seen its rings tilted to catch the light... and somehow, it's different. More.

Pooh-Bear, apart from being amazingly strong, was endlessly cheerful and even-tempered. We discovered quickly that humor is sufficiently cultural that a great deal of what was funny to us made no sense to him, and vice versa, but he was easy-going about it, and tolerated our attempts to explain why something was funny with good grace, even if it still made no sense to him. His English was good, both intelligible and pretty comprehensive, and our German non-existent - but he and I both spoke French, so sometimes we conversed in French to level the field a little. That way neither of us was using our native language, so the disadvantage was equal. Or at least somewhat equal, because if one of us didn't know the right word in French, we still had to revert to English to go around it.

With Pooh-Bear on the Mesa, we were able to split up a little. He and Maggie - both stronger hikers than I - would go out on long point-hikes, and I'd go on shorter hikes, seeking the small bunches of sheep nearer to hand. About this time I noticed an interesting thing. When I'd first come onto the Mesa, I knew which way was north, but I was otherwise entirely dependant on the topo maps to navigate. But after even a few days out in the middle of nowhere, the terrain starts to fit itself into the mapping function in your head. What used to tell you "Go down to the Starbuck's and then take the stairs to the second floor and the office is third on the right", now tells you "Aim to to left of that shrub and then when you see that one rock, take a 90% left turn and that'll take you to the trail." Somehow I wasn't expecting that. Don't ask me why.

I also noticed that I really preferred sleeping outside to sleeping in the tent. I don't know why this is, but it's the same as it was when we were rafting the San Juan: I just couldn't see the point of the tent. It wasn't raining, it wasn't cold. Why sleep inside? Accordingly I unfurled my sleeping bag at the foot of a scrubby little bush, taking advantage of the slight rise at the root of it to use as a pillow. One morning when Maggie woke before me she was sitting in the doorway of the tent and looked up to see a young bull elk peering over the bush at me, inspecting my sleep. He watched me for several minutes, blinking his large, dark eyes at me, turning his ears to catch my breathing, his nostril sifting my dreams from the air. At last he sighed, relaxed, wandered off.

Like a dope, I slept through the whole thing.

We stayed on the Mesa for eight days with Pooh-Bear, and our last day was a nine-hour hike out. By the time we got to town it was early dusk, and we were hungry, tired and filthy. Neither Maggie nor I paused to collect our dogs; we'd shower and eat first, and round them up after dinner. Ravenous, we decided we'd go to the bar for pizza. Trading hiking boots for tennis shoes and grubby field-wear for clean clothes, we walked to the bar. It was early; only three or four of the Northern Geo guys had yet showed up, but they had the jukebox blasting, and they'd engaged several boisterous locals in a game of 8-ball. They gave us waves and grins as we came in. We took a table at the back of the bar - furthest from the door, but closest to the bar (and hence our food). Someone else had a pizza in the oven ahead of us, so we ordered a pitcher to occupy us while we waited.

I happened to be sitting with my back to the bar, facing the door. I saw it open, and suddenly there's my little dog loping into the bar, her head turning side to side to search. She sees me and her ears flatten with delight and she races over, leaping into my lap.

"Merrik! What are you doing here?" I asked her, quite dumbfounded. Maggie and Pooh-Bear stared at us with identical expressions of open-mouthed surprise - doubtless the same expression I wore. Merrik squirmed happily , tail wagging madly, and offered me a bright-eyed grin, panting with cheerful excitement.

The couple who'd opened the door sauntered up. "I take it that's your dog," the man observed, amused.

"Yes - but where'd you find her?" I asked, completely bemused. She'd been at the babysitter's, confined in their yard or inside their house, to the best of my knowledge.

"She was sitting outside the door, staring at it. When we opened it, she darted in between our feet. We almost stepped on her," the woman said.

"Whoa," said Maggie, raising her eyebrows. She had to be thinking the same thing I was: How did Merrik know which day to escape, and why would she come looking for me at the bar? We'd never brought her there. Why wasn't she waiting for me at the babysitter's, or failing that, at the bunkhouse? Those, she'd been to. We'd never even walked her past the bar, all of our main-street business being at the other end of the street.

"You're going to have to take her out of here," the bartender said, wandering up to the table. "Health codes."

