Nature calls
I recall thinking, as I crawled soundlessly with my wife into the Wyoming outback just before dawn to hear the elk mate: What if we get divorced?
It's more than a frozen tourist's tale that elk only mate when the icy winds start to blow.
The good thing about Wyoming is there's a vast glory-land of state and national forest, on which commercial development is forbidden. Take a look at what they've done to Sedona the next time you're in the mood to see what the old hippies are up to, which is more or less the same as always. See halfway up the red rock canyon? Condos. For a hundred-dollar bill, you can sit on a vortex and eat a tree bark sandwich on rye, out Sedona way, a vortex being the earth force that makes some people tingle, and makes others think their pocket was just picked. True, if Jackson Hole in Wyoming were any more touristy, you'd have to get your hand stamped entering the city limits.
But the area into which I crawled below the Grand Tetons to hear the elk mate was "Shane" country. From the classic cowboy movie: "Shane come back," the little boy yelled. "Forget it kid, I'm freezing to death, I'm moving to Charleston," the thespian Alan Ladd as Shane replied; something like that.
Splinters remained from that movie set when I went crawling for mating elk, so the story went -- splinters from the shack in the film where there was a stampede.
Alan Ladd was built so near the ground, filmmakers cut trenches into the earth for his leading women so they would appear to be of a similar height.
You can't get too near the elk in numbing Wyoming pre-dawn, otherwise they will quit mating. And you, yourself, might never mate again if they travel your way.
Mating elk sound like big truck brakes screeching.
I hope.
In the attorney's office when we were giving and taking depositions, I said to my ex-wife in the making, "Remember when it was 11 degrees and I crawled a mile on my hands and knees to hear the elk mate?"
"And you wore those thin socks and cloth gloves. I can't believe you did any of that."
The second memorable morning-light experience with animals has to do with, since this is a horse racing place, racing horses.
There is, not far from where I live in Oklahoma, a place called the Tall Grass Prairie, a vast expanse of rolling natural blades and stalks and stuff that brings to mind the Willa Cather quote about seemingly endless grain in the wind resembling a running herd of buffalo. This Tall Grass Prairie is quite simply so plain, it's beautiful; believe it or not, starkness can grow on you until it's lovely. It's the kind of land where they check on cattle in choppers. The "Bonanza" theme should play from cell towers.
This time the first sun found me much, much, much, much, much more comfortable with the natural scheme of things.
I sat in a car beside a nothing-much road watching wild horses run like they were warming up to film a Budweiser commercial. Wild horses, mustangs, live in this protected nature preserve. Talk about a big piece of heaven: The mustangs would kick at each other, and buck at each other, and chase one another up rocky slopes and down steep inclines, banging shoulders, clipping heels, flashing teeth.
Then they were gone, and you sit there wondering, what's up with all the fake dirt for race horses?
Write to Jay at jaycronley@yahoo.com.
