Uninterrupted Expanse
Shrub-grasslands, nostalgia and the timelessness of fatherhood
“This sensation persisted, kept cropping up all the time we were there. It was not an entirely new feeling, but in this setting it grew much stronger. I seemed to be living a dual existence.” E.B. White
The feather of a falcon slept on the snow and as I reached down to pick it up, I imagined this time the orchestration would all come together. My foot pumped fuel to the carburetor as I turned the key in the 71 Chevy. The old gal whirled, rumbled and choked down the cold air as she steadied out the idle. The engine noise stabbed into aged memories, a different song on the radio, a different companion on the bench seat. I let the truck warm up against the Wyoming winter then crawled out of the snow to the front of the house. The boy and I followed the river down the highway and talked through the wind noise and engine roar. Along for the ride, under the camper shell, was a bird dog older than the boy, a new pup, a prairie falcon, and a few pigeons. We headed to the forgotten places, the creases in the broken earth, the spaces between the shrubs, the exposed. The tires rolled over the trailed millennia of departing hunting parties and our true humanity was bound in that purity of evolution. Graceland.
The truck ran smooth and gutless up the hills and down the river valley as we turned slowly on a gravel road leading to public lands. I’d like to say we had Woody Guthrie or Lee Greenwood on the stereo but the old music make-it-happener in the Chevy eats tapes and the radio antenna snapped. We absorbed into the seat with every bump that triggered lost memories. At fifteen, I imprinted on a white 70 Chevy. I would sit in the truck, count the days until I was sixteen and dream of my own way. As I gripped the thin, cracked, taped-up steering wheel and smelled the rich fuel, the duality of time blurred the edges. I turned and look at the boy and I saw a kid at dawn, under a mesquite tree on the edge of a small field watching Texas Bobwhites rouse the sleep off their feathers. I shook my head, blinked tightly and looked straight ahead.
As soon as we rattled over the cattle guard to public lands, a few weekend warriors were parked off the dirt road shooting propane tanks in the borrow pit. Further ahead, a woman followed a town-bound cow dog in her Buick. We carefully passed them and bounced up the wash-boarded road. I checked the rear-view mirror to make sure nothing broke loose or flew open, reset all my teeth and found a smoother line of travel. We kept our eyes wide for the chance to see a greater sage-grouse near the road as we headed further into the shrublands.
The boy wanted to head off the main road. We had time for a good long walk, but I didn’t feel like sliding off into deep ruts. He told me he liked getting stuck. My brow sweat with flashbacks of tires digging deep in the sand or the thud of laying the frame down. I looked down to check the fuel gauge.
When the boy was still a rolly suckling, we lived in New Mexico and I drove a different 70 Chevy truck. I took care of the seats quick with a pair of six-dollar Mexican blankets and ignored work on the gauges. Quail season was ending soon, and I wanted to go hunting. I called my buddy Josh, piled two setters in the cab, fueled up and head for some public land. At the gas pump, I left some in the bank instead of the tank. We plodded down the dirt road, through desert grasslands, as a lively winter storm rolled in.
It snowed for the better part of the day as we searched for desert blue quail. Big Rocky Mountain snowflakes fell on the tobosa, soap-tree yucca and rocks. After a long walk without any points, we retold the hunt and sipped on wobbly pops as snow continued to fall. The fuel gauge in the pickup didn’t work, we ran out of gas twice near the only two gas stations on the way. It was high adventure, a mixture of luck and misfortunes.
For a nine-year old boy, getting stuck was that “high adventure”. He reminded me that we had a shovel and sleeping bags in the back, but I knew I would be the one running the shovel and we only had one sleeping bag. At a decision point, we headed to a good winter cover. As my hand wrapped the truck’s door handle, I hallucinated teenage trips to the lake with my first girlfriend, red dirt roads, no one knowing, the red mud stains, digging the tires out with driftwood, stolen gasoline, and quitting our jobs because the boss wouldn’t give us the same day off. I shook my head again and stood evenly in my boots.
I opened the camper door to excited bird dogs and a prairie falcon raring to go. The transmitters I used to track dog and falcon beeped and broke the receiver static. I scooped up a few pigeons as insurance against false points and we started walking towards some hills I’ve never set foot on. There is always new ground to cover. The afternoon was still, almost warm, and quiet. There existed only one party to the magic.
“Do you remember that great big herds of Pronghorn we saw?” The boy asked.
