May 12, 2025

Calling from Colorado, Ed, my brother-in-law, expressed the hope that we might paddle out to Wild Horse Island, a capstone of sorts to his long driving trip through the Rocky Mountain West. On Wednesday, we paddled from the Walstad Fishing Access to the biggest island in Flathead Lake. After we returned home I wanted to write about the experience, but it took me awhile to realize what most needed to be expressed. Not what it is like to paddle against a headwind both in crossing to the island and in returning to shore. Not the contrast between May’s warm air and lake water at 43 degrees. Not the island’s eponymous horses we never saw. I want to describe sight and insight about the snake, the geese, the rams, and the Shooting Stars.

After reaching the island and padding up its west shore I waded ashore in Skeeko Bay. I noticed a garter snake swimming about my ankles; it too wanted to be on shore and to warm up. After lunch on a sun-silvered Ponderosa log, I returned to the boat and found the snake in the shade of the kayak where it had sought shelter from the sun. While Ed and I prepared to walk the trail to the island’s isthmus, we watched a mated pair of geese sail through the trees behind us, fly out over the water, and with sun on their backs, make synchronous wing beats to slow their descent and land smoothly on the bay.

On our walk through the forest, we paused at the trees where Native people found the sweet layer of cambium beneath the bark during the starving time of early spring. Along the way, we did our best to name the season’s ephemeral flowers, then at the saddle, I outlined some of the island’s history.

We scanned the slopes and margins for bighorn sheep, mule deer, or horses, but we did not find any of these large animals. On the way back to the bay, I noticed that eagles that nested last year in a snag above the most visited area of the bay chose to locate this year’s nest somewhere else. I hope they found a safer and more secluded part of the island to raise their young. As we paddled out of the bay, we caught sight of three young bighorn rams. As easily as boys playing on a jungle gym, they scrambled over the rocks a few feet above the waterline, stood as silhouettes at the top, then vanished from view.

Leaving the cliffs, we felt the wind shift 180 degrees and oppose our every stroke. The return was even more difficult than getting to the island. We were not given the free ride we thought we deserved after paddling to the island.

As I think about the day, I feel as though I see clearly that each creature we encountered has its own life, a life separate from our own. Each animal and plant has a center to its own being, its own way in the world, and its own relations. They are not on the island for us, for our amusement, but for themselves. Each makes its own adjustment to temperature and light, to adversity or comfort, seeks its own safety, nourishment, and shelter. Each star has its own fire, trajectory, and circuit. In the same way that we humans had to adjust to not being the center of the universe at the dawn of the Copernican revolution, so we are not central to these other lives no matter how powerful we think we are. This was a good day because it de-centered us, dethroned us, and let us see, briefly, the autonomy of other living things. The grand total of two headwinds amounts to a warranted and appropriate humility. This is the gift we took home.