Tag Archives: Soda butte creek

A Little Open Space

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Some of you around the country have been thinking of writing in to complain about the weather and how you’ve been feeling confined and when’s it going to stop, etc., like I would know, and I sense your frustration. And as one of our great, but impeached, political leaders once said, “I feel your pain.”

Consequentially I have chosen to give you a little open space this morning. I know a lot of you have been cooped up and can’t get out doors to do the simplest things, like dump your litter box, or see if you can find your car under all that snow, or get away from that significant other who has been singing “The Spirit of New Orleans” for the last three days. It seems like a little relief is needed.

So OK then, rather than look for the shells for the 12 gauge, take a moment and reflect on this image of the north end of the Lamar valley looking up at Barronette Peak. Take a deep breath and smell the clean cool air of an early fall afternoon. The sun still has some warmth left and it feels good on your back. The grass, though yellowed and dry for the most part, still has enough life in it that the grazers can graze, and way off down there, past the drainage of Soda Butte creek, a small group of buffalo are settling in.

You have the whole place to yourself today because it’s too far North for the tourist busses to come and everyone else is down in the Hayden or over at Swan Lake flats looking for grizzlies before they head uphill for the winter. The grizzlies not the tourists. The tourists will be heading back to the Holiday Inn in West Yellowstone before it gets dark and scary out here.

If you wanted too, you could take off and just walk straight towards the mountains as long as you wanted to, just remember you have to walk back, so maybe just sitting on the boulder there and finishing off your thermos would be enough.

Well we all know that this isn’t as good as the real thing but hey, it’s better than listening to you know who sing. And as long as we’re on that subject, after you’ve had your fill of whatever serenity you can muster from viewing this special part of Yellowstone National Park, why don’t you go and tell you know who that you’ll let him out of the basement if he promises to stop singing. Maybe even show him this picture and fix him a nice hot cup of tea, and if that doesn’t work the shells for the shotgun are on the top shelf in the hall closet behind the Christmas decorations. Good luck.

The Tourists Are Coming, The Tourists Are Coming

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Every day here in Yellowstone about a quarter after six to around seven-thirty in the morning the local Osprey are charged with traveling up and down the rivers, as Town Fliers if you will, letting the other residents know that the tourists have been sighted and are on their way in. So everyone needs to look sharp and assume their usual positions along the banks doing what ever they do.

The elk will come down to wade in the water and pose as the first bus pulls up. The tourists all pile out amidst much shouting and gesturing, camera shutters blazing. On the days they are scheduled, the lone wolf on duty will lurk convincingly in the underbrush so it can suddenly appear for its photo-op, then move up-stream a half mile or so for its next appearance. This is just one of the many services provided by our nation’s premier national park.

There was a time not too long ago when all the animals had to punch in, get their assignments and go to work putting in their 12 to 14 hours a day. That was back in the mid 70’s, early 80’s when the parks ran a much tighter ship. However it made for a less spontaneous show and the tourists began to complain saying if they wanted a ‘show’ they’d go to SeaWorld or somewhere where they did a lot more stuff in a shorter period of time. New management was brought in that adopted a less rigorous style of running the park and although the various animals still had responsibilities they were left to their own devices as to how they wished to portray themselves.

This resulted in a much more relaxed, natural appearing park and the public loved it. It wasn’t long before the grizzlies were added and the occasional interaction between bear and human just added to the unexpected excitement as word spread that if you were lucky you could see a bear take down the occasional unwary tourist and drag it off into the bush. This was great stuff and before long the park was nearly over run by tourists wanting the ultimate spectacle. Fortunately for the targeted tourists this didn’t happen all the time so it became almost like playing lotto. If you were extremely lucky you might get to see it, screams, broken camera straps, the whole works. Repeat visits to the park became the norm and didn’t diminish in the least when the park raised its entrance fees. In fact it added an expectation that due to the higher costs you might be more likely to see the ‘big event’ and everyone wanted to be on The Bus that had the guy that got eaten by the grizzly bear.

Under these new wildlife management policies, the elk were left to battle it out during the rut rather than having to attend anger management classes, the wolf packs were allowed to consume a lot of those brand new buffalo calves without having to always stop and apologize, and the buffalo were just left alone period. They wouldn’t do anything they were asked to do anyway.

But as was mentioned previously, all of this activity starts every morning with the Town Fliers doing their part, flying up and down the Firehole and the Gibbon, the Madison and the Yellowstone, the Gardiner and the Lamar, Soda butte creek, Crawfish creek, Slough creek, Fall river and the Lewis and of course the Snake. Each river has it resident Osprey whose main duty of the day is to fly the rivers and lakes and call, “The Tourists Are Coming, The Tourists Are Coming”, as soon as they’re spotted so Yellowstone can start a new day.