A thin layer of white blankets my Midway garden. Sparkling crystals create a pallet for a web of fresh animal tracks. Heart-shaped hooves, tiny paws (likely from Reggie, a neighbor’s friendly calico) and delicate impressions belonging to feathered friends: community mourning doves, errant starlin gs, a pair of flickers and one determined, downy woodpecker. Their trail of prints appear random, but it is not. The route weaves between wire cages of suet, ground seed, dried berries and a steel water trough frozen solid. Only three days earlier I listened to the drip, drip, drip from a steady rain pelting my metal roof. Fresh water replenished the trough as I watched a lone American robin quench his lusty thirst. It was the edge of winter in the Wasatch. “Remembering the truth that we are all relatives meant to live in reciprocity.” The arrival of new snow and a clearing sky beckoned midweek skiers to Deer Valley’s East Village gondola as it ascended to Park Peak and the fresh snowpack in higher elevations. A faraway slope revealed graceful S-turns — man-made tracks laid down by backcountry skiers. Below, the Heber Valley looked parched and dry as a bone. Sandy banks skirting the Jordanelle Reservoir lay nakedly exposed. We are haunted by hope for more snow and plentiful snowmelt. Another gondola, the Jordanelle Express, delivered skiers up the mountain to eventually return them back down to bare ground. “Hope is not fragile. It is work, it is discipline. Hope is a practice. It is the work of our time.” The next morning, friends called early but not with invitations to ski. Eager voices tinged with concern shared sightings of an elk herd, 100 strong. The animals were bedded down in an open field wedged between two busy highways. Throngs of drivers speeding along highways 248 and 40 posed a great threat to the elk. Wildlife advocates frantically videotaped, photographed and alerted Park City and Summit County officials and law enforcement authorities. Would they please station officers to safeguard crossing animals and drivers? Could they keep watch over the wildlife sharing our landscapes? Would they listen? “ I don’t ask for perfection. I ask for relationship.” Among ourselves we raised questions. Where did the herd come from: Browns Canyon, Round Valley, the 910 Cattle Ranch or Swaner Preserve? Where was home? Could it be a resident herd from the BLM property in Wasatch County, displaced by the massive construction at and around Deer Valley’s East Village? “If your heart is noisy you cannot hear the earth.” Early the next morning I followed the tail end of a light winter storm to Salt Lake City. My tires left prints on a wet road under a steel gray sky. At dawn I saw them in the near distance. A huddled mass of dark bodies curled into the frozen landscape. My breath caught as I slowed to absorb the magnificent sight. The elk herd remained safe, for a time, secure in their impressive communal strength. “Learn to look at it with reverence rather than ownership.” That morning I was inspired by more than a chance sighting of wapiti (Shawnee for “white rump”). Darren Parry, a Shoshone elder, author and scholar, delivered the keynote address at the second annual Central Wasatch Symposium. His voice held a message worth the long drive and more. Parry moved a rapt audience to tears with his eloquent power of story. Reverence for the Wasatch and the learned ways of his indigenous forebears will lead us onward, he said. “If we choose to listen.” His words were an offering to our tired souls and land, “a love letter from the mountains.” A Native American vision for the future of the Wasatch and sustainable quality of life depends on our relationship with nature. And accepting that the ecological carrying capacity of our natural world is finite. “Relationship to place is not in the language of reports …” The gently placed tracks of a wild animal or the warm breath of resting elk rising in frigid air, only to evaporate like vanishing hoof prints in melting snow, is testament to a profound sense of place. Nature’s loving prayer for life and home. “Love asks something of us. To be brave. To be alive. It is a sophisticated strategy.” Quoted excerpts from Darren Parry’s keynote address on Jan. 8. Leslie Miller is the co-editor of “Reimagining A Place for the Wild” and a former, long-time resident of Park City who now lives in Midway.  The post Wild Seeing: Life at the edge of winter appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less