Coyote in the Moonlight
I spent the night of July 14, 2019, high in Okanogan country. The dry air was a crisp 65ºF/ 18.3ºC, a relaxing temperature for a summer night at 6158ft/ 1877m. I curled under a soft blanket inside my tent, listening through headphones to the microphones I’d left out a few hundred feet away.
The air was still and quiet. So quiet that my SPL meter didn’t register low enough, bottoming out at 20 dbSPL. Through my headphones I could hear the faint trickle of water seeping through the vast bowl-shaped subalpine wet meadows. I sat as still as I could. Even at this distance the slightest movement could be picked up, it was so so quiet.
Tall, sharp mountains standing on an already high, mostly dry plateau make this a unique place in the Pacific Northwest. Snow packs the peaks all winter, melting out only around the Summer Solstice. Water drains into the meadows’ bowl and slowly seeps into the ancient earth. Stream channels that seem to have been flowing for eons are only a hand-width wide but nearly as deep as my knee. They burble and ripple in the boggy ground, occasionally sounding out as tiny drops in the recording. Soft munchings from nocturnal rodents grind at the edge of my hearing.
In the morning the meadow will fill with birdsong, from Hermit Thrushes to Golden-crowned Kinglets to Clark’s Nutcrackers. The meadow comes alive with the sparkle of their activity. This open space, surrounded by forest, both green and burned, makes for a beautiful natural amphitheater, perfect for recording a willing performer. With a reverberation time that seems to go on forever (over 6 seconds!) as echoes bounce off hills and trees, it’s just waiting for the right voice to fill it.
Luckily one came along.
Not long after moonrise — a nearly-full, gorgeous spotlight — a lone coyote entered the meadow. I don’t know if it was the excitement of the light, a desire to hear itself echoing, or just the nervous chatter a late-night hiker, but the stage was theirs. For nearly 50 minutes they barked and yipped, called and bounced, dancing through the echoes, in a slow meander across the meadows. It stated on the far left, a few hundred meters off, and worked its way across the meadow stage, coming closer as it did. Echoes bounce off hills and forest. It’s a huge space. The coyote turns in place on occasion, it’s direct-sound dropping slightly and the pattern of echoes reflecting the new orientation. Is it playing? Does it think the echo is another coyote copying it in return like the Greek nymph Echo, doomed to forever repeat back whatever anyone says?
I don’t know that it saw my microphones, but it never seemed to get closer than 100 meters. That’s close enough, though, to bring a big silly grin to my face while I listened.
For anyone unfamiliar with North American Coyotes, they are extremely vocal animals, not the quiet loners wolves can be. They often bark, yip, howl, and more for long periods as they make their rounds of their territory. They stay in constant contact with their tribe. When you hear a coyote calling for such a long time, chances are there’s another coyote calling back, too far away for a non-coyote to perceive. When it’s just you and the coyote, though, it’s hard not to feel that she’s making the racket as a special performance just for you.
Eventually the coyote falls quiet. I imagine she’s working her way around the back of the meadow. After several desperately quiet minutes her voice reappears, more distant. She’s gone around to the other side of the meadow to make her exit.
I silently press the marker button on my recorder, ensuring the file is recorded. This is a peaceful moment I’ll be returning to over and over, like the coyote’s voice echoing of the silent hills and forest.