Bears and Beauty

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.