[Vision2020] Over clever writing

[Phil Nisbet]

Being a fairish writer of poetry and not a bad spinner of short stories, 
when I was asked to write a news peice for New West on the wolf population 
of Central Idaho prior to Alberta Wolf Introduction, I decided to be clever. 
  I combined elements of a single days hunt of the Hat Creek wolf pack into 
a mix of news and short story, was pleased with the result and sent it in.

The editor of course sent it right back telling me to get off my duff and 
write a real news storym though he said it in very kind words.  So I 
figured, hey, I would post this wonderous meddle of writing styles for a 
short stories writers group I belong to, figuring they would love it as an 
artistic approach to news.

The story of course went over like a lead ballon.  They all loved the prose, 
but hated the fact it was not a short fiction with all of the required 
elements of that genre.  They suggested that I stop being newsy and write it 
as a real short story.

Having thus bombed out with my very clever idea, I figured I would foist the 
darn thing on a post to this board.  Hey if everybody hated the darn thing 
for not being what they wanted, at least I can use it to annoy all of you 
guys as well.

Wolves in the Mist

Three canine forms move in a wary gait through the early morning fog.  Their 
darker forms silhouette them against the contrasting white of the packed 
snow and ice of the high country road.  They pad in a quiet V past fallen 
cabins and empty sheds toward the noise and the lights of the camp along the 
ridge crest.

In the dead of winter the crest of the Salmon River Mountains are deeply 
buried in snow with few slender plowed crossing between the civilization in 
the valley of the Main Stem and Panther Creek.  Recreationists rule the 
Ridge Road, running on groomed snowmobile trails or telemarking cross 
country paths along the eight to nine thousand foot mountain chain.  But 
beyond their reach, on small spur roads from the more remote Cobalt town 
site side of the divide, a small group of full time residents hunker down in 
the face of winters grip, living a life more in tune with the rhythms of the 
19th century than the world of the high tech 21st.

There is only one focal point in that back country drainage, open all year 
and playing host to all comers.  That one business, the place where every 
sort is drawn, is the Panther Creek Inn, a boxy yet rambling affair of a bar 
at the confluence of Panther and Blackbird Creeks.  Beer and wine are served 
to hunters, to hikers, to birders, to the regulated and the regulator, 
miners, loggers, environmentalists and back country rangers rubbing elbows 
and ordering cases of beer to carry away back to camp or to the snow bound 
homesteads in the deep side drainages.  The walls are covered with dollar 
bills boasting success in drilling or in tree planting, in game taken or in 
miles hiked.

Up the road at Copper Creek, the Cobalt Ranger Districts summer station is 
closed for the winter, but a steady stream of vehicles drive up creek to use 
the only land line, the only pay phone in 60 hard drive miles.  The lucky 
few can drive to higher ground and hope to connect with the outside world by 
trying to achieve line of sight with the one cellular tower or get a clear 
enough piece of sky to hit a satellite, just to let the world know that all 
is well or receive instructions for another days work.

The largest Wilderness Area in the lower 48 States sits just a few miles to 
the west, but this working landscape is just about as remote as you can get 
below the Canadian border and the tourists often mistake it for wilderness.  
The locals and regulars at the PCI laugh at that and are only to happy to 
play the game of “If you want remote” with newbie’s.  Yet Salmon is an hour 
and a half drive away and even the largest town in Lemhi County, with its 
population of 3,000, is still 146 miles from what most in America would 
consider anything near to being a city.

In the time before the introduction of Alberta wolves to meet requirements 
of the Endangered Species Act, the locals all knew of the existence of the 
remaining native wolves.  The pack which was known for their summer range on 
Hat Creek, denned most winters just to the east of the divide in the 
headwaters of Iron Creek south of the glacial circ amphitheater of Iron 
Lake.

