One of the wonderful things about our trip west was getting to see wild creatures in their natural habitats. We spent 5 nights at the Pebble Creek Campground in Yellowstone, at the far end of the Lamar Valley, the best area for seeing wildlife in the park. Bison were abundant, in our drives coming and going from our campsite and much to our surprise/delight/dismay also in the campground itself.
Buffalo make a deep rumbling raspberry snorting sort of sound that you can hear when you’re close to them. We had noticed it when driving near herds of them in the Black Hills. Our first morning in Yellowstone Jay and Peter and Emma went to explore the creek while Bri and I stayed around the campsite. And then we heard it – that deep rumbly sound. I looked up and saw one across the creek (a safe distance away), but as Bri and I got up to check it out, another buffalo walked through the campground, between us and the creek (not a safe distance away)! We were very glad it was not interested in us. We also learned, after a few nights of camping there in the rain, that wet buffalo poop smells a lot like wet dog poop . . .
Much of seeing wildlife in the national parks is noticing other people pulled off the side of the road, looking at something through their binoculars and stopping and asking what they are seeing. We did a lot of this, especially in the Lamar Valley, and we saw amazing things we might not have noticed on our own. We got to see wolves and wolf pups, and we were also able to see bears.
I was not particularly eager to see bears – all of the
cautionary signs and warnings about food and safety had me pretty anxious. And
Jay and I had once watched a movie with a bear attack in it and that was one of
my fears as we got ready for the trip. Honestly, I wasn’t really interested in
seeing bears even at a distance. But one day we noticed lots of folks by the
side of the road and when we asked what they were looking at, the answer was a grizzly
bear. Jay quickly pulled over and jumped out of the van. He was so excited he
left his door open and the rest of us behind, heading to where folks had
gathered with their scopes and binoculars. The rest of us caught up eventually,
and there it was. Walking through a distant field, visible through our
binoculars. I don’t think I’ll forget Jay’s voice as he saw it and exclaimed,
‘Beautiful.’ And it was beautiful – it moved with such strength and grace and
power. I’d thought of bears before as scary, or as sort of clumsy and cute in
the zoo, but I hadn’t seen their beauty before.
As I was writing about it my journal later that night, I
made a note to look up Mary Oliver’s poem about a bear. It’s about a black
bear, and we saw those too, and her description of ‘dazzling darkness’ captures
a bit of the beauty of the grizzly bear too. Here it is:
Spring
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against
the silence of the trees.
Whatever else
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her –
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
The lines ‘There is only one question: how to love this world’ strike me as I type this. I’m so thankful for travel and witnessing beauty. It helps me love this world that God made.
