Yellowstone Yarn

It starts with what I call an even
trade.  My plans to go to New York City
around New Years fell through.  I was a
little disappointed, when all of a
sudden it was announced that my
grandmother was taking my family and me
to Yellowstone National Park for the
week after Christmas.  Would I mind not
going to New York and going to
Yellowstone instead? No Problem. 
Immediately, I thought of my update
list, I wanted to share my adventures
with you guys and so I began to take
notes in a notebook, to keep some of
the memories fresh, as I would not have
access to email until I got back to
Chicago.  This was a guided tour,
sponsored by the National Parks
Conservation Association (NPCA) and led
by three guides from a Bozeman, Montana
guiding company called Off the Beaten
Path.  Our guides were Steve, his wife
Betsy, and Susan.  Steve (who reminded
me of Marty Stouffer) and Betsy are
wildlife biologists who study
carnivorous animals and do a lot of
work in and around Yellowstone,
although they have also worked in
Glacier National Park and Alaska. 
Susan is a writer who specializes in
nature writing.  All three were great
fun, although I think they found that
the Imrie humor gene was a little much
for them.

In my mind, the trip was broken into
two parts, one in which the main
attraction was the wildlife, and the
other in which the main attraction was
the geothermal activity that makes
Yellowstone special.  The first several
days, when we were staying outside the
park in Gardiner, Montana, were
dedicated to wildlife.  The wildlife
viewing actually began the day we
arrived in Montana, when we watched a
bald eagle above the Gardner River (The
town is spelled with an I, the river is
not.)  That evening, we also saw
bighorn sheep in the hills above the
river.  They are brown, as are the
hillsides they climb on, and they were
impossible to see without the aid of
Steve’s scope.  

  The Lamar Valley, in the northeast
area of the park, is a great place to
view wildlife.  Out there, we saw
wolves, coyotes, ravens, and lots and
lots of elk and bison.  Our first day
out, we spent quite a bit of time
looking through Steve’s viewing scope.
 It was pretty powerful and allowed us
to see animals very well, even when
they were clear across the canyons and
valleys.  At one point, we saw some
wolves chase a cow elk through the
hills and down into the valley.  They
eventually got her and probably ate
pretty well.  Reading it makes it sound
pretty gruesome but when we saw it, it
was not.  We all seemed to accept the
fact that wolves take down elk and
there is nothing particularly “wrong”
with that.  Steve and Betsy’s work
primary revolves around “predators,”
they do a lot of work with wolves,
wolverines, bears, etc.  Steve said
that in the early days of the Park,
there was this idea in the Park Service
that there were “good animals,” like
elk and deer, and “bad animals” like
wolves and bears.  The Park Service
actively tried to eradicate predators.
 Unfortunately, the predators are an
important part of the ecosystem.  One
of the early advocates of predator
eradication, Aldo Leopold, finally got
religion and realized that, in order to
be a healthy ecosystem, Yellowstone
needs wolves.  Leopold began to
advocate the reintroduction of the
wolves back into the park, and finally,
in the mid 90’s, wolves were
reintroduced in the Park and now there
are several packs within the park.  

Before the trip, I sort of had this
impression that coyotes and wolves are
the same size.  WRONG.  I have a ruler
on my pocketknife and at one point, I
measured the tracks of a coyote and a
wolf that were together, side by side
in the snow.  The coyote track was 4cm
X 7cm, the wolf was 12cm X 14cm,
according to my notes.  That may not
look like much as you read this, but it
sure looked significant in the snow. 
If I were a coyote, I would stay the
hell away from wolves.

My favorite plant in the park was
sagebrush that covers the floor of the
Lamar Valley.  I’ve never realized how
beautiful it is but it’s great stuff. 
It’s small and tough, but when you look
out over the brown plains and see miles
and miles of sage, it’s really gorgeous
stuff.  My favorite animals in the
park, hands down, were the bison.  I
think this has to do with my childhood.
 I grew up a half a block from the
Museum of Natural History in New York
City, and my parents took me there
constantly.  Although I cannot remember
a specific exhibit, I know the museum
had a few bison in it.  So something
inside me was awakened when these
animals came into view.  It may have
been a memory from the Museum or it may
just be that the Bison has become
somewhat ubiquitous as a symbol of the
American West.  It’s scary to think how
few bison were left when they were
reintroduced into the park.  Steve told
us that the original herd in
Yellowstone consisted of 25 animals. 
Now there are quite a few and there is
even a commercial market for bison
meat.  I have tried it and it’s very
good, not much different than beef. 
Since bison are native to North
America, it is more ecological to raise
them than it is to raise beef and the
meat is lower in fat.  I also got a
chance to try some antelope and quail
on this trip.  I liked them both very
much, although the quail had some sort
of vegetable stuffed into it, so I kind
of wonder if I actually tasted the
quail.  Unfortunately, the State of
Wyoming is very paranoid over the
possibility that buffalo will spread a
disease called brucellosis to the
cattle that are being raised outside
the park.  There has never been a
recorded instance of brucellosis being
transmitted, but the State doesn’t want
to take chances, so they are killing
any buffalo that wander outside of the
park.   

