The newly released scent of sagebrush was strong, and the air swelled with its smell and the scent of pine. Then the wild, musky odor of bighorn sheep swept over the hillside. It came rolling down, like an avalanche. The sky was cloudless. To the north, the peaks of the Gallatin Range across the canyon were bright with snow that became darkly treed as the range ran south toward me and, farther south, to Yellowstone.
Winter lasts longer on that side of the canyon.
A bighorn sheep grazed the next ridge over, tan against the deep blue sky. She was simply there, on top of the ridge. I climbed higher than the sheep. Suddenly, a small herd of bighorns appeared out of the draw between the sheep s ridge and the next one over. They ran up the sloping meadow of that far one, then disappeared over the edge.