June 2021 - 47
the hay is cut, but not bailed. June's wet, cold
rains can crush populations of young birds
that depend upon warm days and the bug
protein. Whether you're a pheasant hunter
or a bird watcher, what happens in the June
rain plays out in the fields of autumn. But also
like any Western native, I know better than to
curse the very existence of rain. I remember
a friend once who laughed at people who
complained about a week's worth of rain in
a dry June. " Just you watch, they are going
to be whining about the heat next week. "
Sure enough.
These are the typical gentle rains, what
the Navajo called " female " rains, unlike their
characterization of torrential rains as " male. "
I like those, too. The big storms that come
out of nowhere, from clouds that tower to the
top of the world, with black hearts promising
an unleashing. When these rains come they
are hard and cold and you better find cover.
They often come with hail and sometimes the
hail is stupendous and dangerous. But it is still
moisture for a dry land. It rushes across deserts
and closes highways. Once I spent a day of
fishing on the Greys River in the Wyoming
Range with a couple of friends in pursuit of
Snake River cutthroat for the Cutt-Slam challenge.
Another couple of friends were on the
other side of the range fishing for their Colorado
River cutthroat. We had plans to meet
at a restaurant in Hoback Canyon for dinner
that night when one of those classic thunderstorms
came out of nowhere, pounding
the canyon and sending a wall of mud onto
the highway, closing it for hours. Needless to
say, our friends never made our dinner date.
Maybe in a few minutes the rain will slack
and we can pull ourselves from our warm den
and step into a world of wetness. Wet doesn't
matter to a cutthroat trout.
- Tom Reed is the author of Give Me Mountains For
My Horses and other titles, all of which are available at
the Game and Fish Store.
- Lori Eslick is an illustrator, artist, presenter, children's
picture book illustrator, author and workshop leader.
She regularly creates illustrations for Wyoming Wildlife
magazine's Wild Country Dispatch column. More of her
work can be seen at eslickart.com.
Wyoming Wildlife | 47
http://www.eslickart.com
June 2021
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of June 2021
June 2021 - 1
June 2021 - 2
June 2021 - 3
June 2021 - 4
June 2021 - 5
June 2021 - 6
June 2021 - 7
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