bordered cascades that tumbled from snowfields and glacial remnants on the slopes of Mount Jackson to our south. It worked; Marsha, surly and nearing deafness in one ear, insisted we keep moving until we were at the lake. But that evening the goats aban- doned their highlands and joined us in camp. Habituated to people by several decades of foot traffic, the Gunsight goats spent their nights right in the camping area, where they sought out the salt left where people and livestock have urinated, or the sweet taste of toothpaste spit on the vegetation (they've even been known to lick sweat from the arms and legs of hikers, but we didn't get that cozy with them). This familiarity, both charming and dismaying, at least allowed me to get some close-up photographs of goats, but when I looked at them
later they all seemed unreal; my mind kept telling me that goats that close must be taxidermic mounts. Who would believe that a wild animal would let people get so close?
All night, these animals that I've always admired as a great symbol of remote and untouchable wildness brushed past our tents, clambered around on boulders, and repeat-
edly approached the llamas. I don't think Zerc slept at all; every hour or so during the night I'd hear him cut loose again, and I'd drift off wondering if the other llamas wished he'd shut up, too.
Excerpted from by Paul Schullery, with paintings and drawings by Marsha Karle; published by the University of New Mexico Press, 2010.
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tional Peace Park,
This High, Wild Country:
A Celebration of W
aterton-Glacier Interna
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