Tracks

The most interesting thing about winter is you see things you wouldn't normally see.

Which is to say that most creatures with two or four legs tell their tales in tracks.

Take the coyote for example.

In a normal year in Glacier, I'm lucky to see one, maybe two coyotes. It's not that coyotes are scarce or I'm particularly blind, it's just that coyotes are better off not being seen. They tend to live longer if they're not and to their credit, most of them know this.

So they shy away from people. Sure, there's the odd coyote that knows it's inside a National Park and therefore fairly safe from humans, but most coyotes who have spent any time inside Glacier have also spent time outside Glacier where they are officially fair game.

So most coyotes stay to themselves. They book at the slightest hint you may be paying attention to them.

It's called survival, and as a species, they're darn good at it. As humans, we did a pretty good of wiping wolves out of Montana. Coyotes, on the other hand, seemly fairly disaffected.

So on Sunday, about three hours before the big game, I strapped on the skis and headed up the Camas Road, looking for nothing in particular.

It was snowing lightly and then snowing harder, but save for seeing two other fellows for a brief period of time I had the place to myself, which is the way I like it.

West Glacier is becoming a busier place in winter than it used to be, which is great for business but bad for solitude, so I've taken to some alternate routes. Don't get me wrong, I like to shoot the breeze as much as the next guy but when I'm in the woods I'd rather be alone.

The Camas Road isn't all that popular a route after you knock off the first half mile or so. It's not all that scenic and the Robert Fire burned all the trees. Plus, it's uphill. Still, it isn't boring if you know what to look for. There's usually a host of birds and on this trip I saw a few different kinds but what interested me the most were the coyote tracks.

I never actually saw the coyote, but he told his tale as he went along.

Every small bush got sniffed and he seemed to have an endless bladder.

A coyote doesn't pee on any old bush. It usually has to be something scraggly. This particular old dog peed on a weed that stuck out near the road, a tree a buck had scraped clean of bark, several scrawny lodgepoles and one rough-looking dogwood bush. It also peed where another coyote had pooped.

All of this in about a one-mile span.

A human would have to drink a 12-pack in the same span to pee that much.

As I went along the coyote stayed the course, its tracks moving farther and farther up the road. I had zero chance of seeing it. Skiing is noisy enough. Skiing with a sled is even noisier.

There was a game to watch at home, anyway.

So I turned around, leaving the coyote behind.

I'm sure he was just making his way up the road.

Sniffing here and there, always on the lookout for the next meal … or the next unassuming bush.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.