The first part of our trip was
conducted entirely by van, as there was
very little snow in the park.  Steve
and Betsy had two club vans to haul us
around in, and Susan used a small SUV.
 They very cleverly used a tape adapter
and microphone to turn the vans’ stereo
systems into PA systems, which they
used to tell us about the natural
features in the park.  However, by the
second half of the trip, there was
enough snow that we could use snow
coaches.  A snow coach looks like a
gigantic Volkswagen Beetle, except it
has tank treads on the back and skis in
the front.  It is designed to run over
the snow.  Steve and Betsy used another
guiding company called AlpenGuides, to
drive the vehicles.  One of the guides
was a big fellow named Mike.  My guess
is that Mike was born in the States,
but he did EVERYTHING he could to make
one think he was Irish, (I have no
doubt that his family was from Ireland,
but he didn’t have an accent.)  He wore
a green tam-o’-shanter and huge gaiters
that made his pants look like knee
breaches.  Fortunately, he didn’t take
himself or his heritage to seriously
and when he wasn’t explaining the
natural features of the park, he would
swap Irish jokes with my dad. 
  
The second part of the trip switched
focus away from the wildlife, and onto
the geothermal features of the park. 
Yellowstone, the first national park in
the world, was not really set aside to
protect bison, but to protect the
wonderful geothermal features in the
park.  At the Mammoth Hot Springs, near
the north entrance to the park, the
flow of the water shifts dramatically.
 I could see places where trees had
grown up, only to be killed when the
course of the stream had shifted and
scalded them.  Hot springs have a
slightly dangerous side to them.  In
the 1800’s, when the park first opened
up, women wore big, pouffy dresses. 
Some women apparently died when they
fell into the hot water and could not
get out because their dresses were to
big.   [NOTE TO SELF: DO NOT WEAR A BIG
POUFFY DRESS IN YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK]

I am sure everyone has heard of the
famous Geyser “Old Faithful,” which
erupts every 90 minutes with a fair
degree of consistency (she’s not
perfect but she’s pretty good), but did
you know that there are over ten
thousand thermal features throughout
the park?  These range from other
geysers to hot springs, steam vents,
and mud pots.  Much of the park, 30-40%
judging by the outline that is
superimposed on the map, is the caldera
of a massive volcano.  This volcano is
considered active, but it only erupts
about every 600,000 years.  But, since
the lava is very close the surface, it
allows for the formation of features
like geysers and hot springs.  These
hot springs do fascinating things. 
Algae forms in many of them, and the
springs often have an electric
blue-green hue to them.  There is also
the persistent smell of sulfur that
escapes when these things go off.  It
smells like rotten eggs.  All around
the vents of the geysers is a mineral
called geyserite.  It is brought up by
the geyser from below the surface and
deposited around the rim of the geyser.
 The first time I saw Old Faithful
erupt was in the early evening, it was
dusk and I waded through the snow to go
out to see it.  It’s a little spooky. 
She “sneezes” first, with a little jet
of water, and then goes off with a
whoosh that puts any fountain at
Rockefeller Center to utter shame.

The most spectacular of the geographic
features we saw was the Grand Canyon of
the Yellowstone River.  I get
goosebumps thinking about it now.  We
snowcoached to where the road was
fairly close to the canyon’s rim and
then we hiked in the rest of the way. 
The canyon was several hundred feet
deep.  Its sides were of yellow
sandstone, and mottled black and white
by patches of snow and trees.  In my
journal, I noted that the walls were
“freakishly steep.”  The far below, the
river raged, and at one end, the Falls
of the Yellowstone River poured into
the canyon, almost three times the
height of Niagara Falls, according to
Steve.  

As much as I love nature and the
mountains and the outdoors, I am a
people person at heart.  I feel I could
do anything as long as I could be
guaranteed a steady supply of new and
interesting people.  There were about
twenty people on this trip, from as far
away as Washington, DC, and Yuma
Arizona.  By far, my favorite person on
the trip was Robert, a glaciologist
from Chicago.  I don’t know if Robert
taught, but in many ways he was the
classic professor.  He had a long
beard, expressive eyes, and a boyish
enthusiasm whenever we came within a
mile of any topic related to geology. 
He told fascinating stories of his
attempts to photograph the inside of a
glacier.  He also constantly urged me
to keep learning.  Like Steve and
Betsy, our guides, he had done a fair
amount of work in Alaska, and dinner
conversation often revolved around this
small town or that river in Alaska. 
His wife, Maureen, was wonderful as
well.  She’s a computer programmer. 
Apparently they’ve been friends for
thirty years but only married for about
three.  They live in Chicago and want
to keep in touch with my family.  I am
happy about that.

Also part of our group was a
representative from the NPCA, a family
from the extreme northern part of
California who encouraged me to go to
Humboldt State University, which is
quite near where they live, and two
couples from Yuma Arizona.  I made a
conscious effort to meet and greet
different people, but inevitably spent
more time with some than with others.

Yellowstone is a national treasure.  It
was a privilege to visit there and I
hope to go back there again someday.