Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West Read Online Free PDF Page B

the night and storm changed everything. I was afraid, not just of bears but the possibility that these wild mountains might swallow me. It was no secret that they could—bones were everywhere.
    The route had seemed clear enough on my map: circle around Blue Danube, clamber up to a saddle between two cliffs, bushwhack a mile to a small, unnamed lake, take a Forest Service trail four miles down Squaw Creek, and then follow a public easement across the Sun Ranch to the Madison River and Highway 287.
    I might have made it, if not for the mosquitoes and biting flies. They came on with dawn and gave me no rest for hours. In combination with the leftovers of midnight terror, they drove me on when I should have stopped to read map, country, and compass. I did not eat. I hardly drank. Soon I was lost without a trail, plunging downhill along a spring, pushing through high willow thickets with both hands.
    Hours and miles passed. Grunts and crashing noises issued from the willows, and at one panicked moment I uncapped my bear spray and pointed it futilely at a wall of close-set sticks. But nothing emerged and it was late afternoon when I struck the highway at Quake Lake, ten miles and ninety degrees of the compass away from the spot I was aiming for. I stood at the edge of the road, looked up at the mountains, and shivered. I told myself that I would not go back.

    Standing next to the shadows of Bad Luck Canyon, the familiar fear rushed into me, the terror of feeling like prey in the mountains. I fled from it again, bouncing the Foreman south through Moose Creek and along the base of the Pyramid. Ahead of me, to the south, the ranch’s property lines pinched down between the sheer cliffs of Hilgard Peak and the curling line of the river. The map showed a tangle of ridges, timber, and contorted streams, labeled with the words “Squaw Creek.”
    Snow lay deep in the road and kept me from venturing far into the South End that day. I dreaded getting my machine stuck. Instead, I shut off the engine, climbed to the top of a ridge, and looked out across the land.
    Just as Jeremy had told me, the north and south halves of the Sun Ranch bore little resemblance to each other. North of Moose Creek, the land was defined by scale, order, and exposure. Views were sweeping up there, the fences followed survey lines, and crossing the landscape was mostly straightforward. In places, the North End Flats seemed limited only by the curvature of theearth. From the Flats, the Madison Range, though always visible, looked far away.
    But to the south, beyond the open meadows that flanked Moose Creek, the topography bent into a great, chaotic knot. Ridges swept down from the mountains at strange angles, and the three forks of Squaw Creek veered crazily back and forth to negotiate them. The low places were choked with thick, dark timber. Even from a distance it looked like an easy place to get lost.

The wolf was not the first of his kind to stake a claim in Squaw Creek, below the sheer rocks of Hilgard Peak. Others, not long gone, had left their mark on the landscape. As he blundered into the places where they had killed elk and prowled through the mossy wreckage of skeletons, he discovered the best trails from one ridge to another and paused at scent trees that still held the last whiffs of stale urine. In time he found and cautiously entered the old dens. Nothing waited for him inside.
    He tried to make sense of it, picking at the smells and leftover sign the way all canids do. A good cattle dog also knows the difference between fresh and stale wolf piss. He’ll hackle up when faced with the new stuff, sometimes even growl or tuck his tail and press against the side of your leg. But old sign gives him pause. He knows it’s not a threat, but pays attention anyhow. He sniffs it carefully, takes his time walking around, and eventually marks a tree or gatepost in a manner that somehow seems both assertive and deferential. From the way he acts, it is no great