wildness

After the bear came back a second night, and bashed in the Mighty Hunter’s front door, he called the game warden who brought this impressive culvert trap over and parked it in the back yard. About eight last night we heard clanging noises and went out to watch the warden set the trap and...
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The MH called this morning to tell me there was a bear in his neighbor’s yard last night. Looks like it came up the creek from the river, and took out the neighbor’s birdfeeder. He said there wasn’t too much damage, but the sliding glass door is covered in big bear paw prints. We...
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It’s snowing this morning. Peaceful still snow. Sometimes big flakes, sometimes tiny, but the air is still and a quiet trickle of snow falls outside. It’s as if we’re all inside some quiet, gentle, still place. Looking out the back window as I did the breakfast dishes I saw a woodpecker on the birdfeeder...
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They’re back! It’s spring in the Greater Yellowstone area, and the bears are awake and afoot. Some of you may remember that the dogs and I had a little encounter last year (see Not the Top of the Food Chain, and Bear Update). Well, this year it was three local girls, who got pinned...
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For big dead animals. I drove up to Suce Creek this morning to run the dogs, and there were two guys standing looking into the bed of a pickup truck. Once of them was wearing camoflage, always a tip-off. So as the boys ran up the hill in search of grouse, I walked over...
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All last week I kept hearing people say they’d seen grizzly tracks up in Suce Creek, and for a while there it sounded like perhaps I’d had an encounter with the Big Bear himself. Luckily, my friend Bill, who did a beautiful documentary for the Discovery Channel on grizzlies went up there on Sunday...
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Well, on our afternoon walk today, we had a little bear encounter. So much for those fancy-dan bird dogs of mine who ran right underneath the bear who was standing uphill from the trail “chuffing” at us. Standing! On it’s hind legs! A bear! A very dark, very big, bear-person who was not happy...
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It’s mushroom season here in Montana and I’ve spent much of the weekend obsessively wandering the bottomlands along the Yellowstone in pursuit of the beautiful, fragrant, and elusive morel. It started on Saturday morning, when Maryanne’s friend Tice took us down to the sweet spot by the sewage treatment plant where her family has...
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Yesterday I went to see the documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides. It was extraordinary. I’ve known about Goldsworthy’s work for a long time — when I was a bookseller, I loved Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature, but I’d never seen his work in motion. In the movie, there are these extraordinary...
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The Burning Season Sometime in the night I realized the wind must have changed, because through the gurgling of the swamp cooler I could smell smoke. It’s disconcerting to smell smoke in your sleep, and I might have been more worried but that even asleep I knew there are two large forest fires in...
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