Lately I’ve been a bit lax about my camera trapping — dead batteries, neglected cameras, etcetera — but, last month, I did manage to check the rig I’d had set up for a while at our county’s friendly neighborhood carcass pile, where highway crews and hunters dump the sorry detritus of elk and deer, and […]
coyotes
On March 1, 2022, Yellowstone National Park celebrated its 150th anniversary. I was privileged to work briefly for the Park Service there after college, and Elise and I make a point of returning every year; our honeymoon even revolved around a backpacking trip up Slough and Pebble Creeks. Until we visited last February to cross-country […]
I find a stick and use it to break up the dry twists of coyote scat I have found on the trail. Shit is nature’s obituary page. In each pile are the traces of lives recently lost. In this particular excreta I find a sprinkling of little white brittle bones—bird bones. And then I pull […]