Reading: Atonement

Watching: rivers

Moving: a little walking

3 September 2002: Gros Ventre, Oxbow Bend

We drove across a plain called Antelope Flats and saw bison but no antelope, and of course the mountains. That's not just leftover snow in the crags: those are glaciers. Wee ones, but still.

We drove up this valley (I want to look up which Georgia O'Keefe painting it reminded me of), down which the Gros Ventre river rushed, along whose hillsides all these pretty horses grazed, for me to loll about a riverbank while RDC fished.

So he fished. I wasn't so wild about this river: its valley was too dry.

It did try its best to be interesting. In 1945 one section of it fell off and down and rolled partway up the other side, damming the Gros Ventre forming a lake. Still.

Too cold to wade. Too rocky for good lolling.

The horses in Wyoming are just better than the ones in New England. I know next to nothing about horses except what I like. Most of the horses I knew in Connecticut were just kind of there. Bay, with white face streaks and stockings, and bay in a horse is like taupe in a shoe, and points should be darker than the body. (Sham is a bay but has a black mane and tail as is right and proper, plus he's Sham; and blood bay Isfahel has black points.) My neighbor had two horses when I was a child, a pinto that was pretty and a bigger one of the Just There variety that was not. Perhaps this is the source of my opinion?

So. Pintos and also Appaloosas. And Assateague ponies, which are painted too.

We talked about our wishlists of national parks not yet visited. RDC made a roadtrip with EJB the summer they graduated and has already been to lots. I haven't been to Yosemite (where we didn't go this time because there wouldn't be as much water in fall as in spring), I have never been to Acadia, I would love to return to Olympic, and I crave to go to Assateague National Seashore (but not during Pony Penning).

While RDC fished, I read Atonement and watched for bears and listened to the river. It was already midafternoon, with afternoon clouds building, so on our way down the valley, we began to watch something else: the clouds forming and roiling and breaking over the Tetons.

We watched the rain move through the valley, down the Snake River. We drove north with the storm, and here it is passing Oxbow Bend on the Snake with Mt. Moran to the left. No moose. No otters. I crave to see an otter. Also but less so, a beaver.

Despite the rain, we swam when we got back. The wonderful thing about sun at higher altitudes is that it works, and if the rain had cooled the lake a little bit, it was only a tiny bit--I'm sure it had no effect below the thermocline, which was about 18 inches deep--and coming out to dry and warm up in the sun was wonderful. Also I took a new scrubby into the lake with me, because even without soap, taking off that first layer of dead skin, sweat, and bacteria felt pretty good.