Mary Panttaja

On the route to Jackson, WY, we took a small detour through Southeastern Idaho to a place called Gray’s Lake. We’ve been here before and never found the lake. And there is a reason we never found the lake—it’s really a very large marshland of reeds with a little bit of surface water. The lake is important as a national wildlife refuge and a major breeding site for Sand Hill Cranes. (Which I learned about reading Aldo Leopold’s famous book “The Sand County Almanac”—one of my favorite thinkers and one of my favorite books.)

So we drove around the lake and saw many pairs of cranes foraging in the cut hay fields, one pair with a baby. Many flocks of cranes soared overhead, each so gigantic that even a small group is very impressive.

As we left the visitor center we found a dirt road that I remembered fondly. It runs from Gray’s Lake through the headwaters and drainage of Tincup Creek. Where the creek hits the main road (Hwy 34) there stands the remnants of an old establishment that is vaguely called Tincup.

This is a very delicate 14 miles through the Rockies: Aspen groves, long creek meaders, open sage brush, and valleys forming from dozens of beaver damns. It is just as beautiful as I remember—and yet such a small thing, just a creek running through its own little neighborhood. And still, it is somewhere I will visit again, just to see it or to sit in its shadows and carefully watch.

Rain yesterday afternoon, but things are dry, and crisp and cold, this morning.