Spotted Wonder

May 25 2023

Hillbillie Willie and I don’t often see anybody out riding in the desert, but coming over a hill last week, surprise! There were our neighbors, Linda on Hattie and Linda’s Menagerie of dogs. (The pigs and goats must have stayed home this time!)

Willie has met Hattie and Company at Linda’s house, but this was the first time he had seen the spotted mule out in the desert, much less with Linda's Menagerie, and much less carrying Linda on her back!

Linda has done a phenomenal job with this wild long-eared thang, from barely catch-able young mule to being ponied in Linda’s July 4th parades while riding trusty Ted, to becoming a riding mule.

She has taken the time (years) to slowly bring this mule along to where she can ride Hattie out alone in the desert. Don’t they look fabulous!

The Owyhee Green Desert

Monday May 2 2022

I've never in my 15 years out here seen the Owyhee desert so outrageously verdant. We've had the craziest spring, with temperatures swinging wildly between 79* one day and 26* the next night. Waves of wet weather have come through, just enough at just the right time to send the flora into a frenzy of growth.

The desert grasses and shrubs and wildflowers are soaking up the moisture as color - all shades of green, carpets of knee-high yellow mustard, fields of purple flowers (blue mustard?), phlox, arrow leaf balsam root, Indian paintbrush, and myriad other flowers I have my own names for because I don't know the proper names for them. 

It's awful hard to get a good training ride on Hillbillie Willie, because all he wants to do is eat this spring's rare Nature's bounty while it exists - and who can blame him! If we do a 2-hour ride, that's because 1 hour is spent training, and 1 hour is spent eating.

As I told a friend, Let us bow our heads and remember this lush spring in a few months, when the flora is withered and gray, and the skies are brown with wildfire smoke that burns our lungs and stings our eyes. Amen.

Owyhee Gold Dust

Friday August 23 2013

If the last blog entry didn't clog your nostrils, this one surely will. Owyhee dust and sun have a mind of their own when they get together. Too bad this gold dust isn't the real thing - it might be more tolerable.

The Loneliest Little Flower

 
Sunday April 21 2013

The tiny seed dreamed. It yearned to burst up from under the earth and grow into the most immense and towering and important and beautiful of all the spring flowers, and to touch the Owyhee heavens.

It grabbed onto the lone raindrop that fell back in February and hid inside it, until the time came to drink. The seed became the raindrop which became a plant which became new life, shoving the sand grains aside and climbing upward, gulping oxygen and sunshine, shooting down roots and firing up a stem, spinning off brilliant yellow petals at the top and erupting into a stunning bright flower.

But above the earth the desert was endless and the skies vast and the flower found itself tiny and insignificant in the great Owyhee world. There it stood, anchored to the earth, a minuscule speck in the universe, unable to grow big and tall enough to reach the skies like it had dreamed, the solitary, odd, and unimportant flower in a sea of sand, no other plants or creatures around to see and share its beauty.

Until one day the earth shook near the little flower and the strangers came. Where there was nothing, 12 tall legs appeared, then shadows, then 6 more legs, then more shadows, then voices and neighs praising the beauty and bright color and intelligence and  bravery of the little flower that was clever enough to hold onto the little raindrop until the right time, and brave enough to emerge by itself and proudly hold court in the desert of Owyhee.

The lucky strangers went on and the little flower remained behind, bright and happy to be part of the earth and still touch the Owyhee skies and the creatures' hearts, happy to be the Loneliest, Prettiest, Little Flower in Owyhee, the center of the universe.

Five Feet and Six Inches

The creek is dry and the pathway inviting.

The maw of the red canyon gapes: I enter. How can I not?

It is fall, cool and dry in the Owyhee high desert. I am alert for cougars and snakes… but the beauty of the canyon distracts me. Stuns me to muteness. I've hiked the upper part; I've walked along the rim; years ago I discovered eagles nests on one of the canyon's cliff walls. But I've never hiked through this lower part, with the dragon walls and monster monoliths and cathedral towers.

My sense of wonder is so overwhelmed that my other senses suffer, and when a willow bush explodes beside me, I explode too, in adrenaline. Five feet was all that separated me from a great horned owl, and I hadn't seen it. Good thing it was only an owl! But I am disappointed I didn't get a close-up shot of it.

I vow more alertness, checking ledges and overhanging walls, where cougars might lie observing, or where more owls might be perching, as I creep up the gorge.

The canyon in places squeezes together, twists in mazes, and widens into a massive garden oasis. Pretty autumn-colored poison oak decorates the passages. 

The walls become a funnel in places when water runs swiftly in the spring, carving chutes and caves and leaving miniature sand beaches where detritus washes up.

In a hole in the wall 12 feet above the creek bed, 

I spy feathers. It's an old owl nest! 

But as I approach closer, and climb up to peer in it, I see it's pieces of a whole owl - this is the dining room of an owl-eater. Perhaps one of the golden eagles who rules this territory has ripped this great horned owl apart in this dining cave-with-a-view.

