The Pocket Hunter

He wanders the desert chasing leads and strikes, yet what he truly depends on for a sense of home are the bear at Pine Creek, the juniper at Lone Tree Spring, and the quail at Paddy Jack's. His talk is compounded of miner's superstition and genuine, fascinating gossip about the ebb and flood of creeks, though he holds stubborn miner's prejudices against coyotes and believes in toad venom and snakebite charms. He matters because his wanderings stitch the scattered places of the land together, and his storm-bound night among the wild sheep becomes one of the book's central images of a human briefly accepted by the wild.