“The greatest part of venturing out into the wilderness,” Rod Frederick observes, “is that you can’t determine what kind experience it will deliver. I took my son to Yellowstone for a special father/son adventure his senior year in high school. Our plan was to track wolves. Soon after we set out we found ourselves enveloped by a herd of the park’s bison. They can range two miles in a day while grazing, and we had the treat of a lifetime.” “On a larger scale, the great migrations that spanned the North American Plains were driven by the buffalo’s never ending quest for food. Their movement was timed to when their primary food source, grass, would be most full of nutrients. Non-competing species such as the Pronghorn Antelope often migrated as well, feeding on a different portion of the stalk or type of grass all together. The relationship between animal and land was symbiotic, the buffalo maintained the Plains, the Plains maintained the buffalo.”

No other animal is more strikingly beautiful than the pronghorn as he poses in the eastern Oregon outback Frederick calls home. With a buck in the sunlight and the others in long shadows, Frederick gives us his take on one of the truly unique Western animals.
Antilocapra Americana (literally the “American goat-antelope”) is found nowhere else in the world. Having roamed the plains and deserts of North America for at least a million years, the pronghorn antelope are the fastest North American mammal, whose powerful legs can carry them to speeds of 60 miles per hour across even the roughest terrain.This curious species has exceptionally keen sight.Their large eyes offer wide peripheral vision and the ability to detect motion as far as four miles away.

“I’m surprised that 45 penguins made it into The Emperors’ Ball,” Rod Frederick acknowledges, “but it seemed like every time I came back to the easel, another had shown up. That’s the tricky thing about flightless birds, they waddle in low so you don’t see them coming. “Emperor penguins, in fact all penguins, live in the Southern Hemisphere. A flightless bird of this size could never have developed in the Arctic with hunters such as polar bears, foxes and wolves. But Emperors thrive in the Antarctic where there are no four-legged predators.
“People love penguins and today I find myself especially attracted to them. I don’t fly or jump as high as I used to on the basketball court, so maybe that’s it. But there is something special about them. Think about, the guys, just the guys, who stay home to watch the eggs over a long dark winter where the temperature can fall to -40, while the girls enjoy a two-month long ladies night out. I bet there is some serious celebrating when the summer finally comes along and that’s the idea behind The Emperors’ Ball.”