Ahead through the canyon walls, I hear and see an angry swooping and diving prairie falcon. I can't see what she's after but I'll bet it's the great horned owl that I disturbed. I try to tread quietly in the creek bed, (which is impossible for a human), try to creep around the corner to see the owl, when it's suddenly had enough of the falcon, and enough of the approaching crashing thrashing human, and it flies over my head back down the canyon, with the prairie falcon in pursuit. As I turn my gaze back up-canyon, a chimney cleft in the opposite wall catches my eye - and I see another great horned owl, staring down at me. He is perfectly camouflaged - I'm not sure how I even noticed him.

I continue on up the canyon, where it becomes very brushy. I could crawl through a tunnel of brush in the creek bed, but I think better of it. I don't sense the presence of cougars, but - what do I know? An owl almost had me for lunch. I opt to crawl up and around where I'm out in the open. 

I see the eagle nest cliff ahead, and there comes a point where I have to either climb or cross the brushy creek bed - and I'm no climber. I pick my way carefully through the 6-foot-high sagebrush and willows, eyes and ears scanning everywhere. There is a sea of poison oak beneath the cliff, but if I pick my way carefully through, I should emerge the other side of the eagle cliff, and continue up the rest of the canyon that I've traversed before.

Still scanning cliff walls and brush, I study my path, carefully taking one step at a time through the tall and pretty red-leafed poison oak. Nearing the edge I say The Heck With It, and I sort of leap and run the last few steps to get it over with.

My mistake.

My last footfall lands in the golden sea of cheatgrass, six inches from one unsuspecting and suddenly very pissed off six-inch rattlesnake. She is golden, barely visible in the matching golden grass, and soundless, because she is too young to have even one rattle. 

can you see it retreating?? me neither!

 (I read later: "Rattler babies have venom, short fangs and are dangerous from birth. In fact, they are more pugnacious than the adults. Although unable to make a rattling sound, the youngsters throw themselves into a defensive pose and strike repeatedly when disturbed."*)

It is only - what? - fate? luck? - that this newborn rattler has not struck me. Again and again. We both leap back, the rattler rising tall and coiling and writhing and rattling a rattle-less tail, me recoiling and cursing, adrenaline raging, stepping back but not too far back without looking, because where there is one rattlesnake baby there could be more babies ("The female rattler may carry from four to 25 eggs, from which an average of nine or ten young are born live"*), not to mention the big rattlesnakes that created them.

The little rattlesnake slowly retreats - while still coiled and ready to strike - into taller grass, and I realize that with its perfect golden camouflage, I'll likely not see the next one, either.

I find my that nerve to continue up this canyon has suddenly vanished. I choose to retreat - back through the poison oak and golden grass (very carefully!) through the tall brush (cautiously!) and to climb up out of the canyon, and leave the rest of the canyon for another day. 

Like a cold day in winter when rattlesnakes should be hibernating.

*from Desertusa.com

Owyhee Secrets

Saturday June 9 2012

While out pulling ribbons from the Owyhee Fandango endurance ride, I came across this young gopher snake digging a hole. I didn't want to get too close because while they aren't poisonous, I hear they can give a painful bite, and I didn't want to bother him at the task at which he was very intent, so absorbed that he ignored this beetle who didn't seem to realize he was in mortal danger. (But then, maybe beetles taste bad to snakes.) I couldn't see anything through my camera screen so I was guessing at what I was shooting, and I was holding my arm out as far as possible, but in this video you can still see the excavating skills of this snake.

[video here]

In addition to the Raven cliff nest I stumbled across with 4 noisy fledged Ravens, I discovered a new hidden little canyon and cave as I cut back to my starting point across country. 

Sometimes when you're out in the boonies and you stumble across something really cool, you fantasize that maybe you're the only person to have found it (not counting the Native Americans who lived here before the whites took over, because in 'our discoveries' we never count the Native Americans - but of course they always knew these places first). I'm unlikely to have been the first white person to find this cave, since not far downstream is the Rock Corral and the sentinel caves surrounding it.

But it is likely few modern people have stumbled upon this place, where the cave overlooks an intermittent creek which, by the looks of the thick trees and vines in the middle of it, runs permanently in this little canyon.

I approached the cave somewhat warily (always looking out for cougars!), and while finding it empty of large mammals, found it large and roomy and accommodating - to rats and mice and perhaps bats. The ubiquitous packrat nest occupied the far end of the cave which dissolved up into a notch in the rock wall, and little nests were stuffed in little pockets in the ceiling. 

No old archeological signs, no obsidian, and no mammal footprints or recent bed impressions in the cave, in which I could have comfortably stretched out or sat tall in, but there was a trail (not used recently) which ran from the mouth of the cave down to the creek. Something larger than a rat has used this cave at some point.

The red cliff walls were a miniature rendering of the deep rhyolite canyons that run on this parallel across the base of the mountains - maybe a million years ago it was one of these deep canyons, or more likely, in a million years, it will be one of these deep canyons. And maybe in a million years, some New Age person will stumbled upon this 'Cave Canyon', and wonder who 'discovered' it, long ago.