"Yeah," I agreed vaguely, still wondering.

"That's almost too bad; she went to all the trouble of finding you," Maggie observed.

"Yeah," I agreed again. I set Merrik on the floor and stood up. She looked up at me, wagging her tail madly, and danced out at my side. Leashless, she could be relied upon to stick close to my side, and I walked her back to the bunkhouse and let her in to sleep on my bed. She hopped up and circled a few times, treading herself a spot on my bed, and then curled up with a contented sigh. I cuddled her for a few minutes, praising her and laughing softly to myself in lingering bemusement.

By the time I got back to the bar, the pizza was arriving at our table. We fell upon it like ravening beasts, dispatching it in record time.

"So do you think she went to the bunkhouse first, and then tracked you here?" Maggie asked me.

"Maybe," I said doubtfully. "She's kind of nose-blind," I added, and it was true: Merrik wasn't good at finding food on the floor by scent, and often had to be showed where a dropped item was.

"Plus we showered and changed before we came; you even changed your shoes," she agreed. "Plus we've never brought her here, and it's pretty noisy with the jukebox. You don't think she could have heard us talking, do you?"

"Not over the jukebox and the pool game," I said. "And how did she know when we'd be back in town?" I asked. We shook our heads.

Well. One of life's mysteries, perhaps.

The next day we drove Pooh-Bear back to Rifle. The dogs went back to the babysitters because we'd be there overnight. I felt a bit odd about taking Merrik back to the babysitter's - after all, she'd made her preferences clear - but there wasn't any option; the bunkhouse at Rifle was closely overseen, and dogs were not allowed. The babysitters - a very nice local woman and her 10-year-old son - told me they had no idea Merrik would dig her way out of the fence, and they'd repaired the fence line and laid cinder blocks over the dig spot. They promised to keep a close eye on her. Merrik liked the little boy well enough - and he was mad for her - but to be safe they took her inside.

At Rifle district we took care of various business and hobnobbed with the other students working DOW projects. Several of us went out dancing that night, Maggie and I among them, but we made an early night of it; we planned an early departure in the morning. It was about 10:30 by the time we made it to Plateau Creek, a lovely sunny Saturday morning. We cut through an alleyway that spilled out onto Main Street, heading for the post office. I was looking at Maggie, saying something, when suddenly her expression melted.

"Oh," she said, the way you do when you see something sweet and sad, and a microsecond later Merrik's feet slammed into the back of my leg. I turned and she leaped for my arms.

"Merrik! What are you doing here?" I asked her stupidly, for the second time in two days. She was squirming and whining in my arms, licking my neck and wagging her tail frantically. Some people walking down the street paused beside us.

"She was sitting out in front of the bar all night. She kept trying to go in," they said.

Well. She'd found me there once, so I guess it was worth a second try - and as it happens, it worked again, although not quite the same way.

"God, I'm so glad no one took her!" I said fervently. I'd licenced her in Plateau Creek, stitching the tag onto her harness with dental floss, but still - I would not have known where to start looking for her if someone had taken her home.

"I think some people thought about it - she's a nice little dog - but it was clear she was looking for someone, and she wasn't getting in any trouble, so we waited. She'd let people come up to her and she'd sniff them and wag her tail, but she wouldn't let anyone touch her. But as long as she wasn't in trouble, we thought we'd just watch and see. The people at the grocery across the street have been keeping an eye out," they added. "We all have."

Small towns. You gotta love that.

We had shopping to do that day and I made a point of thanking the grocers for thier kindness in watching out for my dog. The proprietors - a sixtyish couple - smiled benignly at me.

"We're getting used to her now," the husband said with a wink. "We know who she belongs with. Don't you worry none."

I was approaching the end of the time I had available to help out on Maggie's project, but I wasn't done yet, so I admit that it eased my worry some to know that little Merrik would be looked out for in case she escaped again. Naturally I'd prefer she stayed put inside the safety of the fence, but it was nice to know she had friends should she need any. But as it turned out, she never escaped again. Maybe it was better fenec repair, maybe it she felt she'd made her point... but to this day I still wonder: How did she know what day to make her first escape, and how did she find me at the bar?

I guess I'll never know.

