I have logged thousands of hours and thousands of miles over the years on the trails with my dogs. I love hiking with them, more than anything else, as they are my eyes and ears, companions, trailblazers and protectors. I hiked a new area today that I have always wanted to explore but it is a solid hour hike to get up in there and many days I don’t have the time or motivation.
The forest was beautiful, scrubbed clean by yesterday’s rain, quiet and soft. It was worth the hard hike in, as the forest there was magically beautiful; knobby rock outcrops punctuated by rolling hills, clinging to the mountainside, and verdant bowls filled with gnarled old trees, moss and very green grass, despite how dry it has been. The wildlife are all there, as it is on the edge of where most humans travel and so they are alone there. I saw signs of deer, elk, bear, wolf, marten and heard a variety of birds. As we rambled and explored, I crossed over a ridge line and stumbled on to a well used wildlife trail as I side-hilled across the mountain face. We followed it for a long while, and it didn’t go unnoticed that the trail was punctuated with wolf and bear scat. The farther South I hiked, the more subdued the dogs became, until they were grouped in a bunch behind me, quiet, alert, heads and ears up, tails low. They were jumpy and on high-alert, and Elf and Spring erupted into barking when we flushed and startled a flock of feeding juncos. As I rounded a bend and began down into a beautiful lush drainage, I came upon a huge, stately Ponderosa Pine; thick orange bark stretched tightly over its immense trunk and the ground beneath littered with years of detritus shed by the giant, topped with debris from being used as an ancient squirrel midden. Here was fresh sign of scratching, marking and digging and among many old piles of scat, was fresh wolf sign. It was at this point that whatever signs the wild creatures had left visible to me, it was clearly a far more obvious, neon sign to my dogs saying: NO TRESPASSING BEYOND THIS POINT! And there they stopped, as one, and refused to go farther. I even continued on for 30 to 40 feet and they did not move.
Turning around on single track trails is always difficult for me as the lure of what lies ahead carries too much temptation, but there was no question the dogs knew far more than I and so, we turned, and began the long hike back out. It was almost a mile before they relaxed and almost two, before they resumed running and exploring. The trail will wait for another day and I am so curious as to what lay beyond that sentinel tree…clearly something my dogs knew and respected and clearly something that I knew better than to ignore. Now they are sated from a big meal, chewing on meaty bones, and tired from a long day on the go, but they are safe and content, and that is worth everything to me.
reflectionsfrommontana 