Her N. Fork
Carol Vuchetich / For the Hungry Horse News
In the morning, a buck emerges from a stand of firs beside our cabin. He grazes slowly from one plant to the next, sometimes with a doe. Gradually he makes his way back into the woods and disappears.
By contrast, out front it's like a circus in miniature with two chipmunks — what acrobats! — climbing the serviceberry stems they grasp with hind feet before swinging down to catch hard-to-reach berries. They carry on for half an hour, climbing, chattering and swinging. For a finale, one jumps into the grass, pauses, then leaps twice its height to catch a grasshead and ride it.
A few months ago I found a nest of grass woven into a cup about the size of my palm. In a spruce bough not more than a foot off the ground the nest held four turquoise eggs. Two weeks later the eggs were gone. I looked around. No chicks. The parents, a speckly brown female and a male with a red cap, were gone too. I knelt for a close look and saw that a predator, maybe the badger or the weasel I'd seen around, had pulled the nest apart on one side. While it can be disturbing to see, it's predation that keeps the life here in balance.
I baked bread that afternoon and the aroma went out into the forest. It must have been a tempting smell. There was a rap-rap at the door. I opened it and saw no one, so I went back to work. Rap-rap. I opened the door again and looked down. A badger!
I said, "Good morning."
At the sound of my voice it looked up and froze for a millisecond, then spun and waddled off quickly— left right left — each jog twitching its coat from side to side.
Among the many creatures here, for me it's the wolves and bears that exemplify most our North Fork wilderness. I've met a wolf twice, once when a doe shot out of the woods behind the hostel. I looked back and there it stood, a black one between the Lodgepoles, focused and absolutely still. Its eyes held the look of the wild, a hard one to describe. It's the look of the 'other,' intent on something that has nothing to do with the human. A look with no past or future, it holds the present like a flame. What a creature. It was a perfect black amid a patch of wildflowers at the edge of the woods.
The second time, a wolf pup waited in a clearing alongside trees that were tall and grew randomly so the light between them fell in broken shafts. For a few minutes, the wolf pranced back and forth as playfully as any pup you'd throw a ball to. Eventually it ran off, a good choice considering the hatred some people feel for wolves. Once, when the subject of wolf kill quotas came up at a meeting, I asked why anyone would want to shoot a wolf. Most of the men looked back at me and laughed.
There was another day. It was morning and the dry dust on the road hadn't been raised yet. My dog and I had crossed the bridge on Whale Creek. We must have been half way to Sondreson Hall when I looked back just as a moose and calf climbed from the water and stood on the other side of the bridge. They watched us from a spot where wind stirring through the trees cast a pattern of shadows and sunlight that flickered. I couldn't get a good look. It was like trying to identify someone standing between a movie projector and a screen.
As I squinted, the cow's legs seemed to be too short for a moose, but the pattern of shadows deepened and I couldn't tell. When sunlight wavered over her back again I thought I saw a silver stripe, ears short and wide set. Realization dawned in slow motion as the sow hefted her forelegs in a great upward surge and stood at full height. Spellbound by her immensity, by the grace of a creature humbling to behold, I stood there in the hard dust.
Something seemed to pass between us. When the moment was gone my heart leapt into my throat. I tugged the dog's leash to walk away and the sow, the powerful one, let us go.
During the first few years I spent on the North Fork I had no idea I could walk up the drive, head down the road a few yards and enter a clearing with a view of Glacier National Park and the Flathead River.
Sometimes I stand there at the edge of a cliff where the rim has crumbled toward the river, building soil where wildflowers have taken hold. Overhead, birds of prey wheel and dip. One plunges into the river. Disappears. Then, with a fierce throb of wings that overcomes the onslaught of rushing water, it beats into the air, fish in its talons. An osprey.
Across the river, past the burn, past the new forest inching up year by year, the Rockies stretch north and south as far as I can see. In clear weather they define the horizon with slate blue juts and crags. Morning haze softens them and they roll and fade off in the distance. On a clear evening it's one of the places, like a jetty at sea, where you can watch night come and the moon rise in the east while daylight dims in the western sky.
If we are grateful for this wilderness, it is our task to preserve it. While considering the idea of paving our road, we must think hard about its effects on a place we belong to. The same elements — clean soil, water and air — that allow our North Fork fauna and flora to flourish keep us healthy too. Historically, good roads have brought development to places people find desirable. And the North Fork has been "discovered."
In order to preserve our area, I think we must continue to endure its inconveniences, knowing that while we are few (and could be many before long), our actions have far-reaching consequences.
Carol Vuchetich
Polebridge