Our home away from home these next few days is an “inn”. But it is not a conventional inn where there are two or three floors of en-suites and a common dining area. This inn is a series of stand-alone cabins, each with a private front porch, chairs and table. During a morning break, I walk the grounds at our cabin hotel where we’re staying for several nights in Jackson Wyoming. The morning is bright and Francesca is away adventuring while I work. Spacious with green, grassy knolls, walking bridges, fire pits ringed with seating, a waterfall, and a natural river, the expanse is impressive. Also, flanked on either side of the river are tepees for the guests to use. Curiously, the tepees have chairs inside. As incongruous as it may be, it is very functional, let me tell you why… When my feet leave the paved footpath onto the grounds, I am on grass. This is when I quickly realize that my walk is a poo dodge. Unlike dodge ball, there is no opposing side in poo dodge. It is a game between me and poo. Meandering around the hotel’s lake with it’s wide waterfall, I hopscotch around the biological offerings determined not to let a little poo get in the way of an early jaunt. Friendly goslings and geese have greeted the morning with an overabundance of morning gifts. From the looks of it, they greet every morning this way. Habituated to people, they ignore me and go about their business – pooping. And that is why there are chairs in the tepees.
Later in the day, I cross the street to the National Elk Preserve which is their winter home. As this is a warm day in late spring, the elk are not here. They are doing elk things in elk places. When winter arrives, the elk will re-appear. The preserve with it’s wide open spaces are ringed by snow capped mountains. The vistas are stunning. In the foreground are geese. Yes. Lots and lots of geese. And guess what I found? It starts with a “p”.
After my workday, we drive to see Moulton barn, past the wee town of Kelly, and alongside the Gros Ventre river to go exploring. On this narrow, windy interior road, there are fewer travelers. It’s here that we find a small herd of big horned sheep clinging to a sheer rocky hill. Focused on grazing, the sheep periodically look up to watch us watching them and then go back to nibbling on the nearby foliage. Traveling further up the road, we come across another small herd. Each adult big horned sheep is 200 pounds or so. Not only are their bodies large, so are the spiral horns that grace the side of their heads like aquatic nautiluses. Each horn is 15 – 30 inches long and beautifully, and so wonderfully strange.
As we drive back into town, we see a couple of cars pulled over on the side of the road. A young man with binoculars is looking at the nearby ridge line And then I saw it! Wolf!!! Because I am near Yellowstone, I think every animal on four legs is a wolf. The “wolf” trotted along the knife’s edge of the ridge. Francesca said coyote and I insisted wolf. From the passenger’s window, I asked a nearby couple with binoculars, “Wolf or coyote?” and they said… “Moose” My brain somersaulted a few times and then I trained my eye to the shadow on a hill. Sure enough, there he was – a mangy looking moose grazing. Unlike the robust healthy moose in pictures or cartoons, this young adult still wore half his winter’s fur in patches all over his body. He was a moose still trying to find his summer groove. Bullwinkle was not robust and looked like he could use some fodder and a little TLC. “Moose are the largest member of the deer family” I tell Francesca. I know this because when my nephew Jonathan was four, he opened the encyclopedia, and read aloud that factoid. It’s funny what one remembers. I smiled at the sighting of Bullwinkle, who may be a very big deer but a slender moose in need of a few hearty meals.