For a Moment, Happy

All too soon, it was time to head east, back to North Dakota. Oh, it was hard to leave Montana, so we made one last stop at Makoshika State Park, which is a paleontological site southeast of Glendive.

We never found the dig or any fossils, but the scenery was terrific. Transformative. We drank in the evening, making the most of Montana's midnight sun, when it stays light until almost 11 pm in June.

A mule deer doe came walking carefully up a draw, her attention ahead of her.

Her huge ears swiveled side to side as if she were apprehensive of ambush.

Oh, the light was so beautiful. I could see myself painting the scene with her just so, touching light across the grasstops and casting the foreground in deep violet shadow. Oh, to have world enough and time...for now and for the foreseeable future I'm painting birds, but someday...deer.

Suddenly she vaulted into space.


She pronked high, looking for danger.

Her springy tendons and slender, resilient legs carried her high up into the air, over and over.




She wasn't so different from my daughter, whose lightness I envy as I grow closer to the earth.


The grace in these children comes alive when they are allowed to gaze out over miles of wilderness. It turns into something electric, something beautiful, infused with the spirit of the landscape.


I couldn't stop trying to keep some of it for the coming winter. And now I'm glad I did.

There is a thought scrabbling around in my head that's hard to catch and contain, so it's going to come out in pieces. It's about happiness, that most elusive of human emotions. If emotions were birds, happiness might be a rail, skulking through the dark reeds of dissatisfaction.

You can take trips with your family, and think back on them, and think, "Yeah, that was a great trip. I was really happy out there in Montana."

And what I'm thinking is: Why does that feeling have to be remembered as just part of a great trip, isolated in occasional memories, floating out there on its own? Why not look at that trip as part of a continuum of good things, an integral part of your great life, and think of it when you step back to take stock, as we so often do?

Because this is your life, this moment in Montana. And these are the people you love most.


And you set up a camera on a tripod to record this moment, this evidence that you were happy for a while.


Believe it. You are.

These are the gifts that wilderness can give to us. Small wonder we turn to it again and again.

Rock Me On the Water

On the afternoon I got the canoes registered, I beat it a couple of exits north on I-77 to Salt Fork, Ohio's largest state park. Now, like all but two of Ohio's lakes, this lake is a dammed reservoir (I could easily have spelled it with an "n"). Repeating: Ohio has two natural lakes. Yes, that's sad, but I'd have to take that issue up with the glacier, and it ain't answering questions. So if we Ohioans are going to disport ourselves on big water, we have to be happy with our dammed reservoirs.

Salt Fork is big, and some people waterski and jet ski on it (bleccch), but there are two long arms of it that are designated as no-wake zones. It is here that I appreciate the men in khaki; they can bust speedboats all day as far as I'm concerned, if they're not too busy busting small women in 10' canoes.

I was not the happiest of campers when I finally got to Salt Fork. I'd had a tough couple of weeks. The sun was already low in the autumn sky and the best part of a glittering day had been spent on getting the boats legal. But the water's gentle rocking worked on me like a masseuse and before long I was humming and noticing and one with the elements like I ought to be.

The pokier the water, the happier I am. Shallow water means the roaring smelly boat engines can't follow me. Shallow water means dragonflies and algae and wading birds and warblers
and banded watersnakes and painted turtles. My canoe draws about four inches of draft so there's very little water I can't navigate. Or: I can navigate very little water. So I launch at the boat ramps and beat it for the nearest elbow or embayment or slough--the places nobody else wants to go.

It was pretty quiet at Salt Fork, a few killdeer, the aforementioned herps, some warblers sifting through the trees. Let's face it--reservoirs are useful and pretty for people to look at, but they're not exactly burgeoning wildlife habitat. When you've got oak-hickory forests marching down right into deep water, there's little room for sedges and cattails, little habitat for the crawlers, waders and sliders. They're picturesque, and sometimes little else. I yearned for the messy, mucky wild rice marshes of Hadlyme, Connecticut, the salt marshes of Great Island, rich with the scent of sulfur and decay, teeming with life. Lois and I had navigated those waters, gotten all muddy doing so. This was too clean for us, like a decorated store window or a movie set. I mulled this over as I stroked over the quiet water. I decided to revel in the reflections of early autumn leaves rippling before the bow.
And then I noticed it--the soft popping sound of fish lips all around me. Evening was coming on and there was an embarrassment of fish, everywhere. Fish feeding, jumping, swirling, everywhere. And then an osprey beat by, and another, diving again and again, right into the light, impossible to photograph but so deeply appreciated. And right behind the fish hawks, a phalanx of Forster's terns. Oh, oh, oh, oh. How I adore terns, how they bring me back to New England. Their creaky calls and slicing wings speak of sand and surf, even on this manmade inland lake.
Oh beautiful bird, with your bandit mask, thank you for saving me.
Hold on. I'm coming. Hold on.

The fish are feeding and so are we. We're not afraid of you; the fish are all around you in your little boat, and we're catching them.
Thank you. I'm all better now, not grousing about sterile Ohio reservoirs any more. I'm going to come back soon. Will you still be here?
We may have to move on, it'll get cold before long. But we'll look for you, and you look for us.

I will. Thanks again for coming to me.

Oh, people Look around you
It's there your hope must lie
There's a seabird above you

Gliding in one place

Like Jesus in the sky

Jackson Browne, "Rock Me on the Water."