To Know a Place

 

A conversation with my friend Hailey Wilmer last week started me thinking (again) about what is required to really know a place. Dr. Wilmer, a range researcher with the USDA Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in Dubois, Idaho, had recently spent several weeks collecting data in the backcountry. She remarked that she was enjoying learning a new place - learning about how to get from point A to point B in the absence of roads, learning about where the good camping spots were, learning to see the country as the sheepherders who care for the Station’s flock see it.

Her comment made me think about my experience on the sheep ranges north of Truckee, California, these last four years. I’ve been studying the interactions between livestock guardian dogs and wildlife - and in the process, exploring much of the Kyburz and Boca sheep allotments on the Tahoe National Forest. And while I don’t know the country like Madardo and Luis (the herders) know it, I’m getting to know it better. The herders know where the sheep can cross the Little Truckee River safely. They know where the sheep can drink on their way into the shipping corrals in September. They know what the sheep like to graze in the morning - and the entirely different set of plants they like to graze in the evening. For me, knowing this country has required my attention - and my repeated visits. Knowing a place takes time, and I don’t yet know the Kyburz/Boca country like Madardo and Luis.

Closer to home, I’m privileged to have spent the last decade and a half getting to know the places where our sheep graze. As I was moving water at our irrigated pasture this morning, I saw little tree frogs where I expected to see them. I heard the mocking birds singing from the top of the oak near the telephone pole near irrigation set number 2. I missed the pair of red tail hawks that I frequently see near set number 5, but I expect I’ll see them tomorrow or the next day. Later, when I was checking the ewes on our summer targeted grazing contract (and where we’ve lambed our ewes in late winter since 2011), I saw doves feeding along the road where I always see them. I saw deer sign and game trails along the seasonal creek. I saw praying mantises on the sheep - which I typically see in August.

But knowing a place, I think, means more than knowing the roads and trails. More than knowing when I can expect to see a certain bird, or where I can expect to find a coyote track. Knowing a place means knowing how much rain will make the little creek run where we winter our sheep. Knowing a place means knowing where the frost will linger into the afternoon on a cold December day, or where the breeze will come up on a hot summer morning. Knowing a place means knowing where the clover will grow one spring, and soft chess the next, depending on the timing and amount of rainfall. 

Knowing a place, in other words, means being there - and being inquisitive - across many seasons and many years. Knowing a place requires being present, again and again, in that place. As Wendell Berry’s great character, Jayber Crow learned, knowing anything takes a lifetime - or maybe longer.

Thanks to my friend Ryan Mahoney for taking these pics!