Field Notes

I started thinking about guttation on a hike at the end of summer. It was a humid day; it had rained almost nonstop the previous week and there was even more in the forecast.

It is not every day that you share a lunch moment with a beautiful insect.

I drive the dirt roads that stretch for miles across the grasslands. I drive slowly as the roads are rutted and rough and cross open cattle range. I often spot pronghorn running in the distance.

That first night, I tried to remember all I had learned but the details were lost. What I do remember is the gnarled, gray twisted bark of the whitebark pine: a representation of strife, turmoil, and persistence.

Squoosh. Squoosh. My feet, encased in calf-high rubber boots, sank into the thick sphagnum moss, and water crept up to my ankles. I pulled one foot free with a loud squelch, lunged towards the nearest hummock, then rescued my other foot.

It was an unseasonably warm first week of January. One late afternoon, as golden sunlight hid behind grey stratocumulus clouds hanging over the Clark Fork River, I came upon a Great Blue Heron.

I can’t stop staring at them. Their beauty seems otherworldly; they’re radiantly fluorescent against the snow. It’s almost scandalous, that neon green, that buzzing orange.

At twilight, from my house in the sage, I hear the underdogs singing outto each other. Sometimes, I swear, it almost sounds like laughter.

The first oceans I explored as a child were those of eastern Montana. I spent nearly three decades of my life in ancient oceans before I ever got my feet wet in a modern living ocean.

Missoula phlox, or Phlox missoulensis; A species named after a town named after a beloved waterway the Salish call nmesuletkʷ, roughly translated to “cold water.”