Adventures At Sheep Camp: Battlement Base Camp

When last we saw our intrepid heroines, they had just conned the Northern Geophysical crew chief into dispersing their cubies all over Battlement Mesa - or at least, one of them had. The other one pretty much just distracted the remaining crew so that the first one could get down to business.

The next day we hiked up the mesa to establish our base camp.

This entailed getting up early and settling our dogs in with their respective babysitters, stashing our day pack gear in the truck and then and driving our rig as close as we could go to the mesa. There were some cow pastures to walk through on the skirts of the mesa, where a pretty little stream trickled through, irrigating the meadow and providing a mud hazard where we had to negotiate. After that we entered the trees and began winding our way up the flank of the mesa. It was a pretty summer's morning, and small blue and white butterflies flitted over the wildflowers, disappearing when we entered the relative cool of the trees.

Most of the climb - and climb it was - was mercifully shaded by spruce and aspen. Sometimes we found ourselves out in the sun on hot, shaley scree. Every so often we'd pause for a minute or two, mainly so I could catch my breath; Maggie, having worked this project for some months before her accident, was unfazed by the hike, and continues on up the slope like a pretty little machine.


A few hours later we were on the plateau atop the mesa. And there, lo and behold, is our equipment, all neatly mounded together by the NG guys who had dropped it off for us - minus five of our eight cubies, of course, since they'd already been scooped up and swooped off to their designated drop points.

First order of business was to have lunch, of course, and a little sit-down while we surveyed the terrain, scoping out the best place to put up our wall tent. The mesa top is generally flat, but not completely level; it undulates gently in the area of our base camp, and rises to a ridge to the southwest of it. Still, there is a broad, flat short-grass meadow stretching around us, dotted here and there with vigorous, wiry shrubs. Maggie and I mow down some cheese and tortillas with picante sauce, deciding on the direction we intend to orient our tent. That done, we begin scouting for tent poles: four saplings sturdy enough and long enough to form crosspoles at either end of the tent, and a fifth to act as the ridgepole down the center line of our soon-to-be home away from home. Luckily for us, there are suitable deadfalls for all positions, and only a moderate amount of hunting and poking about is required before we have dragged our lodge poles to the camp.

Now, I've never put up a wall tent before, but Maggie is an old pro. I have two good hands and Maggie doesn't, but she's not the type to stand there shouting directions while someone else does all the work - and realistically, putting up the tent poles is really a two-person job. From time to time Maggie stops to take pictures of our progress - or has me do so - because at some point she will have to present progress reports at meetings, and photos are always a welcome adjunct.

Once we have the tent hung from the ridgepole, we need to put in tent stakes. We have a supply of those, and don't need to scavenge them from the woods. The first hints of evening are coming on; the shadows are lengthening now, and the the heavy weight of the afternoon heat is lifting, softening its touch to a caress. I take the sledge and pound the first stakes in.

"Here, let me do some,"Maggie says.

"Are you sure about that?" I ask doubtfully, eyeing her splint. While the day has proven unequivocally that Maggie can hike circles around me any day of the week, she knows my upper body is stronger than hers; I'd wowed her on my second night in town by pulling the cork out of a bottle of wine (which, in my view, didn't require much effort, but was evidently something of a feat from her point of view.) "I don't mind doing them all," I say, trying to look sturdy and muscular.

"No, I want to," she says, so I hand her the sledge. Frowning with concentration, she positions her stake just so; this is something of a challenge with the splint, but she manages it after two tries. Using her unsplinted right arm, she taps the stake to seat it and then gives it a bigger swing to drive it. So far, so good. The second swing glances off the tent stake and bounces off her shin with a thump that sets my teeth on edge.

"Give me that," I tell her, snatching it out of her hand while she giggles. It's only a five-pound hammer, but still: that had to hurt. We are, admittedly, punchy after our long hike and the heat of the day (and maybe not as much sleep and a bit more alcohol the night before than would have been wise), but the whole reason I'm here is to help Maggie get out into the field again, which help she only needs in the first place because of her injury. Somehow I have an idea that letting her fracture her shin with a sledgehammer might be more or less the opposite of what I'm there to do. Call me crazy.

