Eight days. Eight short days separate this moment in time from my departure from Newcastle. Leaving this place is something for which I've been waiting the last five months. To say that I'm excited to be returning to home would be an understatement. And yet, despite my anticipation to finally be going back, I can't shake this uneasy feeling of uncertainty, insecurity.
I would love nothing more than to say that as soon as my things and I are back at home that I'll be set and secure to spend the next nine months comfortably enjoying my time, waiting to enter grad school. But the truth is, my immediate future is anything but certain. Some problems do seem to be slowly working themselves out- I think I've found a place to stay, for instance- but there remains a chance that the next nine months could be much the same as the last five.
As I see it now, there are two likely possibilities for me. One, that I return home for a brief period of respite, only to have to move again within the next month or two for work, or two, that I stay at home but end up having to take a low-paying job that I hate just to get by. There is the third possibility, of course, that I'll find a great job doing something wildlife/environment-related at home, but I feel my odds for such fortune are slim at best.
I suppose the best I can do for now is focus on the near-term future. Namely, my sights will be set on March, when I'll hear if I've been accepted to, and subsequently make visits to, grad schools, and August, when I'll (hopefully) be making a more permanent move elsewhere to begin my graduate studies.
In the interim, I've been finishing up things at work, wrapping up loose ends in the field and trying to fill long stretches of time in the always-boring office. This week I had two days of work on a 300 acre parcel of BLM land along the Wyoming/South Dakota state line, known as "Mallo" for its proximity to a summer camp of the same name. Mallo is considered one of the nicest pieces of land managed by our field office, and with good reason. The area sports a 2.5-mile hiking trail, a meadow, extensive aspen groves, tracts of white spruce along a narrow drainage, and one of the last remaining stands of old-growth ponderosa pine in the Black Hills.
Despite only having two days of work at Mallo, I had to bide my time to get there. The cold, wintry weather from last week persisted through the weekend, with additional snow falling heavily west of Newcastle. Tuesday's forecast looked more promising, but Tuesday morning dawned grey and cold with freezing rain and high winds. Finally, on Wednesday I decided to take my chances. I am, after all, running out of time.
No freezing rain on Wednesday... or at least, no "freezing." Though the temperature hovered near the mid-forties, it poured down rain all morning, and between the rain and the six inches of snow on the ground, it made for a day that was cold enough. Especially because the Gore-Tex on my hiking boots just isn't up to scratch. Despite the slightly uncomfortable weather, I enjoyed my time on Wednesday, and enjoyed today even more, when the weather cleared and the sun shone for the first time in days.
You might be tempted to think that the forest is relatively empty. A few birds here and there, perhaps, but not much else around. After all, take a hike around an area of forest and you're not likely to see much. Birds, the occasional squirrel, maybe some deer droppings... Nothing to suggest that there's a lot of activity. But walk that same tract of forest after a good snow, and your opinions might change.
A fresh coat of deep, white snow betrays even the most inconspicuous forest occupants. Deer trails and turkey highways, rife across hilltops, bypassed here and there by the tracks of lone elk. Small, clawed fox prints run along the meadow's edge, near the tracks of a rabbit. Around the bases of trees, the characteristic rodent stride, red squirrel, chipmunk, and the prints of mice, so close together they resemble tiny, crisscrossing train tracks. Near one tree, the larger prints of a porcupine. Along the trail in one spot, the dinosaur-like marks of a ruffed grouse. Then, perhaps most impressive of all, the tracks of the Black Hill's last remaining apex predator. The mountain lion.
The pug marks of the cat- a large one, probably male- are spread across a hilltop, wavering, circling, stopping briefly to spray his strong scent on a tree, then returning downhill to the cover of spruce in the low-lying drainage to the south. Later, more tracks, along the old logging road, along the trail, near the fence line, his path marked intermittently by spore, an obvious sign of a newcomer staking his territory.
Had I the time, and perhaps a friend with me, I would very much have like to follow his trail down into the drainage. The tracks on the hilltop were fresh, only an hour or two old. The chance to see an elusive animal is hard to resist, and the odds were good that he'd taken refuge in a tree not far downhill. Despite my longing to glimpse such a prince, my common sense is strong enough to win over temptation, and I reluctantly moved on.
Now I have only two days of fieldwork remaining before my internship ends, both to be spent tracking the sage-grouse. Leaving the sage-grouse behind will likely be the hardest part, perhaps the only hard part, about leaving Newcastle. I'm happy to have two tracking days left, to get a last chance to see where the grouse are spending their time, and if they're starting to move towards a winter range. The best part about my last two tracking days? Pronghorn and deer season both ended today, which means I and the other denizens of the prairie will be, for the first time in weeks, safe.
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