Dillon, Montana

A chorus of birds sang me out of Wisdom as I headed up the Big Hole Valley. On either side of me stretched vast pastures running to mountains draped in snow. It was a crystalline morning. One of the joys of being out early anywhere is hearing and seeing wildlife starting the day. A sandhill crane croaked. A killdeer ran screaming from my approach. An osprey cried out from its nest as it flapped its wings but remained put. There were chirps, chutters, whistles, coos, caws and sing-songs from birds I couldn’t identify, some in brilliant plumage of orange, yellow, red or blue, others in more mundane dress of brown or black. Although normally highly skittish, two pronghorn antelopes remained sitting facing the rising morning sun and let me pass less than 50 yards away. And as far as I could see black and red Angus cattle dotted the landscape. Overhead I heard a hawk screech. It escorted me down the road about a mile.

Prairie dogs dashed to the middle of highway for several miles of my ride up the valley. They sat and looked at my approach. As I got closer they would scurry into their roadside burrows. “How can you be so bold or foolish to expose yourselves that way with hawks all around?” I asked myself. At one point five of them lined up one after another for about 150 yards .They all appeared to be looking my way. As I pedaled closer to the first one, he dashed to his burrow. Out of nowhere a hawk swooped down and plucked the last prairie dog off the pavement. At the moment of impact the victim screeched and his brethren zipped to their holes. I stopped in amazement and followed the hawk as it flew to a far fence post where it tore into its road food.

Jackson, 18 miles up the valley, offered a brief respite. Despite having a population of only 38, it draws people to its hot springs. Lewis and Clark soaked in them and even cooked meat in the hottest one. I rode on.

At the top of Big Hole Pass (7,360) I stopped to rest and look back on what I had accomplished. An information marker stated that I could see more than 400 square miles of the Big Hole Valley. Save for the single ranch that I could see the Valley was little changed from when the Corps of Discovery first saw it.