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Author: Anne Cassidy

Cicadas

Cicadas

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I heard them yesterday for the first time this summer and realized what had been missing.

There was warmth, stickiness, day lilies, cobwebs in the woods, ground fog in the morning and red-winged blackbirds in the cattails.

There were industrial strength lawnmowers next door; they made a fine whirring sound. And traffic noise, always more prevalent this season because I’m outside to hear it.

But these weren’t what I was looking for. It was the high-pitched keening, the happy crescendo, the sultry lullaby. I was waiting for cicadas. Now that they’re here, summer can begin.

Skunked!

Skunked!

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I had to stifle a laugh last week when on a hike through the Rocky Mountains I came across a fellow hiker in awe over a deer. In northern Virginia deer are pests — I have to spray my day lilies with deer repellant every night to be sure the buds aren’t eaten — and there are fox, racoons, owls and much more wildlife. A neighbor swears she saw a coyote in her backyard.

Over the weekend I got the most unwelcome of wildlife visits. Saturday night a skunk sprayed Copper, and before I realized what had happened, the dog had come inside and rubbed his back all over the living room carpet.

This was followed by me chasing Copper around the house, finally corralling him in the garage and bathing him in a hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish detergent solution. At which point I set off to deskunk the house.

I dowsed the carpet with baking soda and there are now bowls of vinegar in every room. The good news is the house smells less like skunk. The bad news is it smells more like vinegar.

I guess this is the price I pay to live in a suburban wilderness.

(Photo: Wikipedia; nope, I didn’t take this picture!)

A Walker in the West

A Walker in the West

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Back home now with newspaper headlines and Metro commutes, deadlines and responsibilities. Gone are the open road and limitless horizon, the buffalo and prairie dogs, the thin air and snow-covered peaks.

I took almost 800 pictures, my notebook is full of little things I want to remember: Potato Museum and Miss National Teenage Rodeo Queen. Gentian, Indian Paintbrush and other wildflowers spied on a hike. The rocks labeled on the drive through Powder River Pass: Granite Gneiss, Pre Cambrian, three billion years old, Bighorn Dolomite, 450 to 500 million years old.

But what I most remember isn’t in the notebook. It’s the view of Lone Peak from 8,500 feet. It’s the TR Park ridge trail on a perfect summer morning. It’s looking out over a huge emptiness, buttes in the distance, no roads, no cars, nothing but sagebrush and scrub land.

How different it would be to walk in the west. How various the views and insights. Travel, like walking, is a great restorative. Travel and walking — well, that is hard to beat.

Prairie Dog Companion

Prairie Dog Companion

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First of all, I’m a sucker for animals that sit on their hind legs in cute poses. This is why Copper scores so many doggie treats from me. He learned early on that if he assumes this position his begging yield goes way up.

I would never think of feeding a prairie dog, of course, even without a sign to remind me. But that doesn’t stop me from admiring the little critters, their high-pitched territorial squeals, their fat little bottoms disappearing down almost-too-small burrows, their industriousness and sociability.

True, if you remove the bushy tail you have little more than a rat, but prairie dogs do have tails, which they shake like crazy when a stranger appears.

When I was young I wanted a prairie dog for a pet. This was before I learned that prairie dogs live together in colonies and to take a singleton away from this happy habitat would be to doom it for sure. So I settled for a white mouse. But every time I spot a prairie dog I have a secret desire to bring it home with me. It could be my prairie dog companion.

(No animals were harmed — or fed — in the taking of these photographs.)

Little Walk on the Prairie

Little Walk on the Prairie

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It wasn’t hard to find the Buffalo Gap trail. Just step out of the Buffalo Gap Guest Ranch, walk around the semi parked by the fence and start strolling. You can turn either left or right, the ranch owner, Olie, said. You’ll find 75 miles of trail in either direction.

