Monthly Archives: April 2020

Strawberry Fields Forever

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Many times as you stroll amongst bears you will hear them singing or humming various melodies under their breath. This is especially true in Yellowstone National Park, a place where you can interact with bears on many different levels. At first you may not pick up on the fact that they are actually producing musical renditions of current musical selections as they go about their usual bear business, whether that business is eating road kill, or gently plucking flowers out the surrounding shrubbery, or simply rending a newborn elk calf down into its lowest common denominator. They are singing.

As with human people, bears like various types of music. Grizzlies for instance, are most fond of Gregorian chants and when they gather around a freshly killed buffalo you will almost certainly hear certain choral works such as Bach’s ‘Mass in B Minor’ or even Brahms’s ‘A German Requiem’. They can often be identified by the music they choose to sing when you can not see them, like you identify birds by their unique songs. For instance if you should perhaps be hiking near Mt. Mary’s trail and hear the refrains from Beethoven’s ‘Missa Solemnis’ or even Mozart’s ‘Mass in C minor K. 427 “The Great”, coming from somewhere in the nearby bush, stop immediately and ring the bejezus out of your bear deterrent bells very loudly, as loudly as you can, that is a Grizzly. As beautiful as the music is it might be prudent now to turn around and quickly leave the area as this music stirs great passion in these bears and it’s best to not speak to them even if you liked the music.

Then of course, you have the black bears. A bear of many colors ranging from jet black to red, brown, even a golden color, tho that is pretty rare. Black bears have different musical tastes entirely. These bears are fun bears, with a great sense of rhythm and style and a most pleasing tone when they sing. You can actually spend a little time with them as they appreciate an audience and will choose a piece of music that they know the listener will get into. Such as anything by Joe Cocker, Arron Neville or John Prine. Bonnie Raitt and Emmy Lou Harris are favorites for the lady bears. And of course Etta. Just don’t sing along with them. They don’t like that.

There is one truth about black bears and that is as a group down to the last hairy one, they love the Beatles. Perhaps that is too conservative a phrase. They absolutely without a doubt are obsessed with them. So much so that when you see newborn cubs recently out of the den they will be playing and gamboling while singing The Yellow Submarine at the top of their tiny little bear lungs. How is this possible? Genetics, that’s how.

Our friend in the image above just stumbled across some shrubbery that reminded him of one of his favorite songs, Strawberry Fields Forever. Let’s stop and listen for awhile, shall we?

Into The Storm

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It was the usual warm day up in Montana that early morning of June 25th. The sun was out, bringing a sky so blue it hurt to look at it. A few big, bulging clouds made their towering way across the sky, like huge slow moving dreadnoughts under all the sail they had, billowing and straining, moving majestically from West to East.

The scuttlebut was that today was the day. Something big was going to happen and the tension was so thick it made the hair stand up on your arms. The enemy was close and everything felt like it was going to bust loose any second.

Like happens every day in Montana the weather changed. The slow moving clouds so white and pure the moment before began to turn into that dark ominous grayish black underbelly that foretold a storm was coming. A big one from the looks of it. Thunder and the occasional lightning strike was seen and heard across the low rolling hills to the West. That and the electricity of the moment had the horses on the picket lines spooked as the wind picked up.

Suddenly all hell broke loose as the advance group of troopers already mounted and riding along the picket lines, the bugler sounding “To Horse, to horse” on his bugle, let everyone know this is it, mount up. They were about to ride into the storm.

After the Battle

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Crow Warrior washing off his horse’s warpaint in the Little Bighorn river

The Crow and every other tribe that used horses in the 1800’s used them for battle as well as other aspects of their life. The horses were used for traveling, moving camp, as a measure of wealth, as dowries, to make it impervious to bullets and protect it’s rider from harm, and as a measure of their prowess as a warrior. The art of stealing horses from enemies was a constant effort and proved the worth and valor of the warrior that was successful in obtaining the most horses.

When they were used for war the horses were often painted with symbols important to its owner. Every mark placed on the horse had a special meaning to its owner and could be religious in nature, or derived from a dream, or to signify who the owner was as they sometimes used the same markings on both rider and horse.

After the battle the markings were removed to preserve their meaning and value, so a trip to the river was in order to remove the paint from both horse and rider. This rider is washing the paint off his mount while standing in The Little Bighorn river just downstream a bit from where the remains of the 7th lay on the hillside in the greasy grass.

Fording Potter Creek

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Crossing a Western creek can appear to be deceptively easy. After all it looks like it’s only hoof deep in most parts, and for the most part it is as seen in the image above. But note too how dark brown the water is from the silt being carried down stream. In places you cannot see the bottom due to the cloudiness of the water.

Also know that the creek can widen out and fill very quickly if it rains up stream or during the spring runoff. Its meandering course also causes deep holes to occur near sharp corners where the bank juts out into the stream and near and around large rocks in the streambed. These holes can be deep enough to swallow a horse and rider up to the saddle or higher.

Granted given the normal shallowness of the creekbed it’s unlikely to be that dangerous if you got throwed or worse yet, fell in, it’s unlikely that your companions would let you forget that for awhile, but the loss of a good Hawkins and the rest of the gear being carried can ruin your whole day. For example, right behind the rider on the paint horse the bank juts out into the river in the image above. Just off that point there is a deep hole that nearly swallowed that horse and rider when the horse accidentally stepped into it. See the image below.

Climbing out of the Widowmaker hole in Potter Creek

Whenever a river or creek crossing was necessary it was never taken for granted despite what you might in see in the movies. The routine to follow to have a safe crossing was to have one fellow who hopefully knew the crossing or was more experienced in fording would start out and the others, in single file, would carefully follow his lead. If the fellow ahead of you suddenly disappeared and all you saw were bubbles it was prudent to halt and backtrack to the bank behind you. If that didn’t happen then you continued across like you had good sense. That usually was the most successful way to make it across, and anytime you could win one it was a good day.