I was deflated. There were no big horn sheep to see, not today anyhow.
I'd walked a long way following the river; green, fierce, flowing fast and loud like a freeway, with it's granite walls holding it all in place on the far side. And then there was me, a pebble beside it and the tens of thousands of utterly wild acres, mountains, valleys and fields behind me, with just the one, winding, icy, snow secreted, dirt roadway in and out of this stunning, hidden and isolated place. I felt somehow claustrophobic with all this vastness surrounding me.
The men and the dogs had gone off in the opposite direction, having told me which way to walk in the hopes that I'd catch a glimpse of and with any luck, some photographs of the nowhere to be found sheep.
I left the river and accidentally, to my great fortune, scared up a mass of Canada geese, and they gave me a show worth tearing up over... and I did as I snapped photo after photo of them, beautiful to me.
Ignored by a red falcon on a thin limb. I pressed in on him but he stayed put.
Huge elk on a distant ridge, multiplied as time passed, sunning themselves smartly in the solitary sun thawed location. "Brilliant", I thought to myself.
And the mule deer, so many of them, not far off, but not many bucks visible...
THEN I remembered the man in the truck with us this morning, what he said about "antlering" and how to do it and when - and it was now, now was the time the large mule deer dropped antlers and I could find where, because he'd explained and I'd listened carefully. And if I found some, then I could touch them and I could take one and better still, I could give it to my son, who waited for me at home in California, and I could say, "see what I've found for you" and he would love me more, if possible.
And so I moved purposefully. I looked through my long camera lens, searching likely places, using it as a telescope and finally, in a crevice, between two steep slopes, I saw a creek trickling toward the river and a half mile or so in, a big bed of tall grass, flattened and soft, unlike the rest of it, which stood upright, surrounding it, frosty and spiked, like a little fence around a hidden garden.
I lost a glove. I fell down a few times. I tucked the camera and the heavy lens inside my parka, pushed them toward my back, but they fell forward as I scrambled on my hands and toes down and into the scrub, moving up the creek toward the place the white antlers had appeared to be, scattered here and there, beside mossy, slick boulders and fallen trees. A branch tore at my face, another slit my coat. I sat down, a little breathless, filthy and worn out. This suddenly seemed like less of a good idea.
I surveyed the sky, searched for and found the still sunning elk way, way , way above and noticed the changing strands of sunlight.
When I looked down, there it was. Not an antler, not something lost intentionally because it was time to be lost, but something taken away. A deer hoof attached still to the lower part of it's fur covered leg, just a few inches away from where I sat. I touched it with my gloveless hand. Warm.
I took a photo. I walked further into the flattened grass, musky and damp, recently vacated. A coat of fur, a fawn's head, more hooves, legs, a set of jaws, a hip, an ear, more fur, and five skulls. And I took photos and I started to place my foot beside the bones so that I could measure the different sizes of the ones who'd been slain. And I hated it. And I didn't hate it. And it thrilled me. And it repulsed me. And it moved me.
Wolves.
Not long before me.
And I wasn't afraid.
It hadn't occurred to me till now, that the men had simply allowed me to go off alone, without protection and how we'd laughed when they handed me a radio to keep in contact as they hunted and how it's face signaled "low battery". "Oh well", we giggled. This is not where I'll die, this I know, and besides the wolves are full. And the rest of the deer have moved closer to the river, seeming to accept this as just another part of another day. I'd seen them, maybe 200 of them, only a short while ago.
And you think these things right about now:
A) I'm somebody's mother, what am I doing here anyhow?
B) I'm never going to experience anything like this again, am I?
C) Who on earth am I going to be able to show these horrifying photos to?
D) What am I going to do with all these feelings I feel right now and how will they change me?
It's just under a month since I experienced my day in Hell's Canyon. A few weeks since I shot some of my favorite photographs of all time; the blue sky silhouetted ridge of elk, the bald eagle rolling mid flight while skimming the river, the falcon regal in it's fragile post, wild turkey gossiping to one another as they tripped through a rocky hillside trail. Not long ago, I stood in a bed of bending stalks and surveyed the remains of a half dozen previously living, breathing beings, savagely slaughtered around me and today, I feel the change I knew would happen as a result of the sum of my experience.
A big part of me knows that was most likely my last time visiting the wildness of the Snake River.
A part of me knows that something beautiful and fragile was meant to die that day.
A part of me accepts that not everything we love lasts.
A part of me is grateful for the beauty as well as for bittersweet sadness.
A part of me wants to go back.
A part of me wants to look forward.
A part of me is finished too early, like the fawn.
A part of me is satiated like a wolf.
A part of me is somebody's mother and wonders what am I doing here anyhow?
A part of me is and always will be alive and well forever in Idaho.
