Springtime in the Rockies

Ah Spring--my favorite season, other than fresh ripe tomatoes! Greg and I took advantage of the one nice day the weatherman has offered lately and visited the National Bison Range, a wildlife refuge an hour north of home. The especially rainy Spring has brought out wildflowers bigtime, especially the dramatic arrow-leafed balsamroot with spectacular daisy blossoms and lovely gray-green leaves. As we drove the windy gravel road through the refuge, we also came across a mule deer doe with newborn twin fawns and a mother pronghorn with her single fawn. The pronghorn have learned that coyotes, the main predator on their fawns, stay away from the road, so the pronghorn give birth near the roads.

































I've always loved visiting wild places for the sense of possibility they offer. You never know what you'll find; it's all luck. One very hot late summer day, my photographer, Bill Muñoz, and I drove the Bison Range but feared we'd see little in the dry summer heat. Besides a bear and a weasel, we had a special surprising treat--we saw two bull elk in the river, plunging their heads into the water and pulling up plants, their antlers draped with vegetation--that's usually the way one sees moose, not elk!

Global Warming or Climate Change?

It's October 9, and I took this photo in the afternoon from my doorstep in Montana. Overnight lows for the next 2 or 3 nights are projected as in the single digits. Brrrrr!!!! Now Montana is in the north, but we "normally" don't get snow until Halloween, and the record lows for this time of year hover around 20 degrees. So, records are getting shattered all over the place around here these days.

This is the kind of event naysayers grasp upon so they can say, "See? How can you say we're having global warming? We're having record cold!"  Such folks have a basic misunderstanding about terminology. The moniker "Global Warming" is indeed meant to apply globally--the average temperatures on the planet are gradually creeping up.  This doesn't mean that the temperature on any given day in any particular place will be higher than it was in the past, far from it.

"Far from it" is a reason for using the term "Climate Change" rather than "global warming."  Our climates are changing, and part of that change is differences in how weather systems perform.  For example, as things warm up in general, not only are warm storms like hurricanes likely to become stronger, cold storms like blizzards are also likely to intensify.  As has happened this week, arctic systems may extend further south than in the past, resulting in brief record low temperatures.  The climate is becoming destabilized in ways that will continue to surprise us as the 21st century progresses.

I have lived here for 36 years, and during that time, what's "normal" has changed significantly.  The first bad year for forest fires I experienced was in 1988, then not again until 2000.  Since then, all but 2 or 3 years have experienced multiple forest fires in our area, including one that forced us to evacuate our home, pictured here as it hurried towards us.  Spring comes earlier now,  followed by a warmer, drier, longer summer, all of which increases the chance for fires to take hold and rage.  Now, the authorities tell is, we must expect our summer skies to turn gray from fire and our air to smell of smoke.  You can be sure of it, the climate is changing.

Back to the Prairie

I returned to the American Prairie Foundation Preserve recently and got to see much more of the landscape. It's quite amazing, from prairie dog towns to a cliff the Indians once used to drive buffalo to their death so they could harvest meat as well as bones and horn and internal organs to make tooks. Little was wasted.
The short grass prairie may be dry, but it's full of life--not just prairie dogs but burrowing owls, elk, lots of pronghorn (antelope), snakes, wildflowers, sagebrush, many kinds of grasses, and more, more, more.
For me, a favorite thing to see, actually just off the actual Reserve lands, is a large polished boulder covered with petroglyphs. Most look like stylized buffalo hooves, and there's a mysterious arrow pointing towards the Missouri River--to what? A river crossing? A favorite buffalo grazing area? Or.....? All a mystery. The Indians leave offerings on the rock such as quarters, bracelets, and a jawbone from a small animal of some kind. Another mystery. This land is full of mystery....