I pound the rest of the tent stakes in while Maggie scouts a latrine site for us. I go dig it deeper with the folding shovel while she starts organizing our gear. We have a stove for the tent - which, in this weather, is needed more as a food-safe than it is as a source of heat, but it's handy for that. When I come back over the rise to base camp, it looks secure and homey: Maggie has the tent flaps tied back and most of the gear neatly stowed inside.

The shadows are deepening now, indigo and violet, and the evening is cooling off. A brilliant scatter of stars is appearing overhead. We inflate our therma-rest pads and shake out our sleeping bags, laying them out on the roomy canvas floor of our wall tent. I don't know about Maggie, but I'm beat. Tomorrow will be our first day of scoping sheep; it's that that is on my mind as I fall asleep in the cozy gloom of our home away from home.

Barefoot in Hatcher Pass

Author's note: This is actually from several years ago, when the dogs I had were Kenzie and Finn - both still with me - and also my beloved and, sadly, departed Borderline collie, Buddy. My friend JK had with her Deshka and Keetna, Finn's parents. This story is from early July, not late May... but the recent gorgeous weather had me thinking of it. So Just pretend it's the 4th of July, a beautiful day out, and you live in Alaska...

So today JK and I took the dogs up to Archangel Falls for a hike. Gorgeous day, and not too crowded for the 4th of July, at least not when we got there... by the time we left four(+) hours later the place was jammed. But at the start it was cool and pleasant under blue skies with nary a cloud, a light breeze flirting in our hair and keeping the bugs off.

The road in is a bit bumpy (and here you should be thinking the movie "Deliverance" bumpy). I was feeling like I was back in Africa as we rattled and bounced and crept along, all limbs braced against any available stationary object. There are a couple of places where you have to get out and scout to see what your best option is for proceeding with your vehicle intact - but it's like purgatory before paradise. Once you get in there and let the dogs loose, it quickly becomes almost surrealistically gorgeous.

Finn started the day out by having some confusion as to which group of hikers was his. He went haring up the trail (as is his wont) and hooked up with a spaniel mix and five hikers. He was out of sight in moments, even with the switchbacks because the alder scrub is high enough that all you can see is people from the waist up, and the occasional flash of white tail-tip flagging above the greenery. We called for him but either he couldn't hear us or couldn't orient, because I could track him going back and forth on the trail, evidently searching for us. No success there until one of the hikers turned around and started walking him back down (bless them). Finn learns fast, though: Once we were reunited, he orbited our own group and didn't try to catch up with his new spaniel pal.

Meanwhile the rest of the dogs were racing joyfully over the hills, bounding like stags up the steep slopes, leaping like deer down the gullies, fording streams and nosing into burrows, racing up and down the trail, demented with joy and freedom. JK and I proceeded a bit more leisurely (having her three-year-old son L along), setting our pace in deference to L's short little legs. He came stumping up the trail behind us, happily playing with his blue rubber band and pointing out flowers to us with little piping squeals and crows of delight.

The trail switches back a bit along the first length of it, and then you get to a stretch where a little cataract comes bounding down the slope, sending tributaries across the trail and splitting them off to run weblike down into the gorge. You have to walk for a bit by stepping on the rocks, since the trail is basically IN the water. After that it's more up/down wandering. The dogs ran all over creation, and JK and I took turns handing L over the rough spots. He's a sturdy little guy, but it is a bit of a hike for someone whose entire body is about the length of our legs. After a while he wanted to go in the backpack, so we hoiked him up and picked up our pace a bit. JK is very fit, so the addition of 40 or so pounds of child to her back seemed to make little difference to her.

There is a bend in the trail with a little lake to pause at, where all the dogs went wading. We dawdled there for a few minutes listening to the marmots whistle sharply amongst the rocks and watching the dogs digging into burrows and loping along the shores of the lake. Buddy lost all sense of decorum about here, sliding repeatedly down the hill on his back (like ravens do). This is hilarious; his mouth is open wide in a grin of canine joy, and his eyes are white-walled with excitement. He is balanced on his narrow knife-blade spine, legs kicking to propel himself down the slope. After each pass he leaps to his feet and shakes the vegetation from his long silky coat, running back up the hill to fling himself down and go again. When he has had enough he sneezes twice - evidently as punctuation - and then goes racing around in his bounding sight-hound lope. This is beautiful to behold but silly as all hell, because he tends to bark shrilly as he does it, eyes wild with delight and gleaming with some insane inner joy that makes him look as if he is possessed.

