Yesterday, Thanksgiving, we hunted a beloved area that got burned in a big fire that started on Labor Day. We weren’t sure what to expect, but have been anxious to see it up close for a while now. From the road, you can only see so much.
Inside it, the devastation was both unsurprising and heartbreaking. Along the creek, you could see temperature changes in the fire’s path, and the flames’ duration from spot to spot. I found myself weeping at times, and terrified when imagining what it might have been like to be there as the inferno navigated its way up the canyon. I felt grateful that the birds and mammals who called that place home are stronger and swifter and smarter than we are. I’m assuming they moved and hope they’ve found suitable habitation.
One of the reasons we chose this place was that I hadn’t bagged a grouse this year. Up high, fir stands in tight draws usually housed good numbers of dusky grouse, the biggest bird we hunt (although next year I intend to hunt sage grouse for the first time). Within five minutes I killed probably the only pair of ruffed grouse left down there. Gorgeous creatures, but the remorse I used to struggle with blind-sided me while looking at their feathers and blood dripping from their beaks before putting them in my bird bag. Clearly, and gratefully, only a temporary resolution.
No sign of chukar in the usual places on the way up. At the top, in the forest, the fire had been greedy thinning the undergrowth, and the large population of dusky grouse had obviously flown the coop. We angled up higher to more open areas whose robust blankets of bunchgrasses were toast, singed into a blackened crewcut. These rolling slopes covered in bunches of grass had made oases for chukar, provided protection from raptors, and now were desolate, bereft of blades.
At closer look, though, a happy sight: almost undetectable sprouts of green emerging from the scorched tufts. I wished I was a botanist so I could predict how long it would take these beautiful plants to reach maturity again and stand firm against the noxious invasion of medusahead, spotted knapweed, rush skeletonweed, and star thistle (among others) that seriously threaten this unique but delicate habitat. I’m eager for spring so I can see how these grasses have fared. I love them. I named one of my favorite beers after them (Bunchgrass Rye IPA).
On one knob that pre-fire was dense with sagebrush, large charred polka-dots showed only the charcoal base of these important and gorgeous plants. Another happy sight, though: in several of them, healthy deposits of chukar poo. Chukar have been there, but we didn’t see any and Peat didn’t find any on our 6-mile (and his 20-mile) hike.
The terrain lured us farther and higher than we’d intended, and on a snowy north-facing slope we found fresh dusky grouse tracks. Seconds later, Peat pointed into a stand of conifers. Two of the pterodactylic galliformes launched simultaneously. Leslie and I each shot at the only one without trees in its way, and we each killed it with shotgun shells I’d loaded containing some of Angus’s ashes. He loved grouse hunting.
On the way down, it was fascinating to see springs in places whose pre-fire plantlife concealed. There was much more water on this terrain, coming out of it, than I ever dreamed in the decade I’ve hunted there. It shouldn’t be surprising: this high desert landscape is stingy with water, so pockets of large plants on the otherwise arid land should signify a spring. Plant-bare, though, you can see it now. But the lack of cover at these springs meant we wouldn’t see any birds that used to chillax there.
Bagging three birds on this hike, despite the remorse, helped make it feel successful. I suppose I should assign more success to the fact that some of the vegetation is rebounding already. But the completely toasted creek bottom dampens the hope for recovery, there at least, because — unlike Hart Crane’s river — the fire did not quickly flee that particular watery spot. Fire and water, hope and sadness. Life.
