Is a Prairie Wild?

So?  What do you think?  When you stand in the middle of a vast prairie landscape do you feel like you are in a wild place?  I believe that those of you that have spent time in the prairie country of Montana you would feel like it is in fact a wild place.  I know for certain my great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother who grew up along Montana's Highline thought they were pretty isolated at times!  But what makes a place a wilderness to you?  Is it trees?  Wildlife?  The feeling of isolation?  Lack of man-made objects?  

This summer I am fortunate enough to be working with Tony Bynum on a project backed by the Montana Wilderness Association and the PEW Trust where we are "inventorying" some BLM land that is up for review as a wilderness study area.  My role in this project is the navigator!  I get to use all the available maps and technologies to find where we are, find how to get where we want to go, and put all the data we gather together in a map to be submitted with a final report.  

We just went out to our first area to get our feet wet before our official training.  We learned many things...mainly that this is a big, big, big job!  It's exciting, fun, humbling, and did I mention BIG?  

I think that if you spent some time in the wide open spaces of Montana you would be hard pressed to say that it is NOT a wild place.  Every square foot of ground holds it's own ecosystem.  It was certainly not the ecosystem I anticipated seeing in the Eastern part of my state.  It was almost a wetland, if you can believe that!  

The antelope and deer populations have been hard-hit in the last two years by snow and disease but they are there and we did see other wild creatures.

There is much evidence of wild game in this area.  Perhaps it's their winter range or perhaps they are use to hunters in their territory and caught wind of us before we spotted them.

The evenings at camp are prime times to go for a nice hike and listen to the frogs, birds, and mosquitoes buzzing in your ears.  

This view stretched for miles across Montana and into Canada as well.  It butts up to Canada's Grasslands National Park which is now new on my "bucket list."

Incredibly enough we found shell fossils on the tip tops of these peaks.  They were just over 2800 feet in elevation and were the tallest spots around.

Moss, lichen, wild flowers, and cactus all grow in abundance in this area.  We were just shy of the prickly pear cacti blooming...it would have been a sight to see!

 There are also some cultural artifacts we ran across.  We aren't sure of the time period or meaning of these rock piles but they were on almost every high-point we explored.  It will be interesting to research the meaning of them.

This marks the end of Chapter One of my summer adventure.  I feel like I hit the lottery with this project. I can't believe my luck in getting to explore my favorite state, spend time with Tony, and learning more about GIS/GPS that I can use in my new job as a science teacher!  Stay tuned for more...we will also be posting a different version of our adventure on Tony's website under Prairie Project.