This was all very well and good (although Buddy's sharp high-pitched barking was echoing off the rocks and could have shattered glass) but JK was eager to get around the bend. I didn't know why, having never been up this trail before, but I found out soon enough.

Around the bend the trail opened out into an enchanted valley. The lake we had just paused at was fed by a series of pools that chained together and serpentined across a green-gold meadow. The water there was a delicate translucent shade of teal, running crystalline over a bed of sand that rippled black and white under the water. We stopped and took our shoes and socks off and dangled our toes in the water. It's just come off the glacier and is only a few degrees above freezing, so while this feels incredibly good and refreshing, you can't keep your feet in for more than a few moments at a time. Your bones begin to ache almost immediately and you have to get your tootsies out of there before they go completely numb. But you can stay and dip them in and out for a while, which is lovely.

Meanwhile, the dogs - who seemed impervious to the sharp bite of the cold - are wading chest-deep in the water. Deshka, who likes to lie down in streams to cool off, wallowed in a little eddy pool. Finn and Kenzie dashed heedlessly in and out, drinking some and shaking quite a lot more all over us. Keetna was off industriously investigating the hummocks, evidently looking (without apparent success) for ground squirrels to dig out. Buddy went wading with the others, but soon developed an odd hunch to his back, stepping gingerly along with his spine raised as high as he could curve it. He's mightily deep-chested, our Buddy, with a tiny little wasp-waist that many a whippet would be envious of. All I can think is that he was trying to keep his little wanker out of the icy water. At any rate, he looked ridiculous, but as this is a particular talent of Buddy's, it was barely cause for remark.

The falls were maybe 3/4 of a mile on, above us. We picked up our shoes and wandered barefoot up the valley. If someone had told me I'd spend the day hiking barefoot in the mountains in Alaska, I'd have thought them nuts. Hiking, yes. Mountains, yes. Alaska, most definitely. But barefoot? No. Not something I associate with the wilderness here as a general thing, most especially not in mountainous terrain. But the ground was densely covered in mosses and sedges and little low-growing plants thickly scattered with red and white flowers. It was turfy underfoot, soft and springy and completely delightful on the bottoms of our feet. In some places the ground was sodden with the meltwater - much warmer amongst the plants than in the streams and pools - and it made lovely squelching noises as we walked on it. There were nice patches of mud to squish between our toes and little puddles in which to rinse them off again. The places we had to cross over the streamlets all had nice big rocks to step across on, some covered in moss and lichen, none especially sharp.

We walked up to the falls and lay down on our backs in the springy turf. JK had brought some cheese and crackers and we nibbled a bit, chatting for a while over the roar of the falls, then falling into a companionable silence. It's stunningly gorgeous up here under the deep blue sky. The foaming water of the falls is brilliantly white, against the dappled rock of the mountain. The varied green of the turf is comfortable for sitting and even more comfortable when we lie back upon it, looking at the little white puffs of cloud that have begun to scatter across the sky, letting the sun gild our faces while the breeze washes sweet and cool over our skin. It is really rather lovely up here, peaceful and still, with only a few other hikers around. It reminded me of photos I've seen of the Scottish Highlands, actually; maybe that makes sense, given the similarity of latitude and altitude. I wonder if there is the same sense of the wildness of the land there; the same feeling that if you are just a little quieter, you can hear the voice of the Earth.

Eventually it is time to pack up and go back down the trail. There is little darkness at this time of year, but L is, after all, a toddler, and while he is cheerful and pliant on our hike, there is a limit to his energies. Accordingly we gather our water and the baggies for the snacks, call the dogs - because Finn and Kenzie are still running around like maniacs - and head down the mountain. We are still carrying our shoes and socks, loath to put them back on. Part of the magic of this place transmits up through our bare soles... or maybe that should read our bare souls. Up here, there is something about the one that ties directly to the other.

Finn did have one more bout of civil disobedience when a tiny lab-cross puppy came skittering along the ridge and lolloped into our dog pack. Eventually we corralled Finn, which he took with good grace, and we gave the other hikers a head start before heading down ourselves, hoping to discourage further indiscretions on his part.

