Bird Cloud: A Memoir of Place

by Annie Proulx

  Those first south-side pits yielded some charcoal, broken rocks and a few flakes and chips where some ancient hunter had worked or reworked his stone tools. The radiocarbon assay of charcoal from one of these fire pits gave an age of 1580 +/- 40 B.P. Deryl noticed two other fire pit areas a few hundred feet farther back from the river on the north slope of the ridge. Here the soil was deeper and there were some old sand dunes. Dudley began to dig one of the north side pits.

  In September 2009 Dudley was working on the site, and the James Gang and I met him there one late afternoon. The lowering sun cast a rich shadow-throwing light over the area and we could see objects that had been invisible in stronger light. In the lee of a sage bush I found a tiny agate (or chert) knife the size of my thumbnail, the serrated edge still wickedly sharp. Then Gerald found one. And another. Agate has a cool, almost slippery feel, very pleasurable to the hand. We soon had a dozen little knives, all of white agate, and it seemed we might have stumbled on either the site of a skinning party or a tool shop as some of the edges were dull and some very sharp and showing slanted abrasion marks on the cutting edges. Would we find bones or toolmaking flakes?

  And where did the agate originate? Dudley thought it might have come from the nearby knoll quarry so we climbed up and looked for a match. The chert here was mostly root beer color, definitely not the source of our small knives. The agate might also have been carried from the cliff or the rattlesnake quarry. Careful examination and geochemical analysis could probably match the tools with their quarry source, a task for the future.

  It was on the way back from the knoll to the dig site that I found a beautiful chunk of glassy black obsidian, highly prized for projectile points and not known at Bird Cloud or any nearby place. Dudley said the most likely source of this chunk was the famous Obsidian Cliff in Yellowstone, a mother source of prehistoric artifacts. Yellowstone obsidian objects have been found in Canada, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota and North Dakota. Someone had carried it more than three hundred miles from Yellowstone to Bird Cloud.

  The fire pit Dudley worked on now was different. In addition to the usual soot-stained stones he found a flat rock set on end, probably a heat deflector. This made him think he might be exhuming a pit house. The entire area began to grow in our minds as a possible cluster of pit houses where people stayed for varying periods. Later Dudley wrote:

  The current theory about potential structures like the one at Falling Cow is to not so much look at them as pit houses but as structures set into sand that took on a basin shape out of use and via construction methods. For argument purposes let’s assume the structure was a dome shaped hide structure. The frame for the dome could be either from sage, willow, pine, or even woven grasses. The builders scooped out the sand and leveled the floor, then set the frame on the leveled sand. The hide was then placed on the [frame] and more sand was placed on the edges of the hide to keep out the wind. Inside the small domed structure . . . sat or lay the occupants. Normal use caused the sand to dish out. . . . If a central hearth was set inside the structure the center would be lower or higher based on preference—but here fire cracked rock would be evident—either because they were used as boiling stones or some other heating function. Over time a very distinct feature would appear but since these were often only short term occupation structures a well defined interior feature system might not have been employed (e.g., storage pits, etc.).31

  Dudley’s digging did not show the typical concave shape for a house pit. The most he would say is that he felt people “created a depression in the sand and set a superstructure over the small depression. We need more data to confirm this hypothesis but we do feel we have some evidence of a habitation in the dunes.”32

  The idea of this site as a short-term shelter camp seemed likely. On the south side of the ridge there was evidence of six or eight campfires spread over several acres. We all walked many times through the sagebrush in the area, peering at the ground, looking for further signs of occupation. I found a mano, a river rock with one side worn silky smooth from grinding, near one of the cracked rock circles. With a mano and a flat stone or hollowed rock one could grind wild grains and seeds into nutritious flour. I did not find a flat stone that might have served as a metate. Next year . . .

  Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything—cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks—press inexorably on and on.

