October

I am always a little bit chilled. When the breeze picks up, when the sun sinks behind a mountain, when it snows in June – I'm cold. Someone watching me shiver once said, You travel all the time, why don't you travel to a tropical climate? And stay there? Why Montana? Why Maine? Why Russia?

Pertinent questions, especially here, where snow is falling in the mountains. It's late this time; three years ago in Glacier, August of a colder summer, I was driving tour boats in the sleet. Not so in 2012, one of the driest summers on record.

The aspens were tinged gold my last day in the Tetons, but fall was only flirting. It was still warm enough to put on a light sweater and sit out in the moonlight. My friends and I had a favorite sitting spot, a steep hill above Jackson Lake Lodge overlooking the willow flats and the lake. The low marshy landscape of the flats stretched for miles toward the line of the mountains, where the moonlight pooled in the canyons and silvered the slopes. It made the willow lands into an inscrutable shadow place. As we sat quietly, shapes began to drift in and out of the shadows, first a few and then more and more – elk. One bull bugled far off, and then another almost directly below us. I saw his pale rump fur flash in the darkness.

Willow flats by day

I hesitate to say that any sound defines wilderness, particularly in reference to the elk of the Tetons, but next to the calls of the wolf and the loon, breeding elk make one of the eeriest and loveliest sounds that you could hope to hear, sitting in the moonlight under the mountains. They sound like the Black Riders in the Lord of the Rings.

In a month or so, when winter starts to get serious, many of these Tetons elk, along with their kindred from Yellowstone and various national forests, approximately 7000 individuals all told, will move down the valley of Jackson Hole to winter on the National Elk Refuge. From January to April, when the snow is deepest, Fish and Wildlife managers will feed them high-concentrate alfalfa pellets. To maintain a controllable population under these conditions, there's a late-fall hunting season, with permits distributed by lottery. Non-hunters can opt to take an elk-viewing sleigh ride instead.

So, wilderness? No. But the refuge was created because the town of Jackson blocked the elks' historical migration routes. The marshes and grasslands provide habitat for dozens of other species as well: bison, wolves, pronghorn, sheep, and many bird species, including trumpeter swans. Such are the compromises of conservation in the modern West.

Can you spot the grouse in this picture?

In the morning, the ghost of the full moon still hung in the sky. A pair of ruffed grouse sat on the roof of my dorm, watching as I packed my car to leave. The sun turned the aspens all around into pillars of gold. I stuffed the last belongings into the back and headed north, retracing the route I had come in the summer, through Yellowstone Park and West Yellowstone, then northwest via Rt 287. In the Madison Valley, heading towards Ennis, MT, I saw the future: winter. The valley was eerily sunny, but black clouds and blowing snow hung over the peaks of the Madison Range, and I could see the same clouds on the road ahead. As I reached Ennis, it began to sleet. In Missoula, when I finally arrived, there was snow dusting the Bitterroots. It had been 95 degrees when I left in August. I drove straight past the house I had lived in, where I would live no longer, and then I knew for certain that summer was over.

I have my own apartment now. In contrast to the 

house on Harrison St, it is a hobbit hole. I can stretch up and touch the ceiling – no mean feat when you're 5'3''. My bed is next to the refrigerator, and I have to duck to stand under the showerhead. But it's mine.

Missoula is different in the fall. I find I have more time to explore, now that I'm not spending eleven days at a stretch packing, traveling, and working in the field. The smoke is gone from the hills and the afternoons are clear. The other day I hiked up the Crazy Canyon trail to the summit of Mt Sentinel, overlooking the whole Bitterroot Valley, with Missoula mapped out at my feet and the rivers of the Clark Fork and the Blackfoot running away to the west. The Crazy Canyon winds upward through stands of ponderosa pines, which make for some of the most beautiful landscapes I know. As conifers go, ponderosas are not very shade tolerant, so they tend to grow in widely-spaced stands. By contrast, lodgepole pine groves generally grow in densely packed 'doghair' stands, and the individual trees are thin and hard to separate from the mass. But ponderosas have mass and dignity, and in October the grasses that grow between the trees are twenty shades of tawny and gold. 

 

Yesterday I mountain-biked up into the Rattlesnake Wilderness, where I rode along Rattlesnake Creek, through more Ponderosa meadows, under cliffs blanketed with fir and tamarack. The sky was a deep, deep blue over the golds and browns and dark greens of the land. The colors of the deciduous East seem flashy and overdone by contrast. Sorry, New England.

Maybe in February a day will come when I pine for Hawaii, or Arizona, somewhere anywhere away from short bleak shivering days. But as long as the sky is blue in October, I will never leave the North.