Black and Bones, Blue and Sky

As weird as this sounds, I like finding bones when I am walking about in the wilds.  Bones tell stories.  Often, they reveal stories of predation.  One of the most remarkable stories told by bones, I saw in something of a ramshackle private “museum” on Jim Town Road in the mountains between Canyon Ferry Dam and the tiny mountain town of York, Montana.  On display there was, if memory serves, the pelvic bone from a bison.  What made this bone so extraordinary, was the fact a stone arrowhead was embedded halfway in the bone.  The ancient bone had been unearthed that way.

Now, that’s a story!

At a minimum, bones provide mysteries.  From what creature this bone?   Why in that spot?

Yesterday, on a walk through a dry and sparsely forested gully near my house, I found a scattering of bones amid short tufts of blue grama grass.  Only a few seconds of poking at bones, made me realize they were the somewhat spiky remains a carp.

Now, that’s interesting!

I found the collection of carp bones something near ¼-mile from the lake.  How did a carp—a big one—find its way so far inland?  Osprey?  Had a raccoon dragged the fish there?

Naturally (being me), I carefully gathered up the bones, tossed them in inside my overturned hat, and carried them home.  I am thinking about arranging them somehow.

Night before last, we experienced a most amazing sunset.  Such deep blue colors are rare and ephemeral.  For reasons not completely clear to me, (other than I like the way the title of this blog rings in my ears), I have included photographs of that sunset on this blog.

Black and Bones

Blue and Sky

—Mitchell Hegman