Summer 2009
My friend Larry called me from Butte. Time to get to Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge by the end of September, early October for the migration of the trumpeter swans. Thousands of them, the largest and heaviest of flying birds, would pour into the NWR and out, on their way to southern feeding grounds.
He was having new windows installed and would meet me there in a few days. Since I was already in eastern Oregon loosely on my way to Butte to see him anyway, I went there. The first town in Montana is MonIda, a semi-ghost town. I was going to make mock of its name but upon recalling our Mexicali and Calexico, thought better of it.
The trip from MonIda and the interstate to the wildlife refuge was 31 miles up a bad dirt road. The suspension on the bus is unaccountably rigid so I drove between 12 and 18 miles an hour the whole way to avoid shaking it and myself apart.
Along the way I was several times favored with sights of small herds of pronghorns, formerly known as pronghorn antelopes. Some astute morphologist determined that they are not taxonomically antelopes. So calling them pronghorn rather than pronghorn antelope has become a point of pride among the sort of people who insist on 'bison' rather than 'buffalo' (me) and 'city' rather than 'Frisco' (you). They are lovely animals with high contrast brown and white patterns on their bodies.
Upon arrival there of what was left of me in what was left of the bus, the NWR headquarters were closed because it was Sunday. I repaired to an otherwise empty campground among groves of stunningly golden aspen by the shore of Upper Red Rock Lake.
The next morning I set out on a constitutional to walk the four miles back to the ranger station. I saw the swans, only two. They were clearly guarding something on the far side of their pond, surely their nest.
The American West is still the place to be.
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