Returning to the valley after a few days in the big city always feels like being released from a pressure cooker to me, as much as I like Seattle and what it offers. It doesn’t take much time back in the Methow to remind you where you are and what that means.
Open range, for one thing. The weekend before last I returned to my cabin, a ways up West Chewuch Road, to find ample evidence that my yard had been grazed by a small herd of cattle. Trained professional observer that I am, I couldn’t help but notice that the grass was munched down and the visitors had left substantial organic mementos decorating the landscape. It looked like a section of the Chisholm Trail, with less dust.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve been a temporary rancher. Wandering livestock are pretty common in my neighborhood and the owners eventually round them up. Yippee ki-yay ki-yo. I didn’t mind. I won’t have to mow the big yard for a while, if at all, before fall is firmly established. The cattle are pretty amiable, and while they aren’t especially dainty in their waste disposal habits, it’s biodegradable and easily stepped around. Besides, it’s kind of fun to watch cows from your front porch now and again with a cup of coffee in hand.
Lately, a young buck deer has been hanging around, munching apples under the ancient tree out by the road and wandering through the yard. A few days ago, it walked right up to the porch and stood there in stare-down mode, oblivious to the irony of a big rack of deer antlers mounted on the storage shed a few feet away. I think it was seeking shade on what was a very hot day. The buck doesn’t even look up any more when I pull my truck into the driveway. I guess we’re used to each other.
I’ve also been keeping an eye on a covey — I think that’s the word — of quail growing up in the cover of heavy brush along the driveway. It’s been interesting to watch what I assume are the parents lead the little featherballs out into the driveway to peck away at who knows what. The slightest noise or disturbance sends them skittering back into cover. A squawking, swooping jay gets them moving pretty quickly.
The other day, as a bunch of the young ones were bobbing away under the protective eyes of the elders, one of the fledglings came charging out of the brush and began aggressively chasing another one with what seemed to be angry intent. For cryin’ out loud, I thought, they’re quail — what possible issues could they have with each other that would prompt such discord? Some kind of avian sibling rivalry must have been at work.
I ran into my next-door neighbor at the Methow Conservancy’s Cider Squeeze last weekend and we compared wildlife notes. He confirmed that I had bovine visitors while I was gone, and is also familiar with the buck and the quail. I guess we’re just one collegial group of critters, trying to get along.
It doesn’t always work out that well for all of the wild and the domesticated around here. The previous tenants of the cabin told me that one of their cats was snatched off the front porch during a winter evening some years back, and the tracks they followed in the snow the next day were of a much bigger feline: a cougar. And I know there are bear nearby, up Cub Creek to be sure and, on at least one occasion, ambling across the road in front of my truck.
In Seattle people think it’s exotic — and annoying — to have raccoons ransacking the garbage cans, crows constantly screaming their territorial warnings or, as happened a few years ago, a fox wandering into the county courthouse. I think they feel the pressure of an urban environment too. Their country cousins don’t seem nearly as agitated.