  CHAPTER 10

  A Year of Birds

  The first day I saw Bird Cloud, in July 2003, I was astonished by the great number and variety of birds in this river habitat. A bald eagle sat in a tree near the river’s edge. Pelicans sailed downstream. I saw swallows, falcons, bluebirds. Flocks of ducks burst up from the North Platte and flew over my head in whistling flight. Ravens croaked from the cliff. I thought my great avocation for the rest of my life would be watching these birds and learning their ways. I decided to keep a notebook of bird behaviors and daily routines. I planned to buy a telescope when I could afford it and put it upstairs, aimed at the river and the cliff. Harry Teague had included a narrow tall window in the library that framed the eagles’ favorite perch tree, an old cottonwood snag. But the tree fell down in a windstorm as the James Gang was finishing the house, and the eagles shifted to another tree, neither quite so choice, nor aligned with the special window.

  Through the two-year building of the house I had tried to identify the habits of the birds in the area, and gradually recognized seasonal waves of avian inhabitants. Watching a large number of birds took concentration and time—there was nothing casual about it. The bald eagles were permanent residents. Some hawks stayed and some hawks went south. The great horned owls stayed. The ravens raised a family every year and then went somewhere else to hunt once the young began flying. They came back in autumn to tidy up the nest and poke around, then departed again before the winter storms came. But I saw ravens constantly throughout the winter, mostly at higher elevations or along roadsides feeding on vehicle-killed carcasses, so perhaps the highway carnage was beneficial to the meat-eating birds. The roadkill ravens had developed a good sense of timing, staying on the carcass as cars approached, and flying up at the last moment. Only rarely did a fan of black feathers near the remains of a squashed rabbit show that one bird had lost the game of chicken and itself become food. Meadowlarks came in early spring to eat the seeds of a particular weed that grew to the south of the house, and after a few weeks they were gone.

  Migration for some birds, maybe all, does not seem to be a do-or-die, single-destination journey, but a more leisurely series of shorter flights with stops at known places with good comestibles. I noticed with consternation that after Deryl and Dave made a beautiful (to human eyes) garden where the favored weeds once grew, the meadowlarks went somewhere else. But what were those weeds we replaced with needle-and-thread grasses that bent in the wind, flashing glassy stems as fine as pen strokes? None of us can remember. In early spring hundreds of red-winged blackbirds hit the copper-stemmed willows on the island and the cliff echoed their yodeling “aujourd’hui! aujourd’hui!” A northern flicker, outraged at the sight of the house going up, hammered violently on it to warn the James Gang that this was his habitat, his territory, take this damn house apart and git! A photographer friend, Marty Stupich, had taken pictures of the cliff from an airplane and enlarged them in a five-foot-long photograph on which I could mark the nests of cliff-dwelling birds. Because the altitude of the plane showed a different cliff face angle than I saw when standing on the ground, many of the crannies and ledges favored by birds did not show well. An artist friend made a detailed drawing based on the photograph and the view from the ground, giving me a somewhat better map of the choicest aeries and declivities. I put out feeders to attract the smaller birds, but
days, weeks and months went by with no avian visitors. These wild birds were too naïve to recognize feeders as a source of food.

  On December 30, 2006, after three years of anxiety, bill paying, construction and shuttling back and forth through the Medicine Bows, I was suddenly alone for the first time at Bird Cloud. I was impressed that during the two years of construction the bald eagles stuck around. The relevant Stokes handbook stated: “Once a pair is established on a territory, they are very reluctant to move elsewhere to breed.”1 That fit the case. Stokes also warned readers from the “egg-laying to early nesting” period to stay at least a quarter of a mile away from the nest as alarmed parents might abandon their nest or the young. But these eagles hadn’t read Stokes and tolerated all of us. The house itself was roughly a quarter of a mile from the nest and the eagles only warned us away if we stood on the riverbank directly across from the nest or got over to the other side of the water and walked near their tree. Then, in 2008 they built a new nest directly above the river and closer to our house. Since then the bald eagles have raised two chicks every year except one year when only a single chick survived. The books say one surviving chick is the norm, but these eagles have been calm and laid-back—wonderful parents with a high success rate. Whenever strangers came to the house the bald eagles took turns flying over and scrutinizing them. Anything new—lawn chair, garden hose, shrubs—piqued their curiosity and they flew over, low and slow, examining the object. In fact, they were nosy. It was quite fair. I peered at them through binoculars, they peered back.

