BY HARRY WEEKES
Rarely do I take my own advice. After my fritillary hunt, I decided to listen to myself and just poke around; to walk slowly up the little valley in our backyard and then wind my way back to the house with the only agenda being to see, smell, and hear what I could see, smell, and hear.
This is a great time to do this—we’re deep enough into spring that the natural world is still going bonkers with the rush to make the most of every single day, to literally make hay while the sun is shining. Or, in this case, to make arrowleaf, penstamen, lupine, and the great hillside bouquets during our short growing season.
As I set out, the morning light cut across the sage, igniting a sprig of alpine sheep sorrel, which literally glowed from where the sun hit it. I sat down to draw the little plant and subsequently had three pens die on me. Somehow, this put me in a patient mood and helped to slow me down even more.
And so it was that I stepped through the sage taking in the sights, sounds and smells, marveling at how focusing on something like smell actually makes you smell more. I took in the scent of sage and the first whiffs of bitterbrush starting to bloom as I approached a depression in the hillside. In this space, snow keeps longer after winter and there is a bit more reprieve from the wind. Here, congregations of plants pack tighter than on the open slopes. Of course, there is sage. And also serviceberry and the bitterbrush and knots of currants and other dwarfed plants.
Just as I looked down to check what footing would be necessary to either walk through or walk around one of these clumps, a dusky grouse flushed from the position my foot was about to be.
Anyone who has flushed a grouse understands how they explode from your feet, an instant bird cloud of thundering wings, whistling and whining feathers, and a clucking shriek of their call.
I said three words out loud, the first of which was “Holy” and the second two of which were swear words. I put my hand on my chest, in some weird, instinctual moment no doubt designed to self-soothe my racing heart.
I watched the grouse disappear over the hill and then immediately wondered how they find each other out here once they take off like that. As if to answer my thought, a gentle “whump” came out of the distant bushes. Then a reply, but from another direction. The grouse talked. And then, kind of everything did.
Perhaps it was the adrenaline of being surprised. Or maybe the concentration it took to hear the grouse. Or maybe the recognition that I could feel the grouse talk as much as hear them.
Then, there was the chattering of a Bullock’s oriole bouncing around in the willows near the spring.
Amidst the balsamroot still going strong, dried wild pea pods stood open, having already completed their flowering and seeding process for the season.
A crushed and splayed arrowleaf plant evidenced a deer bedding directly on it, which assured me I wasn’t the only animal indelicately working its way through the brush.
Brewer’s sparrows jumped from the ground and as quickly disappeared into nearby tangles of shrubby branches. Above me, harriers and crows took very different routes through the sky, with the hawks circling and the corvids flying in their nice straight lines.
Back at the house, I took my boots off to a shower of sage leaves and small, broken stems. As I got up to get on with my day, I had the thought that I had just experienced a bit of each of those things days—days which consisted, simply, of being in this place. And, for a moment, having a person meander on through.
Harry Weekes is the founder and head of school at The Sage School in Hailey. This is his 54th year in the Wood River Valley, where he lives with Hilary and their two mini-Dachshunds. The baby members of their flock have now become adults; Georgia and Simon are fledging in North Carolina, and Penelope has recently changed roosting sites to Connecticut.
