Rain, mud and a dead cow

Current news: (written Sunday night)

Warning: Long, descriptive narrative to follow. If you don't have the time to read it all, go directly to synopsis at bottom of this journal entry.

When I finally poked my head out the door this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see less rain damage than expected. The rain gauge registered 1.1 inches, a destructive quantity for this barren landscape to handle at one sitting.

The sun had regained its hold and it was a very nice 48 degrees by 9AM. Perhaps the rains would finally relent their tenure here. I would celebrate by taking the puppy for a walk down to the creek to check its running status. This was not a light undertaking since the half mile trek was spiked with deep cut ravines and slick mud pockets. I put on my rubber boots, the first serious pair I have ever owned, and headed gingerly across the road. Brou was now geared far higher than his normal overdrive and took twenty leaps in a joyous and widely rebounding zigzag pattern for every step I managed. After this outing, perhaps he would rest quietly upon the floor when we returned - at least I could hope so.

Brou knew the mission and offered to show me the way to the creek bank, first this way and then that way and then four or more additional options. They all involved mud, always a treacherous mix of potter's clay and something akin to hypoid gear oil. I deemed him the anti-guide as usual and carefully planned my own path through the sage brush to the next more forgiving patch of light-colored sand. My old kick-starting right hip complained bitterly as did my back and neck but this was better than sitting in a chair, surrounded by the chant of the hurty harpies. You could become deeply lost in your other thoughts out here with the challenge of every careful step drowning out those usual voices of pain. And so I walked on, my eyes busily analyzing every next step, the unavoidable mud flats suckling at my big black rubber boots, still vaguely aware of the ever criss-crossing Brou. The sun's heat and the marching movements were adding ease to every new step now. If I were to walk another ten miles in this fashion, could I perhaps then take flight effortlessly and soar far above these ever-nagging carnal miseries? Get real. But the brief fantasy was a beautiful respite.

My pleasant reveries were interrupted by a set of deep cloven tracks crossing my path. My mission to survey the state of the creek was now usurped by a new mission; to find this unknown cow eating up our range which was supposed to be in a state of seasonal rest. I turned west and followed the trail. Despite my stopping to point out the prints to Brou, he would stop to sniff and then dash off in a random direction. The path of the tracks was laborious to follow and I found myself finally at the high edge of the creek bank, some 30 feet above the creek itself. Like the phantom owner of the tracks, I turned back and then followed its many half-loop checks for a way down into the creek bed below. I did stop to notice that the creek had pulled in its skirts and was now content within an eight to ten foot channel. Still not safely crossable but an encouraging sign.

Finally the terrain sloped down hill at a more reasonable angle and I followed the tracks downward, noting their occasional long skid marks as a caution to my own next steps. I had no intention of mudboarding in my boots down the entire slope. There was no clear shot and the path was continually punctuated by jagged plants. This thought brought a grin to my face as I remembered my first walk with Mark down to the creek. He lost his footing and rode down the mud on his buttocks until he came to an abrupt stop by straddling a yucca plant like a bull rider. All I can say is that the yucca is not a pleasant plant for a gentlemen to be doing the hoochy coochy with. After a lot of knee jerk expletives, he made the rest of the descent in a slower and much more dignified manner, albeit now in a slightly bow-legged stride.

Brou and I scoured the flood plain but never caught site of any cow in the distance. Now, you need to realize here that I am no blood hound, no hunter-gatherer type either. My absent-minded revelations and steps were interrupted by a pile of what looked curiously like semi-ripe black olives. The "Doh" light came on when I connected the dots between that pile and the others I had already stepped around. This was no bovine ghost at all but a VERY large elk. He must have slipped across the canyon to evade the mesa full of soggy hunters. Looks like the old boy will survive the harvest one more year.

With that mission coming to a sudden end, Brou and I followed the bull elk tracks up another shallow embankment and headed for home. The mile between us and home went by fast with Brou continually flushing birds out of the taller brush and me still watching my every step. A starkly white spot popped into view and turned into a very large and sun-bleached mammal hip of some sort. It wasn't long before we found a nearly complete cow carcass on the other side of a rain water puddle. It was no longer pungent enough to command a roll in it from Brou or he would have spent the night howling outside of the rat villa. I was deeply thankful. Cattle sometimes die from predation, other times from mundane to utterly mysterious causes out here on the range. The unexpected death of this animal undoubtedly represented a troubling thinner margin to some cattleman somewhere.

As I was writing down today's events, the clouds knotted together in another dark charcoal ensemble and began wailing again. The lightning and thunder were even closer and more vocal than last night's show and the creek's vigor has just been renewed. These desert banshees have finally played themselves out and the deep quiet we love has returned ... but for how long? I do not know.

Synopsis: It rained. I went for a walk. I came home. It rained.

Next likely post: in a couple of days