(From “Diaries...) A Lion's King Mar 17: The tributary I am on today bisects a roadless area. So the only choice I have is to wade up the stream as far a possible, then turn around and retrace my steps back downstream. Needless to say, this makes for a boring day observing the same water–and scenery–twice! But today something else is amiss too. I feel I’m being watched. Occasionally, I steal abrupt glances backward and to the sides, hoping to glimpse the intruder. Then three miles up the stream I sprain an ankle in a slippery pool. For the first few anxious moments (when I feared more than just a sprain), I am wondering just how the heck a helicopter could possibly get me out of this remote place. Then I realize that it couldn’t. It’s way too steep and heavily forested. But this proves to be needless worry, because in this deep canyon, I would not be able to call out for rescue anyway. Neither my cell phone nor radio would be likely to work. Thankfully, after a few minutes of resting the ankle and fashioning a makeshift crutch from a piece of driftwood, I am soon hobbling back downstream towards the road. And that’s when the source of my earlier anxiety becomes apparent. Alongside my original footsteps in the sand across a large bar, I discover the fresh and parallel tracks of a large mountain lion. He’s clearly moving upstream in lockstep with me. For the sake of my future piece of mind during these solo surveys, I reach a conclusion: the lion’s tracks and my tracks are completely independent and unrelated events. Knowing this is so, I’ll sleep much better tonight.