Escape to the Wild (Day 13 – Howl)

For the last couple of mornings, I have been getting up early and going out to enjoy the crisp, chilly morning air.  Yesterday, while on my walk, I heard a faint howling echoing down the empty streets.  I slowly followed the sound until I identified the source.  Unfortunately, it had stopped by the time I had gotten there.  At the end of our street is the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center.  They rescue animals that would otherwise be euthanized, and people can go there to get an up-close and in-person view of some of the more elusive and dangerous natives of Yellowstone.

The howling I was hearing was coming from several gray wolves in an outside enclosure.  I decided to get up again this morning and try to catch the wolves song with that hope that they did it every morning.  As I trudged down the street in the 20-degree air, I was greeted with only silence.  I started to panic that it was a one-time thing, but I decided to go anyway.  As I crept up toward the chain-link fence, I found a pair of golden eyes staring back at me from the other side.  A gray wolf, although this one was completely white, was watching me with curiosity from the other side. 

I stood there, peering through the cracks in the fence, admiring her sleek beauty when another wolf came out from behind the rocks.  This one was multiple shades of gray and white, and he was bigger than the smaller female.  All of a sudden, he lifted his head up, stretched out his neck, closed his eyes, and started to howl.  It was a high-pitched mournful sound, almost sad.  Pretty soon, the white joined in, and then other wolves from surrounding enclosures that I couldn’t see.  Each with their own unique pitch, as if each was adding his or her own unique voice to the song.  Some were not even howls at all, but merely barks and yips.  As each instrument in a symphony plays a different part, so each wolf lends his voice as he feels moved.

As the sun crept up over the distant mountains, I was reminded of that scene from City of Angels where the angels gather on the beach every morning to welcome the day.  The morning being the time when everything is new and fresh, when they feel closest to the Creator.  So, they gather to listen to the music of the day being created and to lend their voice to its song.  This is how I felt standing there watching and listening to the wolves howl.  That they were lending their voice to the song.

Part 2.

Well, today is our 2^nd 14^th wedding anniversary, so another happy anniversary to my beautiful wife.

It is our last day in the park, which has filled us with both sadness and urgency.  We are sad to be leaving a place that has become comfortable and familiar to us.  We have our routine here now, and it will be hard to have to get back into the old rut.  We feel urgency, because we want to make sure that we squeeze every possible drop that we can out of our experience here.

Not really having anything on the plan, we decided to head back to the Upper Geyser Basin.  The last time we were here, we only saw Old Faithful and didn’t take the time to walk around and see the other geysers, pools, and springs.  We arrived right after Old Faithful had erupted, so we decided to go see the other attractions first.  My wife really wanted to see the Grand Geyser, since it’s supposed to be absolutely spectacular when it erupts.  Unfortunately, it only erupts once a day, and it wasn’t going off until around 8 p.m. tonight.  We had similar luck with the Castle Geyser.  About the only one we got to enjoy was “Spazzy,” the Spasmodic Geyser.

While walking to and from the other geyser area, we came across a bison that was throwing a temper tantrum.  Apparently, someone had gotten too close while trying to take a picture, and he didn’t like that.  So, he was sulking in the trees, refusing to look at anyone.  The park ranger was shooing people away from him, giving him a time out.

We made it back to witness Old Faithful blow its top again.  I was almost arrested for throttling a man to death when he decided to stand up right in front of me, so that he could take a video and picture at the same time.  He was a Japanese man.  We have had a terrible experience with the bus loads of Orientals touring the park.  They are rude, pushy, inconsiderate of your space and position to take pictures, and they talk incessantly and at high volumes which sometimes scares away the animals.  I was able to move over enough to still get the geyser at its peak, which saved him.

We talked to a park ranger at the information center, and he told us that we might be able to see wolves in the Lamar Valley, so we decided to attempt to drive all the way there.  Lamar Valley is on the opposite side of the park from Old Faithful, and the direct road through Dunraven Pass is closed eight months of the year due to excessive snow.  So, we had to drive all the way around through Mammoth Hot Springs.  It took us a little over two hours, but we finally made it.

On the way to the Lamar Valley, we stopped off at the Petrified Tree.  It’s a descendant of the ancient Redwoods and was petrified in the volcanic eruption that shaped much of Yellowstone.  A large portion of the trunk of the tree is still standing and stands as a monument, hundreds of years old.

The Lamar Valley and the mountains around it were amazingly beautiful.  We were shocked that we hadn’t come over here before.  As we were gawking at the scenery, we almost missed the coyote walking down the road.  We stopped to take his picture as he went off the side of the road, chasing something to eat.  His coloring was very pretty…a camouflage mixture of orange, brown, black, gray, and white.  We watched him hunt for several minutes before he finally trotted off down the road.

We next stopped at the Soda Butte Cone, a striking thermal cone near Soda Butte Creek.  As we stopped to take some pictures, we ran into another couple that were gazing out at the fields and mountains across the creek.  We learned from them that on several trips to Yellowstone, that they had seen bears in this area.  They were hoping to catch one again.  We told them that we had come up here to find wolves.  So far, both of us had been disappointed.

By this point, it was getting late.  We didn’t figure that we were going to see any wolves today, so we headed back.  A few miles down the road, we found a large group of cars pulled over on the side of the road.  All of the people had binoculars or telescopes and were peering off into the distant trees.  We stopped and asked them what they were looking at, and one guy told me that there were three wolves over there…a gray and two blacks.  We couldn’t see the wolves with the naked eye, but someone mentioned that the park ranger on the hill behind us might be able to tell us more about them.

We climbed up the hill to talk to him, and he was not only kind enough to explain about the wolves, but he also let us look at them through his telescope.  At first all we could observe was some black lumps laying in the grass.  But as we stood there, a grizzly bear suddenly came out of the trees right into the middle of the three wolves resting area.  The wolves, completely not intimidated by the bear, walked toward it and started circling it.  The park ranger was describing the scene and explaining that neither side was showing aggression.  It looked more like curiosity.  He again let us look at the scene across the creek, and we were finally able to see the wolves and the bear. It was a still a little blurry from that far away, but we could clearly make out their shapes.  I would still like to see a wolf a little closer, but my wife said that we’re counting it.

Interesting Fact:  The park ranger that we were talking to about the wolves was none other than Rick McIntyre.  Ranger Rick is famous inside the park as the “Wolf Man” for his years spent observing the behavior of the wolves within and across the packs.  He knows more about the wolves of Yellowstone than any other person.