We cut to the other side of the descending pools, fording the streams without difficulty, but eventually we did have to put our shoes back on. As we went down the trail we met quite a few more hikers going up than we'd seen on our own way up, including one guy in a kilt (grey cammo - I wonder what clan has THAT pattern?) The dogs were amazingly good; all of them but Finn and Kenzie were maybe a little tired - perhaps not a surprise, given that they ran the entire time we were walking. Finn and Kenzie had the most excuse for being tired, since they bounced around like Tigger while everyone else lolled around on the comfy turf - and maybe they were a little tired, come to that, because they behaved perfectly on the trail, mannerly and obedient, if still noticeably energetic.

Well, at least they were good until we got back to the road where we had parked the car. There we re-encountered the little lab pup, upon whom Finn had evidently developed a bit of a crush - which affection he proceeded to demonstrate rather graphically. (Sigh.) Deshka, Finn's father, gave him a look of such profound disgust that you could almost hear him thinking: These young punks. No class, no style, no judgement. (Deshka, an experienced stud dog, is FAR too dignified to attempt to hump a 3-month old puppy at any time, much less in the middle of a dirt road.)

I'd estimate that hike is about a 4 or 5 mile round-trip, probably not over 4000 feet where we went. Above timberline, certainly, but up here that's 2500 feet, so that's not a good guide for altitude. It's my new favorite hike (hanging with JK has been quite an education for good places to go with the dogs... or without them, although why anyone would want to do that I have no idea.)

So that was 4th of July in Hatcher pass. In retrospect, I think there's some risk going barefoot up there... because if you set your soles bare and unprotected on that ground, something comes through them that alters your souls forever, and you can never get rid of it.

Not that you'd want to.

The Red Hand of Death (And Other Ways to Stay Sane During Vet School)

Vet school is a stressful gig. It's not just the responsibility of it, the knowledge that you are undertaking to go out and save lives, do surgery, make tricky medical diagnoses; undertaking to be the expert, to have people rely on you for help in matters of life and death. It's not just the astonishingly fast pace or the intense workload or the massive amount of information and skills you are trying to master. It's not just the expense of it, the long hours and the early realization that, rather than floating somewhere near the top of your class, an academic over-achiever, you are suddenly average: EVERYONE in your class is an academic over-achiever and ALL of them are from the tops of their classes - and at least half of them (and probably more) were better students than you were.

No, there's also the sneaking suspicion that your admission was a dreadful administrative error, and that you don't really belong here. This feeling will be emphatically underscored by the realization that the stunning girl who sits next to you - who is beautifully made-up and has her long strait hair perfectly curled, who has a husband and a house and a job.... this girl is not just smart enough to get into vet school, but she's SO smart she also has time to manage a full life AND look like that. Every day.

That's when you're pretty certain you're sunk.

Maybe it's not a big surprise that I went a bit frantic on the studying the first semester. We had an exam every 10 days, because if they stretched them out further, the amount of material to master was just too vast to be contained within one exam.

Now, the upperclassmen and the faculty were all well aware of the fact that the first exam of vet school was the most stressful of all of them - until it came time to take the National Board Exam and the Clinical Competency Test in senior year (plus or minus a state board exam, depending on the state in which you proposed to work). It's tradition that an outgoing Freshman - now a newly-minted sophomore - "adopted" a "little sib": an incoming and somewhat petrified freshman. In my case, I had my regular big sib - who, on the morning of the first exam, brought me a plate of home-made snicker doodles and a nice encouraging card, which was bright and cheerful and full of moral support - but I also had my neighbor's big sib, a very kindhearted girl who had met me via a work-study situation and to some degree taken me under her wing. She brought both of us - me and the kind, funny, intelligent and intimidatingly beautiful girl who sat next to me, who was her ACTUAL little sib - a new and freshly-sharpened #2 pencil, a brand-new eraser, and a petri dish of m&m's, labelled "m&m culture, eat on [date of exam]". My neighbor also got a few extra goodies, but it seemed her big sib didn't want to leave me out. Isn't that sweet?

