Month: May 2012

We’re running out of adjectives. May we resurrect “groovy” or “out of sight”? There’s a story behind everything you see, if you have the patience to look and listen and look again. The yellow and red hills are fossilized soil. The landscape erodes one inch per year. As with everything we’ve seen, it is constantly changing. Where big horn sheep are in their glory, humans find it much harder to scratch out a living. Of course, we’re suffering from sensory overload and are afraid of being accused of photoshopping. But, this is truth, mile by mile, foot by foot. If you look carefully, it is all beautiful.

 

What a better way to spend Memorial Day weekend? The less familiar sculpture is the Crazy Horse monument, in progress. Just the head of Crazy Horse will eventually be the size of all four Presidents at Mount Rushmore. All in all, some monumental sights!

 

 

 

Calling it Bear Lodge, as Native Americans would prefer, casts a different light on Devil’s Tower. It strips away that vaguely sinister edge and leaves the awe, the reason it is a sacred place where prayer packets are still left and the centerpiece of many Native American stories, such as the creation of the stars and the heavens and the big dipper constellation. Another sacred place is Wind Cave, the site of a creation story because of the wind that whistles out of a small opening to an enormous cave system only explored by European Americans (after blasting open a much larger entry) and that features 95% of the “box work” geological feature known in the world. Finally, we experienced the haunting spire forms along the Needles Highway as we made our way to Hill City, South Dakota.

 

Leaving Billings, we headed southeast to the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn, an event bound up in an extraordinarily complex web of history, culture, ambition, frustration, and regret. Of course, the allied forces of the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho carried the field and took no prisoners from among the troopers and Crow and Arikara under Custer. We now know that no one won. The public uproar over Custer’s fate sealed that of the Plains Indians. The site today is about reconciliation and the desire of all to live in peace.

 

The battlefield is on the rolling hills of the Crow Reservation that flow into the Northern Cheyenne Reservation on whose eastern edge lies a little museum at the St. Labre Indian School. It was graduation day for the high school seniors. The subtly (to us) different designs of the various tribes on the items in the collection reminded us again of the great number of tribes each with its own language and customs and rich history of migration and conflict with the Europeans who came to join them in ever greater numbers.

 

With rain & hail and a wind strong enough to push you over the day before, a light snow sends us on our way (if only the bison would allow it). The Old Faithful Inn was a splurge well worth it, the inspiration for “parkitecture” and Disney’s Wilderness Lodge felt like an organic part of the park – a built expression of nature. We’re also glad to have stayed in two regions of the park. After all, it’s as large as the state of Connecticut.

 

On our way to the Billings airport to pick up our fourth traveler, we stopped by Pictograph Cave State Park. Our party complete, it was off through the Crow Reservation to visit the home of Chief Plenty-Coups, the most important chief of the Crow Tribe in modern history. Known earlier in his career as Bull Goes into the Wind, Chief Plenty-Coups began to make his reputation as a very successful warrior fighting the Sioux and other enemies of the Crow people. Later, the Crow fought alongside the US Army. He was a transitional leader taking his people from the age of the buffalo through to the reservation era. He was impressed by the importance of Mount Vernon and left his home to the people, both red and white, and his Medicine Spring is still a key spiritual destination for the Crow.

 

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone cuts through layers of geological time to reveal astonishing shapes and colors, the river slicing through the rocks most susceptible to its power. The ospreys rule this world from their nest atop the spire.

 

 

We forget that 60% of Yellowstone was devastated by fire in 1988 or that constant change and transformation is the primary rule of nature. All over the park there is evidence of the resurgence of growth that follows destruction. Indeed, some trees cannot reproduce except with the help of intense heat. Along a hiking path you may discover a puddle teeming with masses of eggs. But, the vast deepness underlying much of the park is a geological just-below-the-surface hot spot releasing huge amounts of energy from the magma. With two-thirds of the geysers in the world and mud pots, fumaroles, and thermal pools all in a concentrated area, portions of Yellowstone feel like a visit to the nether world. Dante would have loved it. You can’t help being dazzled by the beautiful patterns created by the bacteria thriving in this alternate world, boiling up from regions beneath. Watching the excellent Park Service film at Old Faithful makes you question the sanity of staying for even five minutes in the world’s most seductive anteroom to Hades.

 

Spotting animals is one of the real pleasures of visiting Grand Teton and Yellowstone. Some are easy to find and many are not. Checking with the rangers and getting out on a lot of hikes is well worth it. We were early enough in the season to avoid the “bear jams” of distracted motorists for which Yellowstone is famous. But, even now, we tourists tend to cruise along the roads scanning the vast fields trying our luck or looking for people stopped by the side of the road with big scopes who seem to know what they are doing. We saw, but didn’t photograph, a garter snake, ravens, an osprey, and a bald eagle. You’ve seen our photos of dusky grouse and bears and deer and moose. We have more to share below: a coyote, a marmot, a woodchuck, a melanistic woodchuck, a mountain bluebird, a bison, a really cute ground squirrel. Still on our list to see are any of the mountain cats and, of course, wolves. It’s always good to have more to see. Someday we’ll see wolves in the wild and that will be a thrill worth waiting for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a certain ambivalence about trying to find bears. The vague sense of danger is always there. Wearing a bear bell on a hike makes you think you’re scaring off the elk and just letting the bears know you’re in the neighborhood. Of course, elk seem like they couldn’t care less about humans (see our shot from about 10 feet away). So, sorry we weren’t closer for the grizzly and cub photo, but we listen to the rangers. We bought some bear spray that we hope to never use. The grizzlies were near the Yellowstone Lake Hotel. We were fascinated by the silent drama as a herd of elk carefully entered the area where that grizzly and cub were feeding. They didn’t want to add variety to the grizzlies’ diet (and they can run a lot faster than we can).

 

 

The Yellowstone Lake Hotel remains in the old tradition and sends a chill through the bones of fans of The Shining. No TV (true throughout the parks); no Internet or business center; a Dining Room with rattan furniture, white tablecloths, and a wood floor with a runner down the middle of the room; and a grand staircase with different woods on different floors. And then there are those long hallways. Who is staying in room 237?