Game in the winter in the high Rockies tends to push to lower levels and 
congregate in quiet places in small meadows near what flowing water they can 
find.  The Hat Creek wolves were practiced at winter hunts and knew where 
the game was likely to be found within their terrain.  On this early 
morning, a hunting party of the wolves is moving up the Copper Creek Road 
toward the Blackpine Mine, where a man camp sits on the old mine dumps.  
They are moving through the tents and vehicles of the mineral exploration 
party on their way to Garbage Ridge above the PCI to investigate the game 
cluster in the hollow to its south.

The shift in the twenty four hour winter drilling schedule has not yet 
changed, but the camp cook is beginning preparations for feeding the day 
shift breakfast and then clearing up to feed the night shift its dinner.  
She will wake the camp for the meal with the pistol she keeps by the cook 
shacks plywood door.  The chugging of the generator up slope on the fuel 
yard landing changes pitch as her husband, the camp manager and handyman, 
fuels it up for the day and down a level from her position, a geologist 
unzips his tent by the old copper mine’s portal.  All three humans hear a 
faint noise of crunching snow and turn east as the wolves move past.  They 
stop their work to watch the progress in silence, smiling faintly at the 
fact that the wolves do not even cast a glance in their directions.

The Hat Creek hunters swing through the camp and turn along the drill roads 
at the ridge crest heading west.  As they approach the first drill rig, one 
wolf continues on the ridge and two of them split off to head into the 
drainage.  The drillers see them briefly, but are busy with their work.  The 
wolves move into their standard hunting formation, the humans are not of 
concern, they have hunted around them before.

The wolf on the crest moves quietly to within range of the elk below while 
his hunting partners wait in the drainage for his attack.  He will select 
one animal to push toward them, while the others thunder away from his 
assault.  A geologist at the second drill rig looks up from his core logging 
as the leader begins his rapid move down hill.  Twenty elk scatter from a 
patch of lodgepoles and a grey shape bounds after them, cutting one of them 
out and away from the rest.  As he and the elk reach the creek floor, the 
other two spring from hiding and in a flurry of motion the elk is down.

A pistol shot sounds from the direction of the man camp.  The wolves stop 
for a few seconds at their kill to look east in that direction.  Up slope 
from them the drilling crews begin to load up for shift change.  The wolves 
hunt will get a mention in passing around the dinner table between reports 
of progress and supply requirements.  It may get a further mention when they 
go down from the camp to the PCI for an after shift beer and a few stories 
of other sightings and actions by the Hat Creek pack discussed.

Cowboys from the Hat Creek Ranch and from the Edwards Family who range their 
cattle in the area will tell you that they do not fear lose to this pack.  
Cougars are always a problem and coyotes have to be watched for, but the Hat 
Creek wolves avoid cattle.  The old hands note that the wolves tend to keep 
the cougars and the coyotes populations thinned in their range, something 
that reduces cattle loses.  Cowboys, cattle and wolves have adapted to each 
other after a war that raged for a hundred years.

The wolves themselves hunt differently and their prey knows their pattern.  
The hunts are not the encirclement of a complete herd common on the open 
plains.  Here the wolves minimize, as do the elk and other game, because the 
deep snows and narrow canyons dictate how they must interact.  The ancestors 
of the Hat Creek pack hunted the woods buffalo here on this ridge in the 
same manner, before man drove that game species to extinction here and in 
the ground where the elk were on that winter hunt come spring, a geologist 
will find a skull of a bison dating to the time of the American Revolution.

All of this will change when the Plains wolves are introduced.  They hunt in 
large packs and not in threes, surround their prey in the manner they are 
used to in the open, driving those they do not take to death by exhaustion 
in the deep snows that do not exist in the Plain’s wolves home terrain.  And 
Plains wolf young will harass the livestock on Phelan Creek to the north, 
where Hat Creek wolves skirted the homestead to hunt by Rabbit Lake.  Others 
of their kind will invade the upper reaches of Iron Lake and displace the 
Hat Creek Pack until they are finally absorbed by Alberta Wolves in the 
Silver Creek area of the Rabbitsfoot pack.

It must be hoped that some day, the knowledge and the genes of those 
original wolves will pass down through the introduced variety.  As one who 
watched the wolves in the mist I can only hope that day is soon.

Phil Nisbet

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