I didn’t make 75 miles, barely two. But I walked long enough to pick up some ticks and a little sunburn on my shoulders. Long enough to grab some wild sage and rub it between my fingers. Long enough to look around and see grass, grass, grass, and feel a part of that buzzing, blowing world of vegetation.

Of Buttes and Badlands

Of Buttes and Badlands

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Theodore Roosevelt Park, North Unit

Theodore Roosevelt Park, South Unit (panorama shot)
View from TR’s cabin

Yesterday’s adventure was Theodore Roosevelt Park, visiting the cabin where the 26th president lived and wrote and seeing the places that inspired him to become an ardent conservationist. 

The buttes and buffalo, the badlands and the grasslands. It was a perfect, blue-sky day with fluffs of cottonwood floating through the air. The parks (both sections, north and south) were relatively empty.

I’m writing this from the deck of a working ranch as chickens peck beneath the boards and vast hills of green stretch to the horizon. I’m thinking about how profoundly the environment shaped TR. How profoundly it affects us all.

Forty-Nine

Forty-Nine

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It was after 7 yesterday and shadows were already softening the North Dakota badlands when I finally entered this state. I’ve wanted to come here for years, had missed it on other cross-country vacations. And no wonder. It’s up here. And out there. It feels both otherworldly and strangely familiar.

The familiar part comes from the 10-gallon hats and the moose heads on the wall. The cowboy culture I’d just seen in Montana. And after driving much of the width of that state yesterday, I would be hard pressed to pick pictures of North Dakota out of a lineup if a bunch of Montana shots were thrown in.

Still, there is a difference here, a roof-of-the-country feeling. And a quaintness, too.

And then there is this: North Dakota is my 49th state. I’ve visited every other but Hawaii. All I can say is, it was worth the wait.

A River Runs Through It

A River Runs Through It

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A family wedding brought us to Montana, so yesterday we gathered on the banks of the Gallatin River (of A River Runs Through It fame) to celebrate the bride and groom as they begin their life together. The vows were handwritten and heartfelt. I’ve known the bride since she was born, and her parents since before they were married.

Later, in a tent under the vast northern sky, we ate and drank and danced until the band stopped playing. The bride had hauled her couch down to the meadow for photographs, and the sight of that familiar piece (I’ve seen it in Indianapolis and Missoula and now here, in Big Sky) and the bride’s father’s toast likening marriage to a river brought all the circle-of-life feelings to an intense and memorable pitch.

The professional photographer didn’t want us snapping many shots of our own, but I couldn’t not take this picture. To me, it says it all.

Looking Closer

Looking Closer

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Yesterday I met a wee Scotswoman who has lived in the western United States for more than 40 years but still has a lovely brogue’ish lilt to her speech. She lost her husband almost a year ago and since then, she said, has found great comfort in walking. “It’s when I think,” she said.

She lives in Spokane and strolls through neighborhoods, but putting her comment together with the spectacular mountain scenery we hiked through yesterday made me ponder what it would be like to have the Rockies at your disposal as a walking/thinking landscape.

At first it would distract. Hard to ponder anything in the face of such beauty. Hard to do much of anything but marvel. But in time, I suppose, even great beauty becomes ordinary. And then one’s eye would wander from the grand vistas to the small beauties: a swath of fog wrapped around a hillside in the morning chill or a stand of lupine beside a weathered tree stump. In time, these would be the prompts of productive ambling; these little things, small and lovely.

Drinking It In

Drinking It In

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Yesterday I couldn’t stop taking pictures. Today I have at least 25 photos of the same vista. It was the photographic equivalent of drinking it in. I couldn’t sit and absorb the beauty then and there so I snapped shot after shot to do it later.

Today, I’m in the midst of great scenery but with the chance to hike into it. But before taking off I had to download the photographs, look at them and conjure up the sights we saw yesterday. The Grand Tetons, some of the youngest mountains on the continent; jagged, snow-topped peaks. Alpine meadows for contrast, easy on the eye. A cold, clear lake.

What to say? Only that sometimes it’s enough just to know such splendor exists.