Next we are all ushered, trembling, sleep-deprived and sweaty-palmed, into the lecture hall, where they are to pass out our exam papers and tell us the rules (the exam being half written, half practical). There is a strange murmuring noise, which you quickly realize is composed of 131 freshman muttering last-minute aides-memoirs to themselves or their neighbors. The professors proctoring the exam are on the lecture stage as the second hand sweeps away the remaining time before the exam. Suddenly it's 8:00. You can almost hear a hundred and thirty-one hearts skip a beat in synchrony.

The lab coordinator gets up to tell us how the practical stations are set up in the lab: there are no more than four students allowed per station at any one time, though we're allowed to go back and forth between stations as many times as we like, within the 4 hours we are allotted to take the exam. We are also welcome to take the exam sitting in the lecture hall or go back to our cubicles and take it sitting at our desks, or anywhere else inside the building, as the honor code applies: we are expected not to cheat. (Although an honor board exists - a group of students who self-police their peers, with advice and supervision from a professor - it is rarely needed over the next 4 years, and never is a student actually found to have been cheating, at least in my vet school class).

Now there is a slight pause, and the lab coordinator tells us a joke. A pretty good one, getting roars of laughter. A bunch of students shuffle in at one side of the lecture stage; they are upperclassmen, and they put on a skit to loosen us up. It's pretty funny - although to this day everything that happened before that exam is a blur to me, and I have not the faintest recollection what the skit was about. What I do remember is laughing so hard I was nearly crying, while one part of my brain stood off to the side, looking at me and saying: Man. You are REALLY stressed out. Get a grip on yourself.

But the joke and the skit do their jobs: I am feeling cheerful and upbeat and a bit more relaxed as I start my exam in my cubicle, with my snicker doodles and my m&m culture, looking at a picture of my pony I have taped to the wall. (Okay, it's one of the racehorses I groomed right before I came back to school, but you get the idea.)

After the first exam, when I realise that I did well, I start to relax just a little. Maybe it wasn't a huge administrative error after all and I really DO belong here. I don't let up on the work, but I'm not so freaked out any more, since I've proven to my personal satisfaction that I can in fact handle the material, as long as I apply myself.

Still: it's a big deal, being in vet school, and I never want someone's animal to pay for me not paying enough attention in school, so like my vet school brethren, I work hard. Which means that we have to play hard - and we do.

At least some students go out dancing every time an exam falls on a Friday night, as there are no classes the next morning. I am amongst those who find this relaxing, and I'll dance til I fall over. Not well, mind you, but with great enthusiasm. Then there are various FACs (Friday Afternoon Clubs) at various bars and eateries around town, which vet students are adept at ferreting out, as many offer free or half-price appetizers and cheaper drinks from (say) 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday afternoons. There's my usual Saturday coffee date with my friend SF, at which we would vent and commiserate. We never said where we would meet; one of us would call the other and it would be:
"You want to meet?"
"Sure, what time?"
"How about noon?"
"Okay, see you there!" [click].
Then we would meet at noon, having never specified WHERE we were meeting or what for. It didn't occur to me until senior year that the only thing we ever specified was the time.

Sometimes I would take out my little mustang mare (or my thoroughbred mare, or one of the horses I boarded in my pasture for extra money) and ride in the beautiful old cemetery across from my house. Sometimes I would go for a walk or a run in the same cemetery. Sometimes I would just sit and listen to music, or watch a movie or a little TV whilst meditatively knitting or spinning yarn, or play silly games with my dog. Sometimes I'd just sit and stare out my window, or go down by the irrigation ditch running through my property and watch the ducks and muskrats playing in the water. I also developed a few culinary hobbies, the B list: making bread, beer and biscotti (all of which had the significant advantage that you could eat or drink the results of your stress-relieving hobby, providing further stress relief.) Sometimes I would write - can't seem to help that, no matter the circumstances - and sometimes I'd get out my pad and sketch, or just draw pictures in the margins of my notes.

In vet school I was also a hiking fool. I had a ratty old Dodge Dart, which half the time had to be started by arcing two poles on the starter with the assistance of large slotted kitchen spoon, but which limped me through the first couple of years of vet school. I took my dog hiking probably at least five times a week for the first three years - less often the last year, as the workload increased, but even then we probably made about three times a week or more (except for the month I spent on the ICU rotation).