  On that red-letter day when I was alone in the house for the first time one eagle sat in a favorite perch tree across the river. The day before both of them sat side by side for hours, gazing down through the pale water sliding over the rocks, waiting for incautious fish. This was eagle-style fishing. Sometimes they stood in the shallows, cold water soaking their fancy leggings. Bald eagles are skillful at their trade and we have seen them haul fish out of the freezing water onto the ice, or swoop down, sink their talons into a big trout and rise up with the heavy fish twisting futilely. The James Gang was lucky enough to see one of them dive onto a large fish, lock its talons, then struggle to get into the air with the heavy load, meanwhile riding the fish like a surfboard down the rushing river.

  Walking induces a trancelike state that allows the mind freedom and ease and encourages exploration of odd possibilities and improbable connections. I walked every day, for the mind as well as the body. On that first solitary day at Bird Cloud, I walked east to the Jack Creek bridge and looked up at a big empty nest high on the cliff across the river. It was clearly an eagle nest. Had the bald eagles used it before moving half a mile west to the cottonwoods? Had it belonged to another pair of eagles? The huge structure was heaped with snow. Somehow it had a fierce look, black and bristling with stick ends. At 4:30 sunlight still plated the cliff with gold light. Ten minutes later it had faded to cardboard grey. I looked again at the distant nest, then noticed that on the debris pile of colluvium below and a little to the west of the nest there were two elk. They were likely refugees from a big herd that had moved through the property several weeks earlier. Twenty or thirty geese flew upriver high enough to be out of gun range. Dusk thickened, and then, in the gloaming, I saw a large bird fly into a cranny directly above the elk. Roosting time for someone, but who?

  The next day—the last day of a miserable year—the sun cleared the Medicine Bows at 7:45. It was a beautiful, clear winter morning, the sun sparkling on the snow, no wind, two degrees below zero and a setting moon that was almost full. As Richard Lassels, a seventeenth-century guide for the Grand Tour said of fireflies, “Huge pretty, methought.”2 By noon both bald eagles were in the trees above the river about five hundred feet apart, watching for fish below. After half an hour they flew upriver to try their luck in another stretch of water.

  In midmorning out of the corner of my eye I saw a large bird flying upriver with steady, brisk flaps and remembered the large bird I had seen the previous evening taking shelter in a cranny near the big empty nest. Was it the same bird? What was it? It was too big to be a hawk. It wasn’t a bald eagle; their brilliant white heads and tails make them unmistakable. Hoping for another glimpse of the big bird I skied down to the east end of the property, a cottonwood bosque that the river floods in spring and where thousands of young willows sprout anew each year. Skiing was unpleasant as vast numbers of snowshoe hares had gnawed the willows down to projecting stubs and stamped the snow into a lumpy floor. This was the Big Rabbit Restaurant. A downy woodpecker pounded on the old dead cottonwood that resembled a David Nash sculpture.

  The days were too short for complete happiness and the dregs of sunlight dripped off the cliff at 4:42. A few moments later I just missed seeing the mysterious big bird, caught only a fractional look as it sailed into the same cranny as yesterday.

  New Year’s Day was warm and sunny, 32°F, encouraging a few foolish blades of grass to emerge from the snow. A flock of goldeneyes, diving underwater to forage, dominated a section of the river that stayed open all winter. I thought there might be a hot spring in that part of the river that kept it clear of ice. This was winter range for these hardy ducks which breed and summer in Canada.

  At the end of the daylight the bald eagles sat in trees three hundred yards apart, merging into the dusk but still staring into the river. Their low-light vision must be good. At 4:40 a dozen Canada geese flew upstream. An orange ribbon lay on the western horizon. I waited, binoculars in hand. Two minutes later the last sunlight licked the top of the cliff, then was gone. The sky turned purple to display a moon high and full. I did not see the large mystery bird. Perhaps it was an owl and had no problem flying after dark. But I doubted it. I had a strong suspicion that it was an eagle, the owner of the big sinister nest.