Wild Horse Butte: Hoofin' It

Tuesday December 13 2011

We've passed beneath it many times on horseback, its cliffs safeguarding the mysteries above. Why is it called Wild Horse Butte? Who named it? It stands sentinel over the Oregon Trail on its south side, and the Snake River on the north. A large, old weathered cairn marks a point on the northeast rim, visible from far away up and down the Snake.

Did the pioneers name the butte? Did they see wild horses watching them from the cliffs as their slow wagons rolled by? There are rumors of an old spring or lake up on top.

While Jose has carried me enthusiastically around the base of Wild Horse Butte many times, I've often looked up and scrutinized it, searching for a way to hike up to the top that didn't involve ropes and pitons. On our last ride past there, the Owyhee Hallowed Weenies in October, I spied a route.

Carol and I hoofed it there on foot, approaching it from the southwest. We crossed the Oregon Trail that we ride along, and headed up a drainage chute where the cliffs had long given way to a steep but scramble-able path up onto the rim.

300 feet above the flats, we have a grand view of Owyhee: the broad Fossil Creek drainage to the southwest - which sweeps around both sides of Wild Horse Butte into the Snake River, and the snow-kissed Owyhee mountains at its head.

Castle Butte to the east marks the passage of the Snake River from its origins in Yellowstone National Park.

At this height, we are taller than the Canadian geese who fly in formations to the west (here they always seem to be flying west, to some mysterious tropical paradise in the wrong direction).

The blue ribbon of the Snake River splashes a striking vividness among the muted winter desert hues.


We see familiar landmarks in the distance, and from the different perspective of a bird: Fossil Butte, Sinker Creek; the Oregon Trail that leads into the West;

the Bates Creek and Pickett Creek drainages in the far distance. We try to decipher the desert puzzle from above, which hills we ride around, which washes we cross, which rims we follow.

Visitors of the two-legged earth-bound variety up here are probably rare; we startle a 4-legged deer and a canyon wren. The rabbits remain hidden in the sagebrush as we tromp their trails along the circumference of the butte.

It is 3 1/2 miles around the edge of the rim. Evidence that cows occasionally find their way up here are in the old cow pies and the cheat grass that has taken over the top of the butte, as it has most elsewhere in this country (a product of overgrazing).

Down feathers stuck to bushes are evidence of meals that are consumed up here: perhaps the diner was a prairie falcon or a golden eagle from the Snake River cliffs or Castle Butte territories.

When you walk with your own two feet, you get to know a place more intimately, appreciate it more, and start to think beneath the surface layers. Walking the top of Wild Horse Butte, you see hints of layers of sediment - a layer of iron, a layer of shore-sand, a layer of river-washed smooth stones, beneath the volcanic layers.


Looking down on the Snake River makes you wonder what it would have been like to see the creation of the Snake River Canyon, as the water from Bonneville Lake in Utah broke through its natural dam 15,000 years ago and rushed through this once flat desert.

And the more you see on foot, the more questions you come up with. We see scattered quartz crystals on random areas of the butte; why in these particular spots? (We finally default to the Raven explanation: it's the Ravens that place them there as artwork.)

And who built all the cairns on top? Some are small, the one is large and took some effort. Some of them are old, judging by the amount of moss growth on the stones. Are they ten years old? A hundred? The first stone on the bottom laid by pioneers in 1850, and the last stone on top laid by us today?

On the way down, two deer antlers left behind show that we are not the only ones who think this chute up onto the rim is a good way to climb to the top.


From the top, I saw the trails like I've never seen them before. From the trail next time, I'll never see Wild Horse Butte the same way again.



**A footnote:
My friend Karen S corrected me on one incorrect assumption:
"The Snake River Canyon already existed before the Bonneville flood.  The flood scoured out the canyon, maybe deepened it a bit and left it looking more or less like it does now.  The flood did not create a new canyon over flat land."
Thanks Karen!

The Owl Grotto II

Sunday November 6 2011

They look quiet and deserted, these Wind Caves, but eyes are always watching you. Who knows what magical creatures inhabit the tunnels and caves when humans can't see?


She's still here, the Great Horned Owl, the queen over her fairy tale domain, camouflaged in the cliffs, fearless, untouchable. Watching, but unseen by most humans, though she leaves clues all around.

She eats well... this is her dining room

where she sits and eats and leaves the bones and feathers and undigested pellets behind.


Sometimes she dines on her terrace-with-a-view.


The swallows build their mud nests on the walls, hiding inside their lairs while watching outside.


The packrats build their magnificent, 6 foot high nests in the crevices of the sandstone cliffs,

burying down in the nests, or clinging to the walls when a human ventures too far into their hideout.


They look deserted, these marvelous carvings and sculptures of wind and water, but the eyes are always watching, in the hidden Owl Grotto in the hidden Wind Caves in the Owyhee desert.


[slide show here]