Belly Crawling through Paradise

The night was fair and the mountain men had food.  They were happy.  Firelight flickered on the faces of an Englishman, an Irishman, and two Americans as they sat around their campfire in Hoodoo Basin in what is now Yellowstone National Park.  Hoodoo Basin was a part of the Lamar Valley, where the Lamar River trickled through the giant furrow that glaciers had plowed through the Absaroka Mountains.  The valley held elk, deer, and buffalo year-round, and the lush grass of the glacial bottom furnished good grazing for the horses.  The evergreens and aspens growing on the hillsides provided plenty of firewood.  To the north stood Hoodoo Peak at 10,500 feet, to the west Parker Peak at 10,200 feet, and to the south Polluck Peak at 11,000 feet.  Content in the lowlands, the trappers leaned back on their elbows and argued about whether England, Ireland, or the Rocky Mountains was prettiest.

“Talk of fine country,” said the Englishman.  “If you want to see a beautiful place, go to England and see the Duke of Rutland’s castle.”

“Aye,” said an Irishman, who sat across the fire from Osborne Russell, the diarist who would later publish Journal of a Trapper.  The Irishman held an elk rib in one hand, a knife in the other, and had dabs of grease at the corners of his mouth.  “If ye would see a pretty place, go to old Ireland and take a walk in Lord Farnham’s domain.”  With a greasy hand he smoothed his long hair.  “An’ if I were upon that ground this day I’d fill my body with good old whiskey.”

But the Americans would not allow it.  Russell loved the Lamar Valley, which he called “Secluded Valley.”  He returned to it time and again throughout his years in the mountains.  On this occasion, it was the other American who spoke, and, according to Russell, won the argument:

“You English and Irish are always talking about your fine countries,” he said, “but if they are so mighty fine, why do so many of you run off and leave them and come to America?”  He glared across the fire and, hearing no rejoinder, bit a mouthful of elk out of the chunk that he held.

Ninety miles north of Hoodoo Basin, I had not yet killed my supper.  Muzzleloader in hand, I climbed to the back of the mesa that overlooks Otter Creek.  Sixteen miles east of the Crazy Mountains and eleven miles north of Big Timber, Montana, this is the piece of land to which I return whenever I can.  The whitetails, I knew from experience, moved up and down Otter Creek throughout the morning.  I laid my rifle atop a short rock wall and scrambled to the top.  The top of this mesa isn’t perfectly flat.  It’s a low dome, and from where I climbed over the rock wall, the hummock of earth atop the mesa separated me from the edge overlooking the creek.  That was as I wanted it.  Any deer grazing in the creekbottoms wouldn’t be able to see me until I crept around to their side of the mesa, and at that point I’d be moving too slowly to attract their attention.  I picked up the rifle.  Before working over toward the creek, though, I’d check the hilltop.  Sometimes deer bedded down in the tall grass after feeding.

The wind blew hard across the high ground, and the tawny grasses bobbed furiously in the breeze.  I crept slowly up the side of the dome.  At each step a new sliver of land became visible over the hilltop, and after each step I paused to examine the new terrain.  I moved slowly.  This way only my eyes and the top of my head would be visible to any deer that I saw.  I wore a camouflage facemask to conceal my forehead, which has become taller and more reflective as I have gotten older.  But wisdom and hair vary inversely, I thought as I peered through the waving grass.  There was a dark blot near the edge of the mesa.  I squinted at it.  Probably a rock, but I wasn’t sure.  Lifted my binoculars.  Nope – two ears and a head.  It was a bedded doe, looking out over the flats of Otter Creek.  She hadn’t seen me.  I studied her.  Whitetail doe, good sized.  A target.  A hundred and fifty yards away.

