Yellowstone – Bears and Wolves

Last winter break, after a long hike in Blue Ridge, my wife Cheryl bent over a puzzle on a coffee table in our rental cabin, concentrating on the colorful emblems of 59 U.S. National Parks.  We noted where we’d been – Zion, Bryce, Grand Canyon – and where we’d like to go – Arches, Glacier, Yellowstone. Yellowstone fit into our summer plans. Bears fascinate my wife and I like wolves.  We’d never seen nor heard either in the wild before this trip.

Our first trip to Yellowstone began in Bozeman, Montana.  I had time to admire the rustic decor of the Bozeman airport and mountains beyond through the large windows at baggage claim waiting for a rental car.  A svelte, long-haired mountain climber with a tattoo on his arm of an Aspen forest, treetops covered by his red Avis shirt sleeve, upgraded me from a Ford Escape to a Mercedes GLS 450.  He handed me the long-awaited paperwork and keys and said, “By the way, the windshield is cracked.” I didn’t want to appear ungrateful, but still. He smiled a carefree, outdoorsy smile.  “Don’t worry. Out here, they all are.”

We drove downtown through a light rain to our retro, two-story boutique motel called The Lark.  The rain cut our Bozeman sight-seeing short. Early the next morning, we left for the park.

The stretch of Route 89 from Livingston to Gardiner was two lanes and arrow straight through a scenic valley.  Practically no traffic, I gunned the Mercedes to pass a poky, cherry red VW van, the kind you find on t-shirts.  The driver looked straight ahead, unperturbed, though his dog made eye contact with Cheryl out the side window.

“That’s it,” said Cheryl, “we’re retiring out here with a dog.”

The weekly park fee was $35.  At Mammoth Hot Springs, I placed my Yellowstone Perk coffee on the wood rails of the boardwalk and took pictures as Cheryl walked ahead through white vapor clouds.  The calcium deposits were blinding white, igloo-like blocks alongside barren crusty ground the color of soot, spotted here and there with bursts of rusty yellow and orange.  The strangest blend of heaven and hell-scape.

After Mammoth, we drove east to Roosevelt Lodge for lunch.  On the way Cheryl tapped her Gypsy Guide app. The app acts as your tour guide.  It tracks your car. The narrator, an affable gent, alerts you to sites about a half-mile ahead of your approach.  Between sites, he offers fun science facts. Cheryl loved this feature. I find it adorable the occasions my wife – by day, a director of marketing – engages with science (full disclosure, I teach science at Milton HS).  Like an eager geology freshman, Cheryl recited to me, “The calcium carbonate dissolves in the hot water beneath the surface? Rises as vapor, right baby? At the surface it deposits as travertine?”

But it was the bear facts – they consumed Cheryl.  “Did you know bears can eat 40,000 moths a day? Can you imagine?”  She tore open a protein bar. Her jaw working, “How many calories, you think, in 40,000 moths?”

The gypsy app advised how not to distinguish black bear from grizzlies: color.  Black bears can be black, blue-black, cinnamon, white, or brown – brown as grizzlies.  Their profiles, on the other hand, are distinguishable: a roman nose versus a dish. Whatever that meant.

On our way to the Yellowstone River Picnic Trail, we stopped at the Roosevelt-Lodge grocery and purchased pre-made chicken salad sandwiches, chips, cookies, and a can of forty-five dollar bear spray.  Back in the car, a few pronghorn scampered across the road looking like exotic deer. I parked on the shoulder as they grazed roadside but missed my best photo opportunity changing lenses.

At the Yellowstone Picnic trailhead, we sat at a picnic table in the small parking lot and ate our sandwiches.  Opening her bag of chips, Cheryl said, “Bears can smell food miles away. Don’t forget to pack the bear spray, baby.”  I shoved the red metal can, still in its shell of molded plastic, deep into my backpack.

From the River Picnic Trail, a mile or two in the distance, the Yellowstone River roared, winding a green ribbon through the yellow rhyolite chasm. In places, we could peer over the cliff and see black basaltic hoodoos.  Three bighorn ewes grazed. Marmots perched on rocks in the shade and stared. I don’t like marmots. If a squirrel and groundhog mated, this is what you’d get.

I caught the scent of brewed tea from pine limbs splintered by weather and age, burnt-orange resin exposed.  Swallows flew swift figure-eights above our heads and shimmered green like hummingbirds before diving over the cliff’s edge.  Like bats, I marvel at their erratic flight path, but so near, I felt uneasy.

Cheryl startled.  She saw movement near a tree overlooking the valley.  A large man emerged in a plaid, cinnamon-colored shirt on a blanket with his family of four.  “Harmless,” I said. She shook her head and dug the binoculars from her backpack. “My senses are elevated,” she said, scanning the distance.  “My co-worker said never to picnic in unauthorized areas. Bears can materialize out of thin air.” Cheryl lowered the binoculars and, eyes closed, raised her nose to the wind, “You left the cookies in the car, right baby?”

We drove to West Yellowstone.  Dinners here were forgettable. Fine dining – Cheryl has a three-star Michelin palate – would have to wait for Jackson Hole.

Our first morning in West Yellowstone, I woke an hour before the alarm in our one-bedroom Explorer Cabin with a view of the iMAX theater.  Our cabin was conveniently located a half-mile from the park entrance and heart of West Yellowstone where I got our coffees from Greens and Grounds.  Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Cheryl asked if I’d heard the wolves.

