Fiftymile Mountain

October, and I awake atop Fiftymile Mountain, southern Utah. We hiked up the evening before, up the great east-facing scarp that overlooks the canyons of the Escalante River. No trucks, no ATVs, you can only get here by foot, or horse, or mule. We camp near a spring, water trickling out of a pipe into a trough. There is a cabin. It belongs to Mary ... I don't know her last name, but she ran cattle here for years. Now the mountain is part of a National Monument and she fights the BLM. She's a tough gal. Three husbands. One fell off of his horse on the trail, struck his head on a rock. One she shooed away with a shotgun. The third probably had sense enough to just leave. The cabin is quiet. Aspens are turning gold in fields of sagebrush, an unusual sight. In four days we see two people, father and son, hunting mule deer the old-fashioned way ... walking, in dust-covered Filsons.

my new boots
fill with cheatgrass;
sticks to cows, too

return trip--
I share the warm truck
with a fly