Hey tweets, I was reminded last night at Seattle Audubon's volunteer dinner that I have yet to complete my trip report to Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan. I've been putting it off because I'm having trouble coming up with words adequate enough to do justice to that glorious place. I'm still searching, but rather than wait any longer, here goes:

The border crossing near Opheim, Montana, is as lonely and remote as the rest of this seemingly empty land. John and I speculated on the drive up from Bowdoin how long the lines would be to enter Canada. We had made reservations at the Royal Hotel in Glentworth, the nearest town north of the border, where we planned on grabbing a bite to eat and then spending the night. I was worried that a long line at the border would prevent us from getting to Glentworth before dark. Marge, the owner, had told me she stopped cooking at 9 p.m.

We saw no cars - or people, for that matter - along the way, so I guess that should have alerted us. When we arrived at the crossing, not only were we the first car in line, there was no line. There were, in fact, no cars at all: nothing but a small customs building, a little garage, three nearby houses, and land stretching from one horizon to the other. I think the two Canadian officials who welcomed us to their country were glad we showed up - it gave them something to do. The younger one put us through our paces until the older one finally thought he'd given his colleague enough practice at grilling. He was about to take over the questioning when John had the happy thought of taking out my bird list. Whenever I go on one of these adventures, I always compile a list of possible birds I might see, with space to write the date and place I see each species. New life birds are highlighted in orange. I have these lists going back to the 1990s, and it's a lot of fun to haul them out from time to time and reminisce. For our short-grass adventure, the list is 11 pages long. When we handed it to the customs official, he exclaimed, "Look at this! She's written in all the dates and places! Wow, she's seen a lot of birds." And he waved us through.

(Note: If you cross here, be sure to check the station's hours before you make the drive - they're not always open, and the US hours are different from Canada's.)

This part of Canada is a land empty of people but not of the wild. As we drove past grasslands rippling in the slight breeze, small family groups of Pronghorn Antelope eyed us curiously, prepared to speed away if we approached. White-tailed deer were warier. They stared, then lifted their puffy tails and jolted away in stiff-legged leaps. In the distance - well, everything was in the distance; we had lost all sense of "near" - prairie dogs stood watch by their burrows, ready to dive in a flash to escape danger. Far away against a low rise, a rounder shape caught my eye: a Burrowing Owl observing us, its sleepy golden eyes glowing in the angled sunlight. Reassured that we posed no threat, anchored as we were to our vehicle and the thread of road strung out before us, the owl spread its wings and began to hunt. We watched until the owl dipped out of sight, but we did not tarry to see if it would come back. Grasslands National Park was beckoning us forward, and so we drove on.

Grasslands is Canada's newest national park. Established in 1981, it exists in two units, East and West, separated by about an hour's drive. The park protects 350 square miles of nearly pristine short-grass prairie - only 1 percent of it was ever cultivated. Almost nobody lives here anymore, though people did try in the past. You can still see some of their cabins and sheds in the lands surrounding the park, weathered and falling down. We learned to examine these decrepit buildings carefully as we drove by - because the area is treeless, owls have nowhere to perch during the day that gets them up off the ground. They're attracted to these abandoned buildings and often claim them for their own. Many times, we saw an owl perched in the hayloft window of an old barn, gazing out at the landscape like an old farmer surveying his crops.

The East Unit of the park is far less visited than the West Unit, but even the West Unit is seldom visited. Usually the entire park receives fewer than 15,000 visitors a year. We spent three days driving around both units, and in all that time, we saw only three other cars on the roads, two of which were rangers' cars. It was a stretching experience, meaning our eyes were stretched wide open by the vastness of the plains uninterrupted by towns, tall buildings, or signs that anyone had ever lived here. From time to time, John would get out and walk the prairie, looking for tepee circles - a series of big rocks set in a circle to hold down the tepees of the First Peoples who lived here from time immemorial.

As for me, I was glued to my binoculars. Horned Larks by the hundreds lined the dirt roads, dropping in from the grassy verges to forage for food and grit. They were by far the most common bird we saw. They were far paler than the larks we get here in Washington, and I could never see enough of them.

As the sun began to set, we turned back from the park and hurried to the Royal Hotel before Marge closed for the night. We arrived just before 9 p.m., hoping we weren't too late. Marge, a woman with the friendliest face I think I've ever seen, graciously turned on her stove and cooked two full meals for us. In the bar next to her cafe, the locals were beginning to get rowdy. I suggested that John and I wait in there while our dinner was cooked, but John - who grew up in a small town in Iowa - said, "I'm not going in there, and neither are you." He explained that strangers sometimes received unwelcome attention from the patrons, most of whom had known each other from the cradle. Not that they were mean, but rather a bit clannish. Just then we heard someone shout, "Who wants to fight? Who wants to fight?" followed by good-natured laughing. No fights that night, and our dinner went down just fine. The bar began to clear out well before we were ready for bed - ranchers and farmers the world over get to work early, and these people were no exception.

We spent a peaceful evening in the cooling night, woke up to a full breakfast courtesy of the ever-cheerful Marge, and set out for the West Unit, where we planned to spend two days and two nights. Our target birds were McCown's Longspur and Lark Buntings in breeding plumage, both life birds for me.

At the visitor's center in the West Unit, we managed to track down the only ranger in the whole park who seemed to know birds. The other rangers seemed much more focused on the breeding herds of bison, the numerous and enormous prairie dog towns, and the Black-footed Ferrets who coexist here. The ranger who knew birds, though, told us the *exact* place to go to see McCown's Longspur. This area is on the border between the park and private land. Due to the fact that John must have some mountain man DNA in his genome, we easily found the place she had described, a country road that goes right up to the park fencing, then branches off to the west in ever rougher ruts. John parked our Jeep, hopped the barbed wire fence (a skill a farm boy must have), and set off for the hills to look for birds.

Meanwhile I set up my camp stool and began to watch the swallows cutting the air in time to the meadowlarks singing their fluting songs. John and I stayed in communication with our walkie-talkie radios. Not that there was much to report - I was too enthralled by the whispering wind and the meadowlark songs to disturb the concert. Suddenly a bird showed up on a distant fencepost and began to sing a glorious song. After a short aria he levitated upward and then began to spiral down, singing all the while. A Chestnut-collared Longspur was performing his courtship dance. Up he lifted again, and down he floated. It was enchanting. A called John to come and see this supreme wonder of nature, and he started back.

As he came over the eye of the hill, I put my binoculars on him and just a litte way away saw a shape on a flat rock. The shape turned to me and locked eyes in my binoculars. A McCown's right there, staring at me, showing his beautifully patterned face and chest, then turning to display his sides. I couldn't speak the words to tell John. Well, it didn't matter because I had dropped the radio in my excitement and couldn't find it in the dirt because I couldn't bring myself to look away from that bird. I will never forget that one moment of communion with a creature so wild and becoming so scarce I never really thought I'd see one in my lifetime.

(Continued on next post)

- Connie, Seattle

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csidles at constancypress.com