FOR THE MOST PART, however, I have little contact with the mesa's shy creatures. Truth is, I am more familiar with the signs they leave behind than I am with their actual selves.

Always I approach the stock pond cautiously, sneaking up through Coyote Gulch, carefully peering around a comer of the dam. Ducks, phalaropes, or killdeer might be feeding in the water. But most often the pond is deserted. Then I can only try to read the stories in the shoreline muck where all kinds of busy tracks intersect. I also attempt to identify feathers caught against the mud.

Killdeer feathers are distinctive, as are those of a mourning dove. The dramatic tail feather of a large hawk is always exciting (or did it belong to a pheasant?). A big white down feather could have fallen from a large shore bird, perhaps a goose (perhaps an eagle, perhaps a whooping crane). Certain speckled breast feathers I attribute to mallard ducks (or black ducks or pintail). Smaller freckled specimens probably belonged to sandpipers (or sanderlings, or ... ). Nocturnal plumage from a nighthawk is easily identified-or did it fall from an owl? After that I'm usually stymied by the varieties of castoff feathers that regularly wind up near the stock pond.

The feathers are easy compared to most tracks. Large webbed feet, little webbed feet. Three-toed tracks could belong to killdeer, phalaropes, or sandpipers. Does this humungous footprint mean a raven, a hawk, or a gull stopped by? Of the smaller bird prints, a majority must belong to horned larks -- their repetitious scribbles are the chatterboxes of the footprint patterns.

Of course, intermingled with the busy ornithological cacophony are the animal tracks. I have rarely seen a deer on the mesa, but their hoof prints show up regularly -- the deer seem to move exclusively at night. Fresh coyote tracks are made at the stock pond almost daily. They often enter the water, suggesting coyotes will dine on tadpoles whenever possible.

Mouse tracks squirt between killdeer and coyote signs. Kangaroo rat pawprints join the clutter. Rabbit prints are big and easily identified. Other marks might belong to prairie dogs, gophers, rock squirrels ... or even skunks.

Inevitably, human footprints join the fray. One pair of workboot impressions, caused by a heavy man, circle the pond counterclockwise. At The Swales I find a cigarette butt -- a Kool Filter King. Nearby are the paper tatters of a Snickers candy bar.

It must be the surveyors again.

FEATHERS, PAWPRINTS, EVEN CIGARETTE BUTTS are some ways I have of vicariously connecting to lives on the mesa. Other signs that reveal activity are the droppings various animals deposit. Aside from being a battlefield, nature is also the world's largest latrine. Sheep manure and deer and rabbit pellets are plentiful; mouse doots lie under most any rock I overturn. An owl casting in Coyote Gulch contains pygmy mouse bones and a skull imbedded in beige fur. Gardenia-sized calcareous leavings of shore birds litter the stock pond mud.

Most interesting, however, is coyote scat. Legendary are the tales of what these mischievous predators will devour. I have seen their leavings loaded with the crushed bodies of ants or a dozen apricot pits. One autumn I found coyote turds solidly composed of piņon nut shells! It would not surprise me to locate droppings made up entirely of monarch butterfly wings captured around the milkweed jungle in Coyote Gulch, And I'm still awaiting the day when I discover a heap of coyote shit composed of, say, a digital watch, a few gold- filled human teeth, and maybe a finely tooled leather belt that once belonged to Joe Don, Billy Bob, Lester, or I.J.H.

THEN MORE HUMAN PRINTS SHOW UP: on the dam, in the soft mud around the pond. A new somebody in low-heeled boots -- not a surveyor -- has been visiting my ephemeral Walden Pond. A mood, almost of caution, of reverence, defines the prints, as if they were made by someone alert to landscape ... or by a dreamer. At first -- but only momentarily -- I am puzzled: then I know exactly to whom they belong -- my friend the escape artist, the sarcastic devil woman.

I follow her tracks around the pond, across The Swales, up into the Western Gully. And locate the woman perched on a stone, thoughtfully contemplating some tiny aspect of life ensconced in the Twin Rocks Rain Puddle. "Mr. Nichols," she comments matter-of-factly. "Why are you always disturbing my solitude?"

Text from the book "On The Mesa" by John Nichols, Copyright © John Nichols.
Reprinted with special permission from John Nichols - All Rights Reserved.
Photography © Peter Staats - All Rights Reserved.