Tuesday, September 13, 2011

This morning we hiked to Swan Lake and Heron Pond. Swan Lake was covered in yellow pond lilies; we were there when the morning light was at its most golden and inspiring. At Heron Pond we saw a mother wigeon and her babies foraging among the lily pads. They were making the softest sounds, little splashes.

Rob kept saying, “It’s so quiet here. Can you believe it’s so quiet?”

We were the only people. For the most part we were hiking through lodgepole pine forest with spruce and firs growing down below in the shade. There were meadows, too, with sagebrush and yellow grasses. We saw fresh moose tracks on the trail.

After our walk, we sat on the doorstep of our little cabin and had “a small repast,” as Rob said. We had trail mix, and peanut butter on saltines, and Rob was being really “bad.” He kept saying the peanut butter smelled bad and that it was sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“The only thing making it even remotely bearable is that I’m drinking this Coke,” he declared.

I rolled my eyes.

“How’s the trail mix?” he asked.

“Terrible,” I said.

After our horrid breakfast on our front doorstep, we went driving down to Elk Flats Ranch, where we saw bison! We stood out there in the dazzling, blazing light, orange grasses waving, bison grazing in the distance, and mountains ringing the entire scene.

After a lunch of bean burritos and an obscene amount of onion rings, we hiked to Taggart Lake. We were crossing a little bridge over a stream and Rob looked back at me for a moment. Then he stopped in the middle of the bridge and said, “You have a little something between your teeth. Right there. Right. Yeah, yeah, you’re getting it. Nope. Nope. Still there. You’re going to need some dental floss. Oh, well.”

We started walking again. I was walking behind Rob. I muttered, “You’ve got something between your butt cheeks.”

The hike to Taggart Lake was a little scary because it was thundering, and heavy black clouds had drifted over the mountains. All over there were warnings about grizzly bears, and we were alone, the only people on the trail.

I was really nervous when I started to see lightning. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” I said. “Maybe that’s why nobody else is doing this.”

“Oh, no, there are some people!” Rob said cheerfully, trying to reassure me. “See the tents?”

“Those are boulders,” I said.

“No! . . . Oh. Oh, yeah. You’re right. Boy, they sure looked like tents.”

“There’s nobody else doing this,” I repeated.

It was so dark and foreboding. The thunder kept sounding.

We crossed a sort of bald spot on the mountain–treeless but with lots of thick shrubs. (I hated how I didn’t know the names of any of the plants.)

“This looks just like the pictures in Blueberries for Sal,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“You remember. It’s a picture book. Sal is picking blueberries with her mother and she encounters a bear. . . .”

We were both pretty nervous. We kept looking around for bears and listening to the thunder. But the hike was so beautiful, our most beautiful one yet. Soon we were back under tree cover, under aspens growing along a mountain stream.

When we got to Taggart Lake we found that we were not the only people on the trail after all. A man and a woman were having the coziest picnic under a bunch of spruce and firs and aspens. They were tucked into a little cove of trees and they were picnicking under the smallest, flimsiest little shelter they had created. I thought the roof was an umbrella, maybe, but Rob said it was a rain slicker. Anyway, they had created the tiniest hideaway, and they were sitting very close together under their flimsy roof under the threatening storm clouds, drinking wine. The thunder was echoing through the mountains.

I was scared as we sat by the lake. I was worried about the lightning. But the couple in their little cozy secret spot didn’t seem worried at all.

We went from Taggart Lake farther up the mountain to Bradley’s Lake. It was a bit of a steep climb, with switchbacks. Bradley’s Lake was lovely but eerie under the storm clouds, and we didn’t stay very long because we were so scared of bears and lightning. But it was a great hike. We walked about five miles.

In the evening we drove out to a place called Antelope Flats, where there were huge expanses of silvery sagebrush, and we saw two pronghorns grazing in the dusk. It was a mother and her young one. They had such beautiful markings–snow white rumps and black “eye makeup.” They were so lovely and graceful.

Rob was getting so excited, taking pictures from very far away. When he checked the LCD screen later, he couldn’t make out the pronghorns, but he remained optimistic that he had indeed captured them: “Well,” he said, “the pictures may not be quite National Geographic quality, but those pronghorn are in there, I swear. They’re in there somewhere.”