The other day our school district sent out a mass email requesting parents accompany children to and from their bus stops.  A mountain lion had been found hanging around some home sites in the Middle Rattlesnake, a little too close to school routes for anyone's comfort.  "Your appreciation in this matter is appreciated," the email concluded.

We live in the Upper Rattlesnake, just a half mile past this spot where the lion was scooping house pets and other small delectables.  We live in this area precisely because it is adjacent to wild areas.  There's a network of trails and creek access right from our door - and we run, sled, bike, and walk through these areas regularly.

Now the deer and the coyotes and the bear and the mountain lions, and scores of other, smaller species, inhabit these areas too --as they should.  Every fall the bear come lumbering down from higher elevations and rummage in the trash, leaving their lumpy calling cards on the sidewalk.  And when that season comes, we rush to shut our garage doors so we won't be the neighbor who spends the morning picking up peach pits and paper towels and assorted trash fragments off the grass.

And in the late spring, when the fawns drop, we try not to notice them hiding in the shade of the mugo pine in our front yard, and try not to let the kids too near them when, knobbly-kneed, they get up and make a break for the lavender.  Other than the fawns, though, for the most part we've all together stopped noticing the deer, forever tromping in monotonous troops past the window, or shrugging their slim shoulders as we walk within a few feet of them.

But mountain lions - now that's another story.  In past years, some of our neighbors have spotted them in the brush at the end of our field - the general area where my boys have a fort.  When I send the kids out with sleds, I say "stay together, don't go too far afield."  And in the spring when all the brush at the base of the mountain buds out into leaflets, the boys call it the "greenwood" and go pathfinding through it, following animal tracks and deer lanes.  This is our world and I choose for them to be in it.

Mostly, I don't worry about their chance meeting with a mountain lion.  I count on them staying together and being noisy, as they unfailingly are.  But last week's email from the school reminded me again that we live in a state flush with wildlife and while we celebrate this mostly, we have to also think about making sure the small mammals that are our children get to and from the bus intact.  In Montana, I am regularly reminded that we are one species among many.  The grass I mow, the land that legally falls into our property, the trails my kids follow through the greenwood, these belong to countless beings.  And this continual reminder of that humbling reality - that we are among multitudes - is one of the reasons life in Montana always remains so compelling.