A beautiful crisp fall day, September of 2008, the Teton Mountains looming to my west. Fantastic, arching, towering granite horns, reaching for the sky. I stopped for a traffic jam on the road and it was a bear. A yearling grizzly. The tourists were stopped to watch the Griz but he was not cooperating, and it was obvious he wanted to get away. To escape the noise and cluster of humans. Maybe even cross the busy road, with all the gawking tourists stumbling around. When the Griz decided to make his move I knew I didn't want to be around, because the bear would go any where he wanted. There were a couple of Park Rangers running around trying to get people to get in their vehicles and drive on. Potential bear bait. Look out pilgrims. That was one report the Rangers didn't want to write.
I slowly drove past the bear jam and just past the gaggle of cars, I looked out the window. The Griz was running up a cutbank, about 100 feet from my vehicle. The yearling was a light brownish color, with very thick fur, and he was about as wide as he was long. Or she. I have no idea what the sex of the Griz was, and had no intention of finding out. It was one massive block of muscle and fur. Like some huge square granite boulder. An eating machine preparing for the long winter hibernation by packing on the pounds. My wife and I only saw the Griz for a few seconds and he was gone, but I won't ever forget that sight.
We drove farther into Teton National Park and took the road up Pacific Creek. The aspens were turning gold color, and roundish groves of the quakies, mottled the dark green forested mountains. The Aspen were also preparing for their hibernation, in the long, arctic like winters of the Northern Rockies. I spotted a coyote by the road, walking through thick sagebrush and I took its photo and was astonished at how its colors blended in, with the sage and bunch grass. The coyote seemed unconcerned by my presence, and had a slight limp, but looked very healthy and kept on moving up the canyon. The coyote was on mission, just like the grizzly. It's called survival and trying to find enough food.
The Pacific Creek road left the Park and the road ended at a campground. There were several packers, preparing their gear and horses, for hunting trips into the Teton Wilderness. As we drove through the camping area, one pack string with two cowboys was headed out. The dark colored horses and mules had their heads down, all business, each with a canvas pack or two on their backs. The packs, expertly and neatly tied with rope. I wanted to jump out of my truck and chase after them. A week back in the wilderness would have been wonderful, even if they didn't want or need another hunter with them. Camp cook or fire tender would have be just fine. Just give me a few hours a day to hike around and explore.
In 1988 I was assigned to the Huck Fire which was burning in the Teton Wilderness. We had a spike camp up Pilgrim Creek and we ended up punching fireline into the Pacific Creek drainage. It was a fruitless effort, as high winds pushed crown fires through the lodgepole pine, and overran all the work we had done. Man against nature and fire. The fire won. The Huck Fire eventually burned north, into Yellowstone National Park, and merged with several other fires.
We drove past an area where the Huck fire had burned over in 1988, and it was a sea of green trees, pinpricked with dozens of graying snags. The snags being the remnants of the forest, before the fires of 1988. Snags; dead standing boles stripped of green. Good for woodpeckers and cavity nesting birds. Thousands of young lodgepole pines formed a new forest, with trees about ten feet tall. It's all part of natures master plan and fire is as much a part of the forest as the coyote, the grizzly, the aspen.
Leaving the Park, on the way back to Jackson, I pulled off on a side road, along a large sagebrush meadow. The bull elk were bugling that time of the year, and I could hear several of them, off in the distance. The eerie primeval whistling noise echoed through the forest. I had my elk bugle with me and I called out several times. One or more bull elk answered back or perhaps they were ignoring my fake call, and sending their warnings to other bulls. I put my bugle away at the approach of a Park Ranger, who was driving down the main highway. No sense getting in trouble for harassing the wildlife. Oh but what the heck. Where is my breech cloth and spear, my bow and arrows. We all need to prepare for winter.
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