Three-hundred yards above, the rams are walking, strung-out, single-file. They are making their way through the open rock bowl, toward a saddle to the left of us, toward an exit, toward the other side of the mountain, to a future in which they exist. Jason, staring through the scope of his rifle, his rife in the crook of his arm and resting on his pack, asks Kent, who’s looking through his spotting scope, if the fourth sheep along is in fact the ram we’ve been hunting for the last 12 hours, and if it is in fact old enough to kill. Kent says that yes, yes it is.

—Excerpt from ARRO II, to be published July 2013