  All the next day I unpacked books, too busy to watch birds. The James Gang came and so did the men with the granite counters for the kitchen. A day or so later the thermometer zoomed up to 40°F, but a rude breeze sucked any transient warmth away. The bald eagles took their stations above the river, waiting for careless fish to show themselves. I ran errands in town and on the way back in late afternoon saw a great blue heron flying toward the river. What was it doing in Wyoming at the coldest time of year? At the front gate I was surprised to see a woman with a camera. She said she was Mary Magdalena, an artist, and would use her sunset photos to later work into paintings. My mother had been a painter, too, but always spurned working from photographs as somehow ignoble.

  The warm day immediately became only a memory. Back to zero temps. The river pinched in, making waists of black water in the ice. I saw no goldeneyes and thought they might have retreated to a warmer section of river. I skied near the west corner, not noticing the bald eagle in the boundary tree. I got too close and it flapped away. Remorsefully I skied east. There was a hole in my glove and one hand got very cold. The sky colors were exquisite pastels, the Medicine Bows misty with distant falling snow.

  For me the keeping of a list of birds sighted has neither value nor interest. I’m not that kind of bird-watcher, though I do watch them with pleasure and do try to identify species new to me. But I am more interested in birds of particular places, how they behave over longer periods of time and how they use their chosen habitats—a more holistic view than a list of “I-saw-them.” At Bird Cloud some birds were year-round residents while most were summer visitors. Eagles, northern harriers, goldeneyes and woodpeckers stuck out the winters while the prairie and peregrine falcons, swallows, bluebirds, and a hundred others brought and took the changing seasons with them. What the birds did, ate, raised attracted me. I suppose I could say I was drawn to their stories. But in thinking about all this the next morning I once again missed seeing the big mystery bird. In the fleeting seconds it was in view I saw it was completely dark in color. The rhythm of its wing beats was similar to that of an eagle. Could it be a juvenile bald eagle from last year’s hatch? Or was it a golden? Maybe. The wind came up and harsh
, blowing snow and cold moved in.

  Then came days of flailing west wind, strong enough to push its snout under the crust of the fallen snow wherever the hares or I had left footprints, strong enough to then flip up big pancakes of crust and send them cartwheeling east until they disintegrated in puffs of snow. Eagles love strong wind. It is impossible to miss the joy they take in exhibition flying. The bald pair were out playing in the fierce gusts, mounting higher and higher until they were specks, then splitting apart and going upriver and downstream. After a few minutes of empty sky the unknown big dark bird flapped briefly into view before disappearing in a snow squall. Surely it couldn’t be a turkey vulture at this time of year! Could it? I was missing something obvious.

  Late in the afternoon as dusk crept up the eastern rim of the world one of the bald eagles showed up with talons full of branches and dropped out of sight at the nest tree. Were they redecorating the nest on a bitterly cold, windy winter day? The wind swelled and blustered. A solitary duck appeared, blown all over the place. White underside and black head and wings and was that a round white spot on its face?—probably a goldeneye but for a second it resembled a penguin shot out of a cannon. Half an hour later two more east-bound ducks appeared clocking along with the wind at about eighty miles an hour. The second bald eagle came into sight fighting the headwind, just hanging in the air and flapping vainly, until finally it turned and in seconds was miles away. The nest eagle rose up and followed.

  The next morning the wind had calmed to thirty miles an hour with gusts hitting fifty. It was a cold and sunny day and the bald eagle team was out flying at eight. As I made coffee I saw the big mystery bird just flapping out of sight toward the TA Ranch. Why was it so elusive? I wanted badly to get a good look at it, but it seemed to fly past only when my head was turned. The two isolated elk stood on a knoll at the west end of the cliff; antlerless, dark brown necks, yellow rumps and red-brown body color. At first sight I could imagine they were the mountain sheep that used to live on the cliff in Indian times. Their faces seemed rather dished, like sheep faces. Magpies were busy across the river, and one raven sat in a tree slightly to the west of their nest site in the cliff. Could the raven, like the eagle, be interested in fixing up its nest so early in the year?