September 22

As for the salmon, Scott says the rebel coho are actually called “jacks” and are about 95% male, so their population isn’t swelling in the traditional manner. And he knows of no data indicating that anadromous steelheads typically breed with other steelheads instead of with rainbow trout. So my conclusions were, predictably, a little shaky. Species can become separated, though, Scott says, because of behavioral differences – the separation needn’t be spatial. Two particular species of moths, for instance, are physically capable of interbreeding but are evolving as separate species because one breeds during the day and the other at night, although they inhabit the same area.

My classmates are interesting people. Tonight Kirra and Smiley John are sleeping at my place, where they’ll probably sleep for the remainder of the course. Kirra was born Australian, and had dreamed her whole life of living in Steamboat Springs, CO. She got her green card a few years ago and is studying for her citizenship exam now. John knew Kirra from leading tours with the same travel company two years ago. The two reunited this summer when Kirra delivered a motorhome to Alaska, where John was working – she currently works delivering vehicles across the United States – and the two drove into Crested Butte together. They were camping in the back of Kirra’s refrigerator truck until the police told them they couldn’t camp in town. Then Kirra asked me if she and John could camp in my driveway. Sure, I told her, but you’re also welcome to sleep in our extra beds.

Kirra, John, Scott and I spent all afternoon outside with our WFR class going through potential medical scenarios as the snow swirled around us and the mercury bobbed in the thirties. I mimicked a climber with a broken wrist and a nasty case of Acute Stress Reaction, Kirra devised a backboard for an unconscious patient while Scott stabilized a spine and John helped to splint a compound fibula fracture. The four of us find ourselves here, in this mountain town, learning the same things and working on the same projects, thousands of miles and millions of ideas from the places we began. It is one of fate’s everyday statistical impossibilities.