Bundling Up The Wild

I'm wrapping up little bundles of wild things I've gathered from my last wandering.

Sage, pine needles, juniper sprigs, prairie grasses, all tied up in turquoise thread!

Running around in the Rawah Wilderness and traipsing along the banks of the Laramie River, I gathered up an armload of wild things. Brown and withered buffalo grass, blue grama and fescue. I stumbled on mounds of yellow grasses, snagged my sweater in deep maroon willow thickets and itty bitty burrs got in my socks. With handfuls of prairie grasses, I held them up to my nose and breathed in, like I would imagine a fox or a coyote would do, as they slink in and out of the fragile stems following the rivers edge. There is a scent to things that have gone to seed. The last of the Indian grass has faded and dried but I wrapped their sweetness up tight, not to be forgotten just because their season is over.