The squalls rolled across the valley floor like wagons hitched to the wind, each one a separate sheet of rain running to the east. Young Wes Turner stood on the porch and listened to raindrops on tin, a thousand little fingers drumming on the roof while the dogs slept at his feet, cool for the first time in weeks. The porch steps were pine, weathered and gray like the clouds, like the rest of the porch, like the house itself, which drank in the dim evening light with the same thirst that the land held for moisture.

As it had for years, the porch roof leaked.

I once watched three tawny mountain lions glide down a snow-dusted hillside. The closest jumped up on a fallen log perhaps 40 feet away and then, without so much as a sound, leaped off and disappeared into the depths of the forest. Another time, an entire family of otters swam over to investigate my fly casting as I waded the icy currents of a beautiful Montana stream.