Coyote tracks on the frozen Frenchman River



- October 14th

Half past six, and dawn has come. From the window of the converted Catholic convent that now functions as a hotel, the sky is obscure with soft grey clouds. Beneath it, upon the brown grass, the church and the scattered fences and ranch buildings, augmented here and there by poplars and firs, all stand so contrary to the smooth line of the northern horizon. This is a land of angles; one is aware of every variation in height far more than in the mountains.

There is no time for the park today. Our flight to England leaves tomorrow afternoon from Calgary, and we must reach Medicine Hat tonight to catch the early bus to the big city. There is no public transport anywhere near Grasslands itself; the Canadian Pacific did build a railway here, once, but it faded away, and the last station sign now hangs as a momento upon the convent's dining room wall.

The weather is shifting, restless, and subtle. It is warmer - the temperature reads closer to freezing than to -10c - but winter's rain falls without sound



The road north is swiftly becoming foreboding.



Come nightfall, it will be greased with newly-formed ice. It is 75 miles to the TransCanada, the four-lane highway that runs the breadth of this great country. We have no snow tyres, and simply have to take care. I know how deep the snowdrifts are; on the way down here, I stepped out of the car and sunk in above my knees.

The wildlife is hiding. It is always a mystery how so many large creatures can conceal themselves in so exposed a landscape, but hide themselves they do. Cattle are still wandering, poorly adapted as they are to the prairie harshness. Their backs are flecked with unmelted snow.

We turn west, entering the TransCanada. The clouds are still low, grimly flat, as if brooding over their recent storm. The snow is now much deeper, covering the inner lanes of the wide road. The prairie has become the Arctic, stretching ghostly to the horizon. Settlements are scarce in the great lone land, and there is no propect of walking to civilization if the road becomes unmanageable.

All this time, I've been admiring wildlife that is finely crafted to thrive in the extremes of prairie weather. The rental car has had no such evolution. It becomes a fight: the central ridge of icy snow on the road, thrown up by the giant wheels of the trucks, constantly knocks the car rightwards towards the grasslands. To the left! To the left! It's no use. The car skids on ice and then slides adrift into the roadside snowbank And there it stays, until a passing American horse vendor, towing a horsebox into Alberta, is kind enough to help us drive out into the snow-flanked prairies and round onto a farm track, from where it can be coaxed back onto the TCH.
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By mid-afternoon, by what almost seems a miracle, I am in Medicine Hat, walking quietly along the banks of my favourite river in the world



This is the south branch of the Saskatchewan River, offspring of the Rockies, highway for so many generations of natives, explorers, traders and surveyors. I've seen where it is born, just north of Lake Louise in Banff. I've also know the north branch, even bigger than this, and once watched a huge mountain grizzly wading through its young waters, overlooked by peaks as fierce as any in the Rockies. I want to travel its whole length one day, and see where it empties into Lake Winnipeg, and then northwards through the Nelson River into the Arctic waters of Hudson Bay. This water might have seen black bears in Banff in its early reaches, but will be in the realm of polar bears before it tastes the ocean's salt.

But for now, the wildlife of the prairie forages along its banks.



A red-breasted nuthatch climbs upwards (or downwards? )



Down below, a savannah (?) sparrow bathes in a pool of water released from the thawing snow.



Smaller creatures leave evidence only of where they once were.



The park above the river is peaceful. An old train stands guard, another reminder of the past.



I have rarely left any land with such a strong conviction that there is so much still to explore. But leave I must. Calgary awaits Like the great freight trains before me...



...I'm headed west, and then east again.

The flight is a long and cramped one, but in one final blast of beauty, the northern lights blaze across the sky as we fly over the Greenland icecap - dancers of green cold flame lightening the polar night beneath Orion's feet. Photography is impossible, but the spectacle is superb

When dawn does come, Scotland is in sight: the mountains of the Hebrides are down below. It seems a long time since I was down there waiting for otters to appear along the sea shore



I think again of those giant trains, constantly rattling back and forth across Canada's heartland. They will retrace their tracks yet again before long. Maybe I will too...

Far beneath the eagle's path, much smaller birds eke a living. Most songbirds are consumers of plants or small insects, like this meadowlark:



But a few are bona fide predators in their own right. On a isolated bush, a shrike stands sentinel. It's either a loggerhead or a northern shrike; the two species are very hard to tell apart, but both are rare. Their prey includes lizards and even small birds.



In warmer months, even humans should be a little cautious



But even now, in the cold, sharp-tailed grouse keep open a watchful eye.



As well they might!



It would be a lucky badger who caught a grouse, but I continue to be surprised by the energy that these high-speed versions of my relatively stolid British badgers display.



But the view is more peaceful in the ruins of an old homestead. Two Nuttall's cottontails, completely fearless of me, graze in the shadow of both sage and abandoned settler endeavour.







The open nature of the prairie and the sheer abundance of small mammals makes viewing them infinitely easier than it is in the Rockies. But, even so, for every ground squirrel and rabbit that I do see, there must be dozens of other animals that quietly slip past my gaze. I photographed these tracks in a little patch of snow at the entrance to a prairie dog burrow. Winter will reveal more secrets for any human visitors who are hardy enough to endure the severe Saskatchewan cold