“I do.”
“There were thousands of ‘em.”
I reimagined the herd kicking up snow as they ran from end to end in a single rewilding movement, not quit thousands, but I let the number slide. This unknown valley is just as special as any Yellowstone or Grand Teton. Greater sage-grouse pile into the valley in the winter in large flocks along with eagles, coyotes, elk and larkspurs. We were looking for just a few grouse for dog to point and prairie falcon to chase.
We walked and laughed as our setter pup honored my older setter any time he stopped. Even if the old guy was crapping, the young one would stop hard, raise his tail and get ready. The setters worked through some old scent with the slight nods I’ve grown to notice. We walked over and found fresh tracks and grouse droppings.
The boy picked it up in his hand, “It’s still warm.”
“Let’s walk a big circle on the edge of this draw and then over to those hills so the dogs can have the crosswind.”
Not far the old setter locked up, made a few careful steps forward and I knew we were on to something. The inexperienced pup was behind him and he stopped cold. This was going well but I needed to get ahold of the pup before he ran in to chase birds and ruined the setup. There are no second chances when you need to time the flush perfectly for the falcon. The dogs must hold still until the bird is in the right position in the air. I fell back on the fact that I had pigeons in my pocket if something didn’t work out. I removed the hood from the prairie falcon, she roused her feathers and took to the air with intent. The young setter pulled off the point to chase the flying falcon instead. This was my chance, so I caught the young setter up and walked him behind the old guy on a leash.
As the prairie mounted higher, we worked through the scent. The veteran is typically careful and often points a good distance from sage-grouse. We walked across the draw and along the edge pausing to check the position of the prairie falcon. She pumped her wings, gaining altitude in a position directly overhead and in front of us. That’s when two sage-grouse finally burst out of the sage. Everything up to this point was in the hands of humans and dogs, now it was between the birds and the evolution of millennia. The grouse beat their wings deeply as they gained altitude into the chambray sky. The fragrant sage crunched under my feet. I could hear the hiss and sizzle of air moving rapidly through the feathers of the falcon above us. The grouse flew a hundred yards before the falcon connected in the stoop, knocking it down. The old guy held steady, and the new pup whined and trembled in front of me as I whispered softly to him to freeze in position. The tough cock sage-grouse got right back up and motored to the horizon. The prairie falcon didn’t stop or wing over but accelerated after the grouse as predator and prey hit another gear and left the county.
The falcon returned, having been out gunned by the grouse. We worked the ground with the dogs but didn’t find any stragglers. When the falcon was wide and high, I tossed a fast pigeon as a reward for a second effort and the falcon slipped behind the pigeon and the prey fell from the sky seemingly untouched. I had only expected a chase. In her third season, she has gained striking precision with her finely pointed talons. She dragged the pigeon under a sagebrush between us. The marks of the grouse wings and tail brushed in the snow where it briefly lost altitude then took back the sky.
I traded the falcon a part of pre-weighted coturnix quail and slipped the pigeon in my game bag. The boy kneeled and watched as the falcon ripped meat from bone. I saw the Texas kid again, under the mesquite tree on the edge of the wheat field, watching quail and daydreaming of wild continuous prairie grasslands. I closed my eyes and remembered how I would mentally erase my childhood home and the coat factory next door, where I learned to shift the Chevy, to imagine some uninterrupted expanse. Here we were, my son and I, in the center of miles of sagebrush. Would this mean much to him?
When the falcon was done eating, she jumping to my fist and jolted me back. I reached for the falcon’s leather hood to cover her head, but it was missing. I looked down towards the ground. I didn’t see it. Where could it be, I thought.
“I lost my hood!” I looked back at the truck and the distance we would walk with a bareheaded falcon.
“Oh yeah?” The boy tried to hide his smile and giggles then reached in his pocket and pulled out a hood. “You dropped it back there. I saw you reach up to put it on the saddle pin but it just fell under a sagebrush.”
“You saved the day, hombre!”
I put the hood on the prairie falcon and laughed. Time can smash together in the heat of it all and it’s easy to lose sight of those little things. The sun warmed my face as I watched the boy skip over sage and run behind the dogs back to the truck. He didn’t have to imagine a wild valley all his own. The high adventure lay before him in these public lands. The home to pronghorn, sage-grouse, golden eagles, prairie falcons and a young boy or two traveling in an old beat up Chevy Truck. I held out hope that it would all stay this way.