Wild Fruit, Tame Fruit

Summer is a time of such lushness and beauty and fresh flavor and abundance! While I love the promise of Spring, I revel in the harvests of summer, and this summer here in Montana has been yielding especially abundant harvests. First of all is the wild harvest, with our native chokecherries weighing down the branches of these tall bushes along the rivers and roadways. Chokecherry syrup is a favorite treat for me, and I've been picking the cherries and making the syrup, experimenting with methods. I've found that the best way to get the unique flavor from the cherries is to cover them with either water or fruit juice and boil, energetically mashing them with a potato masher to release the flesh from the pits. The mashing also gently releases some flavor from the pits, which I think gives the syrup its special wild quality. Then I strain the pulp, mashing more to release juice and flavor. I put the residue back into the pan, cover again with water, and repeat the boiling, mashing, and straining. I measure the juice, add an equal amount of sugar, and boil until the liquid becomes syrupy. If you used water instead of fruit juice, you might need to add some pectin to thicken the syrup to the right consistency. I pour the syrup into clean jars and refrigerate them. You could process the jars into a canner so they will seal and can be stored in the pantry if desired. We tried the syrup out on out of town visitors and had to give them a jar of it to keep up the friendship!
Later this week we visited Forbidden Fruit Orchard in Paradise, MT, a perfectly named enterprise--the peaches are so luscious it almost seems a sin to enjoy something so much. Look closely at the photo, and you'll see a hidden surprise among the leaves.

Saving the Prairie

I am honored to be on the National Council of the American Prairie Foundation (APF), which is dedicated to preserving the American prairie in central Montana, between the town of Malta in the north and the Missouri River to the south. Its goal is creation of a prairie-based wildlife preserve that will benefit not only wildlife but also local economies and will enable visitors to experience the wild prairie in all its beauty and diversity. In early October, people associated with the Foundation were able to visit the latest property added to the protected prairie, the first piece of APF land that fronts on the Missouri River.
We traveled there by jet boat, as that's the easiest way to get there, as this area is sparsely settled, with narrow, rutted dirt roads. As I stepped ashore onto this old homestead, with its deteriorating buildings and empty corrals, I felt a wonderful sense of possibility for the future of this place. Volunteers would clean it up, wildlife would wander down to the water to drink, people would come to enjoy the riverfront.
The native shortgrass prairie is an impressive and actually quite varied landscape with hills, creeks, prairie dog towns, and miles and miles of wildflower-strewn grassland. Abundant wildlife such as pronghorn, elk, and coyotes live there, and APF has acquired a herd of pure American bison, with no cattle genes mixed in, as there are in many bison herds.
After visiting the new property, we enjoyed a picnic in the nearby Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, where impressive bull elk were courting the elk cows as they grazed among old cottonwood trees along the river. We are hopeful that all these lands--the wildlife refuges, parks, ranches with conservation easements, and other protected properties will become linked together to create an "American Serengeti," a wildlife preserve that protects not only the wildlife but also honors the human history of the area with restored buildings such as a one-room schoolhouse, a homestead cabin, and ranch buildings.

Catching up and Crow Fair

I let time get away from me and neglected my blog, but after a very busy year, I'm back to it again. I will spend the next days getting caught up on what I've been doing, as I think much is of interest to others.
This summer, I'm finishing the manuscript for a book about Indians and horses, and my research for that book has taken me to special places in Montana, in books, and in my mind and spirit. For thousands of years, Plains Indians had no horses. When the Spanish came in the late 1500s, they brought horses with them, and by about 1750, all the Plains Indians had them, revolutionizing their cultures.
My first journey for this book was to Crow Agency, in southeastern Montana, for the annual August Crow Fair, nicknamed "The Teepee Capital of the World" because of the more than 1,000 teepees pitched there for the celebration. Indians from all over the U.S. and Canada come to participate in the rodeo and races and to socialize, and Crow families gather to catch up with their loved ones. Every morning the Crow people parade proudly through the camp, dressed in their finest outfits, riding their beautiful horses. It's a delightful occasion, and an opportunity to experience how this tribe has maintained its close relationship to horses despite all the horrors its people suffered as European Americans took over the prairies. My favorite part of the experience was watching the young people riding through camp bareback and hanging out on their horses around the rodeo grounds.