I was reminded of the owl (baritone dove, perhaps?) she hears in our backyard in Milton.  Last night after dinner, a clerk in a bookshop had talked of bears wandering into town. But wolves?  “I’m serious,” Cheryl said, “and something lives under this cabin. I heard it banging under the bedroom floor this morning after you left to get the coffee.”

Inside the park gates before 7:30am, we arrived at Old Faithful Visitor Center near 8:30am, the next eruption predicted for 9:15am, plus or minus ten minutes.  Time to spare, we hiked up to a view where I left the path, past the Do Not Leave The Path sign, for a good photo perspective of a marsh blooming with purple wildflowers.  Looking down, careful not to plunge into the muck, an unseen marmot shrieked – a single piercing chirp of ungodly volume and frequency – before scampering away through the tall grass.  Heart racing, resentful, I returned to the path without capturing a single wildflower.

Old Faithful erupted at 9:16am.  We walked the Upper Geyser Basin boardwalks and saw spitting geysers, burbling springs, sapphire pools, beauty pools, pools of burnt ember, pools of emerald green.  Cheryl’s mom had told us before we left, “Everything bubbles.” The last site, the postcard-worthy Morning Glory Pool, a rainbow pool. Cheryl wore a bright red shirt.  I wore green. A tourist took our picture. You’d think we planned it.

Our Gypsy Guide truly was the ideal travel-mate.  He was ecologically savvy, navigated us through busy parking areas, and never once complained.  Still, our Gypsy could be improved. Like a puppy, he wanted to see everything. He needed a setting to attune to his customers’ mood and energy.  Like, a setting for ‘exhausted’. The app tracked our car position – perhaps it could be programmed to upload the 20,000 steps we’d already taken and recommend accordingly.

We had energy left to hike to the Natural Bridge, an eroded rock structure, smaller yet similar to Devil’s Bridge in Sedona, AZ.  Mounds of scat all along the trail, Cheryl assumed was from bear. She was nervous. In a campsite along the hike we saw two bison the size of mini-buses grazing between picnic tables.  Close enough to hear grass ripped from the ground. So big, it’s magic how they appear without a sound. No snorting or stomping – just the rhythmic uprooting and chewing of delectable weeds.

Our second morning in West Yellowstone, I heard the desperate howls.  I walked outside into the cool air. Across the street, the iMAX theater parking lot was completely vacant.  I’d expected a logical explanation, like Hollywood in town for a pre-dawn screening of Kevin Costner’s new series, Yellowstone, speakers in the parking lot.  So early in the day, it stands to reason Kevin might prefer avoiding crowds.

Next to the theater, where I did see cars in the parking lot, was the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center.  On their website, their mission: The Center is a wildlife park and educational facility.  The Center offers every visitor to Yellowstone a chance to uniquely experience the world of grizzly bears and gray wolves.  All the animals at the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center are unable to survive in the wild and serve as ambassadors for their wild counterparts.

Before I came back inside, I dropped to my knees, waiting while my eyes adjusted to the dark of the crawlspace beneath our cabin.

We hiked Mount Washburn, the highest point in Yellowstone.  Our gypsy guide said we might see bighorn sheep. No bighorns, but panoramic views and lengths of trail covered in packed, slushy snow.

Morning three, we drove to Grand Tetons National Park.

The paved drive down from the overlook atop Signal Mountain Summit Road in the Tetons was narrow and winding.  I braked as a young mother with two small children emerged from behind a parked car. Their car blocked the road.  Mom, bent a little at the waist, held the smaller child’s hand as she pointed with her camera into the wooded valley, mouthing the words, bear and cubs.

I parked behind them.  As I exited, Cheryl said, “You’re not leaving the car here, Eric.”  My camera was on the seat behind me, my hands trembling as I opened the rear door to replace the wide-angle lens.  A fit, shirtless man in his 70’s driving a convertible kit car with a dachshund riding shotgun pulled up behind me.  I’d seen his midget dog up above at the overlook before I’d seen him, his dog scouting the path, unleashed. I had the two pegged for locals.

“It’s our first bear,” I said, giddy, telephoto lens locked and loaded, camera dangling from my neck, yet mildly embarrassed as I heard the words exit my mouth, thinking what a newb I was, worried that he too might scold me for blocking the road.

A steep ridge separated us up on the road from the black bears below who were difficult to track through the trees and undergrowth.  Minutes passed, then the bears stopped. Turns out, I had parked perfectly for Cheryl. From her car seat, she could see the two cubs through binoculars clawing at a fallen, rotting tree trunk.  I asked to look. Cheryl’s knuckles whitened as she rotated the focus wheel, “Oh my god, now they’re picking grubs.”

The shirtless man appeared, standing beside me, dog clutched to his chest.  Together we peered into the woods. More people now out of their cars. The bears would disappear only to reappear further away.  I wanted a picture and started down the valley. I heard a familiar sound, on the wind, beckoning. When my wife calls my name, Eric, she draws out the air- and then the –ick in equal measure, a plaintive sound that can last seconds.  The call is a signal to her mate: one of love, of concern, perhaps trouble. I returned to the car. No picture, but still, our first bear.