I spent a lot of time kicked back against a log by the lake, enjoying the view and reading. The feisty little camp beggar would wait until I was nodding off to charge across the log and my back.

There was an osprey and a bald eagle that battled from time to time too, right where Heart River exits the lake. The days that I spent on the shore of Heart Lake reminded me of the old joke about the hillbilly that told a passing stranger that sometimes, "I just sit and think, but mostly I just sit." That's life in mid-summer in the backcountry of Yellowstone.