The other two times I saw Henson, he didn't see me. I was out birding, well hidden by willow and brush, silent, patient, on the public land that runs adjacent to the west side of our old ranch property, federally managed by the Bureau of Land Management. On March 24, I saw Henson cutting wire on the property line fence that separates our ranch from the BLM land. On April Fools' Day, about a hundred yards down the fence line, he did it again. I got pictures of that one. I went down and checked for new grazing leases, and Henson's name wasn't anywhere. BLM land belongs to all of us and none of us, all at the same time, and grazing it without paying fees is the same as stealing feed. Worse, he'll be sending cattle across Pop's and my secret Gunnison sage-grouse lek in the middle of breeding season, which is just as bad for those birds as a real estate development would have been.

THE GUNNISON SAGE GROUSE have as much to do with the woman I am today as Pop does. In 2000, they became the first new species of bird to be officially recognized in the United States for over a hundred years. I was twelve years old. The whole town was talking about them. Part of our landscape. Part of our character. That kind of thing. I was doing all the ranch chores with Pop by that age, every day a chance to test my courage rounding up cattle, test my strength pulling wires taut on fences, test my stamina working every last hour of light in a day. I knew by the smile in Pop's eyes that he was proud of me, which is how I learned to be proud of myself. In my memory of Pop's voice, he is always saying, because he always was:

Nice work, Norah.

You keep after it, Norah.

That's it, girl, well done.

While we worked, Pop told me stories about his life, before me, on the ranch. My grandmother sucking the poison out of snakebite. My grandfather taking the waters at Waunita Hot Springs. The creamy sweetness of my mother's homemade ice cream. It comforted me to know that Pop and I had other people once. The stories let me blame time and bad luck for the missing members of my family—stop worrying we were alone because something was wrong with us.