I sank to my knees so that the hilltop screened me from the doe.  With this open-sighted muzzleloader and a deer-sized target, a hundred and fifty yards was way out of my range.  I could crawl to the top of the hill without her seeing me, I thought, but even then I’d be about a hundred yards distant.  I wanted to get within fifty yards, seventy at the most.  I envisioned the terrain between the doe and me.  After the hilltop, there was a low gully between us.  If I could reach that gully, then I could crawl up the opposite side and get a shot at her.  But reaching the gully would be a problem – once I topped the hill, I’d be in plain sight.  I could only crawl through the widely-clumped grass and hope she didn’t notice me.  No other way to do it.  The wind prevented approaching her from the opposite direction.  Maybe the grass would give enough cover.

I dropped my pack and, rifle in hand, moved toward the hilltop in a crouch.  Then I dropped to all fours until the doe came in sight again, then flattened against the earth and crawled on my stomach.  The wind was too noisy and she was too far away for her to hear me, so I crawled quickly.  I crawled ten yards or so then, when I lifted my head, saw the doe.  A hundred yards away.  She still hadn’t seen me.  I paused to look around.  There was no easy approach.  I rested my elbows in the dirt and pointed the rifle at the deer.  The front bead sight covered the whole forward half of her body.  Too far for a shot.  I’d have to crawl for the gully.

I cradled the rifle in the crook of my right arm and, swiveling at the waist, reached forward with my left elbow and right knee.  Doing so raised my butt and shoulders a little bit, but that couldn’t be helped.  I dragged the rest of my body forward by my elbow and knee, lay flat, then repeated the process by reaching forward with my opposite elbow and knee.  I found an awkward rhythm as I slid across the ground.  Butt and shoulders up, drag forward, lie flat.  Butt and shoulders up, drag forward, lie flat.  The doe was still looking out over the creek.  She hadn’t seen me yet.  Butt and shoulders up, drag forward, lie flat.  I felt a sharp pain in my knee as I crawled over a prickly pear.  But it didn’t hurt too bad, keep going.  Butt and shoulders up, drag forward, lie flat.  I could smell the dry, crumbly earth.  Vague scent of sagebrush, butt and shoulders up, drag forward, lie flat.  It really was pretty country.  Big, empty, optimistic sky above.  The snow-topped Crazy Mountains serrating the sky’s western edge, butt and shoulders up, drag forward, lie flat, and clumps of tawny grass covering the plains to the north as far as you could see.  To hell with Brits and Irishmen and their puny little islands.  Butt and shoulders up, drag forward, lie flat.  The American west, big and open, raw and untamed, unfettered by the ticky rules and norms that shrunk down a European life.  This was the place for a man to make his life.  Butt and shoulders up, drag forward, lie flat.  America, where the west was not merely a direction but an ideal that instructed us still.  Butt and shoulders up, drag forward, lie flat.  Long a magnet for wanderers, dreamers, explorers, warriors, debtors, criminals, and young guys trying to escape from office chairs.  Butt and shoulders up, drag forward, lie flat.  How had this doe not seen me yet?  I was way out in the open.  Butt and shoulders up, drag forward – and there she went.  I was still eighty-five yards away and the doe jumped up, bounded some distance, then stopped to look back.  How must I have appeared to her?  A dark shape, slithering toward her like a giant, chubby, arthritic snake with its middle section rising and falling against the ground.  No wonder she ran.  She stood broadside to me, offering the ideal angle for a shot.  I lifted my rifle and sighted at her.  With a modern scoped rifle, I could have shot her through the shoulders – a heart and lung shot – but with the muzzleloader the front bead covered most of her body.  Too far.  I lowered the rifle.  She stood looking at me for a minute or two until, tired of pondering the mysterious ground-humping snake, she walked over the edge of the mesa.  I rolled over to pluck cactus spines out of my knee.

So much for a knife in one hand, venison rib in the other.  If I were a mountain man, I’d have gone hungry.  I cleaned out the cactus spines, then stood and stretched.  I thought about breakfast.  Praise be to the modern pantry.

The view from the mesa when I went back later with Duke.  Crazy Mountains in back left; Otter Creek behind Duke's head.

[note: the events described above occurred several weeks ago]