I took a slow, relaxing breath before I answered him. “I do want an easement,” I said, “but I'll settle for access to the land. I'd like to just do a count.”

Henson's brow was furrowed. He didn't answer right away. I heard the screech of an eagle and rifled through my bag for my binoculars. I'm never without my bag, my binoculars, my ledger. Sure enough, I spotted a bald perched in the familiar gnarled old cottonwoods that lined the riverbank.

“Bald eagle,” I said. “Want to take a look?”

Henson shook his head no with a sort of bemused expression, like he was indulging a child. It was the same with Pop, who supported birding as a hobby but could not understand it as a dead fucking serious science career.

“They're not exactly rare anymore,” he said. “I've been watching that one for days now.”

“Sure,” I said. “Old news, bald eagles.”

“Yeah, you won,” he said.

“What?”

“Your people. Environmentalists,” he said.

I lowered my binoculars, sat back down. “My people owned this ranch for sixty years. We're not so different from you.”

Henson sniffed, looked away. He was right about the eagles. They've recovered. There was a time I found that hopeful, some sort of proof that we humans could still find our environmental emergency brake, as if we'd finally felt the loss of the passenger pigeon, of the Carolina parakeet, of the Labrador duck, of the thirty pages of birds under the Wikipedia category “Extinct Birds of North America,” which you don't have to be an expert to google. But not anymore. I'm older and maybe wiser and I know better now. We only saved the bald eagles because we want to see ourselves in them—they are our national symbol, after all, which makes them exceptional in the same way we believe ourselves to be exceptional, the default lens for our worldview. Ordinary birds, like the Gunnison sage grouse, we shrug and let disappear. Which is more proof, if I needed more, that we are not, that we have never been, all in this together.

“Land didn't come with an easement.” The sunset was fading. Henson turned on the porch light. “Which tells me your dad knew better than to invite the government up here, give up good grazing for the sake of some ridiculous birds.”

“Pop left that land alone because it was the right thing to do,” I said. “He loves those birds.”

Henson snorted. “He was dodging the government, or I'll eat my hat. No easement, no mandate. Old ranchers are all the same. You know that. Or you should.”

I knocked my empty beer can over when I stood up to leave.

“I'm sorry. I don't really want to say no to you, Norah,” Henson said. The apology seemed sincere. “I've put all I have into this place. I won't risk any limited use.”