The Pica's Nest

With school fast-approaching, I have been attempting to get as much mountain-time as I can. Last weekend, I made my family go camping at Circle Park, and hiked a ten-mile loop in the Cloud Peak Wilderness on Saturday. During the end of this past week, my sister Kelley and I enjoyed a three-day wilderness trip starting at Hunter Creek trail head and concluding at West Ten Sleep Lake. We packed 20 miles total, in rain, hail, snow, and sunshine--the trip was how I wanted it to be.

The beginning of the first day worried me--it was cloudy and the "kiosk keeper," as I call the volunteers monitoring Wilderness entrances, was a smidgen of a bully. I heard that rock had fallen onto the trail over Florence Pass, and asked whether there would be great difficulties with rocks on the trail. He told me, "Yeah, there's a lot of rocks up there. That's why they're called the Rocky Mountains." He was not helpful--slightly irritating for a beginner back-packer leading her younger sister into a late-summer high-country. But we left him behind, and the sighting of two moose, a cow and her calf, lumbering across a meadow an hour or so into our hike healed some of my frustration.

The other animals we sighted were all smaller, a ferret, squirrels, chipmunks, fish, birds of many sizes and friendliness, and, best of all, picas, in the high rocks. I had the pleasure of climbing the ridge west of Lake Helen, looking at the high peaks--Cloud Peak, Bomber Mountain, Mather Peaks--, looking across the Big Horn Basin, and watching scores of birds flitting about the rocky terrain where I sat. It was a pica who arrested most of my attention, however. After hearing his piercing cry--sounding more like a dog's squeaky-toy than a round-eared, tailless rabbit relative--I finally spotted him, scurrying up and down the peaks and valleys of the spilled granit carrying a fresh plant of some kind. He disappeared under a boulder very close to me, and came out empty-mouthed, to give a few more cries and scamper off. So I ended up sticking my head into the crevices, searching out the pica's nest. I would have liked to see myself, torso wedged between great rocks with my legs waving to the birds. I found the nest--mounds of grass and meadow-plants, in various stages of dryness. The smell was like a clean horse stable--dust and hay and a hint of manure which came from tiny bead-sized pica turds. I even found the newly-brought plant, chewed off by it's root and snapped where the pica had folded it for transport. I tried to put it back exactly how I found it, but was keenly aware I failed. When I emerged several birds, responding to my beckoning wave no doubt, were gathered in curiosity, but they soon flitted away.

I left the pica to his nest, the Basin to it's smoky haze, and the peaks to their cruel weather and returned to Lake Helen to strike camp and trek the 6 miles out. Things I will remember: the moose, the blue-green color of Florence Lake, the frost covering our tent the second morning, the two Mountain Bluebirds, and the pica's nest.