Osprey

Osprey appears briefly in the book as evidence that some wildlife persists amid sweeping ecological loss. Hig reports seeing osprey at Jasper’s creek, placing the bird within a landscape where familiar species have vanished but others remain or return.

A surviving bird in a changing landscape

In a later inventory of wildlife, Hig names osprey alongside bald eagles, hawks, and crows. He also notes abundant mice and crows in winter, while bison are moving back toward their old range and wolves and bighorn sheep are returning. These observations describe a changed ecology, not a simple recovery: the trout and elk are gone, and the landscape still bears extensive forest death even as spruce, fir, and aspen grow back.

Connection to the creeks

The osprey sighting at Jasper’s creek gains significance from the book’s repeated attention to streams and their losses. Hig remembers fishing and hoping to find even one surviving trout; elsewhere he describes creek water warming enough to eliminate trout and shifting conditions affecting other fish. The evidence does not describe the osprey’s behavior or explain its relation to the creek’s fish, so the sighting remains an observation rather than proof that the aquatic ecosystem has recovered.

Ecological significance

Osprey is not developed as an individual animal or given a separate plot. Its brief appearance contributes to the book’s pattern of naming what remains, what has disappeared, and what is returning. Set against Hig’s grief for lost trout and his fear of worsening environmental change, the bird marks survival without erasing loss.