Flaming Gorge
The desert’s silence is a multitude. That is the first thought on returning to the desert this evening from my mountain home. Mollie and I walk through the scattered sage in the high desert of southern Wyoming. The distance and silence seems to envelope every sound and draw it away in an attenuation of distance and softness. And here if one can match its stillness the heart slows and calms. Thoughts seep out across the landscape. One can see further and finer here. The scented air dry, the arid land revealed under a clear blue sky.
The chitter of a small bird in the sage and the herbal fragrance comes to us from the westerly breeze. The sun is on its way down and a moon just past first quarter is on the ascent. The light warms the beige cliffs and rocks.
The buff colored dust that, with blocks of sandstone concretions, forms the matrix between the sage and other low plants betrays a brief sprinkle of raindrops. The dust glommed in places where each drop fell, so scarce was this sprinkling of rain past.
From the vegetation erupt clouds of small gnats and insects awakened by the cooling evening and perhaps the rain. They hum in their self-involved clouds working on the next generation for the next rainfall. These in turn draw the swallows who skirt and swoop amongst the sage and brush in the hunt for food, literally on-the-fly, before returning to their cliffside nests safely below the edge we walk along.
Here and there in the dust are the prints of coyote and deer. A desiccated wing of a bird victim of some falcon perhaps.
We are on the edge of a reservoir tonight and mixed with the silence is the sound of waves gently lapping the shore. This strange juxtaposition is enhanced with the silent flights of gulls and a few ducks.
A magpie haunts the camp as one did the day before. He is here to hunt scraps around camp and makes his presence known in the early morning with the scraping noise of bird feet on the roof above us. He will find slim pickings here as we keep a tidy camp.
A morning walk and we see a Pronghorn Antelope on the hill above us. She is alone and is aware of us at the same time; she lopes then hurries up the hill until she disappears over the brow.
Near shore are a pair of Common Mergansers and further out on the lake a pair of Western Grebes. More Mergansers can be seen on the far shore of the inlet. This inlet that used to be a wash or arroyo now filled with still water.
The water from the reservoir has transformed this place. It has brought some who would not be here otherwise. The gulls, ducks, fish and people would have no reason to be here without it. The Pronghorn would walk the half mile to the edge of the Green River for water. There too would reside the ducks and fish. The humans would likely leave the river alone as they have from the town of Green River down to the reservoir. Just some luckless cows to be seen.