But maybe the single most important thing that kept me sane through the first three years of vet school was the discovery of racquetball.

This was introduced to me by MT, she of San Juan rafting fame. For 7 weeks of the first semester of vet school (for me; she was finishing her Master's degree) we had a weight-training class three days a week and would warm up by playing racquetball for an hour or more first. Then we'd do our weight training and then we'd walk to Pescado Bay for fish tacos afterwards. Naturally MT was a much better player than I was, but by the time she graduated, I was hooked. Not because I was so good at it: more because it just felt so good to hit something.

So I developed other friends to play racquetball with, and was on the courts at least 5 days a week the first two years of vet school (during which we were up-campus and within walking distance of the students-only rec center), and on a slightly slower schedule for the third year, when our classes moved down-campus to the teaching hospital. I did have two unfortunate events associated with my racquetball obsession: One was that I tore my calf muscles badly on the court one day early in our sophomore year and was laid off for three weeks; that made me nearly crazy with restlessness, and to this day that calf has never been quite the same. And the other was that, consequent to my years making my living at the end of a pitchfork, I had tendinitis in both wrists. This made for a certain amount of strain on my right wrist during play, with the consequence that sometimes, as my hand grew slick with sweat, the racquet would spin in my grip, ruining a shot.

Well. I can't have THIS. I need to hit the ball so hard I split it along its seam. Need to, I tell you.

So I went shopping for a glove of some kind, something that would keep its grip no matter how sweaty my hand got. But naturally I didn't need TWO gloves, since racquetball is a one-handed game. To my annoyance, I could find goggles and balls and racquet covers, sweat bands and court shoes and all manner of workout clothing - but nary a racquetball glove to be found. Not one.

After much poking about I realised that golf gloves come as a single glove. Well. This looks promising.

So I tried on all kinds of different golf gloves of various sizes and makes, until I found the one that fit me the way I wanted. It was thin and light and didn't ruin my feel of the racquet, but it was made of leather that would absorb the sweat and would, if anything, become stickier if the sweat soaked through the palm. Perfect.

The first day I tried it out I was playing with a male classmate, C. He had thick curly brown hair and smiling dark eyes, and in some way reminded me of both my brothers - the curly dark hair and twinkly chocolate eyes of one, and the teasing demeanor and bratty-younger-brother spunk of the other. He was not so very much taller than me - perhaps six or seven inches - but he was significantly more athletic - well, or at least looked it, with a diver's build and a general lazy ease of motion.

We get on the court and I unzip my racquet cover, taking out my golf glove and pulling it on. It just so happens that this glove, the one that fit me just right, is bright red. C takes one look at it and starts laughing.

"What is that?" he asks me.

"The Red Hand of Death," I tell him with narrowed and menacing eye, trying not to grin. For some reason this makes C laugh all the harder. (Hmm, I can't think why THAT would be). On the other hand - the Red Hand of Death hand, no doubt - I beat him two games to one that day... maybe because he was laughing at me the whole time.

I'm telling you: It doesn't do to laugh at The Red Hand of Death.

Nowadays I find my stress relief in some ways differently, and some ways similarly. I no longer have a horse, and my gym does not have a racquetball court (although there is a gym in town that does, the fees have gotten ridiculous, and I have no partners anymore, so it hardly seems worth it.) I traded making beer for making wine, and baking for making kefir and roasting lamb. I still play silly games with my dogs, of course, although some of those games are a bit more serious - working sheep, for instance. There is less regular TV and more PBS and movies, although music and staring out my windows are still good. I do less sketching and more photography, less hiking and more flying, but I still meet friends for coffee. I have no patience for spinning anymore - in part because the minute I turn my back on it some Border collie snatches the end of the yarn and runs all over the house with it, unreeling it madly and tangling it in a giant spider web upstairs and down - but I still like to knit and crochet, especially while watching TV... it seems less wasteful somehow if I'm making something at the same time. And of course... I still write. I still can't help that. It's almost a compulsion.

These things do me fine, for the most part. Every once in a while, though, when I've had a particularly trying day I can feel a little itch in my palm, and I think: I wonder if I could get away with wearing it to work... The Red Hand of Death.