There’s a reason I keep coming back here. I first came in 1964 with my parents and brother in our 1958 Pontiac station wagon, pulling a tent trailer my dad rented. The sides of that old tent trailer were canvas, held to the sides of the trailer with rope. I was enthralled then and there with the place. My brother Joe and I counted 50 bears in the two days we were here. I remember vividly a huge Grizzly coming up to the car and slathering its tongue against the window where my mom sat in the front passenger seat. The place was crazy with bears in those days. We saw more bears than any other mammal in the park. People threw food at them like they were beggars on the streets, which, of course, they were. My dad, having spent some years in Alaska during the late 1930’s, regaled us with all kinds of stories of bear encounters, both his and those he had heard of. His advice to me was always, “If you have one of them chasing you run along sideways on a steep hill. They can’t control their weight and they’ll roll over and you can escape.” It seemed true enough for the times. Yellowstone was the highlight of our two week swing through what seemed like the entire West. My dad was one of those guys who planned things down to the minute on vacations. Since that visit long ago when I was twelve years old Yellowstone has remained always in the front of my memory.
The next time I came here was in 1972 with Jimmy Tillay and Diane. We borrowed Diane’s mom’s Camaro and made our own 2 ½ week swing through the West. We went everywhere, but again, Yellowstone was the highlight. Maybe we saw 20 or so bears that trip. Diane and I rented a little boat and went out fishing on Yellowstone Lake. Romance ensued on a little island at the far eastern side of the lake. Yow!!! On the way back a storm blew up creating some serious waves. It was all I could do to keep that little V-Bottom boat headed into the wind. Turning her sideways into the wind would have been catastrophic. Every time we headed a wave Diane would sail into the air off her seat in the front of the boat and come down hard on her bottom. I wasn’t sure at all we were gonna make it back in one piece alive. Other boats passed by and hollered at us to see if we were alright and then rushed back to the marina. I’m still here and Diane’s still here, so it all ended well that time.
Once again, in 1976, we came here, Diane and me, with the Bluegrass Alliance band...Bob Breidenbach, Robert Poole, Lonnie Pierce, Monty Barry, our sound man, Vince Gill, and Bill Millet. We were playing a two week gig at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson Hole and during our down times we would venture out to Yellowstone or the Grand Tetons. We all trundled into a boat again and went fishing on the lake. I recall seeing fish at least 20 feet below us while we were fishing there. I’ve always had great luck fishing on Yellowstone Lake. I’ve always caught Cutthroat Trout in those crystalline waters. God, I love that place!
There was a long absence of my visits until 2000 when I brought my own family here on vacation. Imitating my dad’s style I rented a pop-up tent trailer and the four of us came here as part of own three week Western swing. We probably saw 8 or 9 bears. Clearly, the National Park Service had changed their bear management philosophy. The Park was badly scarred at this time by the recent massive forest fires. It seemed the entire park had been burnt by the same fire. Little shoots were coming up in the burned out places, though, as the forest was regenerating. It would pass through several phases of regenerative process. Grasses first, then the lodgepole pines. In some places the pines were coming back fast already.
Eli and I caught stringers of fish on the lake...Cutthroat. We only kept a dinners worth, though. It was a time for me to teach, Keep what you need and leave the rest. Later, that same day, back at our camp on Slough Creek in Lamar Valley Eli still had the fever. Fishing from the bank he continued to catch trout. He ended up giving them to various campers who were there. I recall how astounded these folks were that an 11 year old was so proficient a fisherman.
One night at Slough Creek the ranger came around and told us that a momma Grizzly was in the area with her cubs, so be on the lookout. Don’t leave any food out, make a lot of noise when you venture out to the head, etc. Suni, our precious daughter of 13, apparently didn’t understand that the instructions from the ranger applied to moisture lotion as well. Along about bed time Diane sniffed the air and exclaimed, “I smell honeysuckle.” Sure enough, Suni had doused herself with some kind of honeysuckle strawberry moisture lotion, the aroma of which could be found wafting clear through the breadth and length of Lamar Valley, I’m certain. Visions of Grizzlies ripping through the tent to get at the delicacy they smelled terrorized Diane and me. I immediately handed out knives to everyone, as if that were going to save us from the sure bear attack that was coming later in the night. I suppose the bears had their fill of honeysuckle strawberries that day for we survived.
The next day we sat at a pullout along Lamar Valley, waiting and watching for wildlife. As if on cue, there, across the broad valley, we watched a lone bull elk working his way along a hill. Not far away, some grey wolves were in pursuit. It didn’t look none too good for the elk. Those wolves tracked that guy and they knew exactly what they were doing and who they were after. We never saw the outcome as the elk traced over a hill and into a distant ravine. It was a good nature lesson for all of us, but particularly for the kids. Earth is a beautiful, sublime, spectacular place...but it’s life and death out there. Diane and I have always had such a profound love of Slough Creek and Lamar Valley since that time.
One particular day Dusty, Cindy, Diane, and I drove over to the middle of the park and went hiking. It was not a particularly long hike at all. Cindy and Diane were not feeling up to it physically and Dusty has the neck and back issues that pop up from time to time. However, it was one of the more eventful and wilderness style hikes we’ve been on in quite some time. The sign at the trail head warned of Grizzlies and someone had hand written they had seen one about two weeks prior. We, ourselves, has seen one just down the road the day before, perhaps two miles east of our location. We set out suitably aware, maybe hyper-aware. As we crossed a broad meadow for about a quarter mile we searched the high grass for any stirring that would indicate trouble but none appeared. We soon entered the forested section of the hike. The thing about Yellowstone is, no matter how crowded the roadways and main attractions seem to be, once you get a quarter to a half mile off the beaten track you really are in wilderness, wilderness as wild and untamed as any you’ll find anywhere.
The path was narrow but well-defined and it was not particularly difficult. It rose and dipped some but basically it was an easy walk. We were constantly scanning for bear and it surely seemed we were in their back yard. Some scratches on trees here and there, a little scat, some sapling rubbings from elk but no major mammals were along the route. At one point, though, we heard what we thought was a bear snorting off in the distance. Surely it was either a bear or an elk sounding a warning to us to stay the course and move along. The hair on the back of our necks stiffened. Cindy thought it was an elk from her experiences riding in the mountains of Arizona.
Every now and then we would come to a clearing in the trees where we could see a meadow down below us perhaps a hundred feet or so, green with beautiful high grass and small rivulets of mountain brook water coursing through. We would stop and dig out our binoculars for a chance spotting of mammals out there in the prime habitat. Off in the distance on the side of a mountain we thought we spied a bear...or was it an elk? We weren’t sure. It was too distant. We traveled on.
At one point we decided to leave the trail and head down to the meadow below. It was just too inviting. When we arrived at the edge of the meadow we found boucoup elk tracks. I decided to venture out into the meadow some to immerse myself in its splendor so to speak. Now, I may have mentioned that throughout my childhood I was terrified of quicksand. Nearly every TV show that I watched, mostly westerns, featured some villain stumbling into quicksand, thus meeting his Maker. I thought that if I left my neighborhood surely I would encounter quicksand somewhere. It was there waiting. Why, it might even be in some unexplored backyard in my own neighborhood. Who knew? You never knew! You had to be on constant lookout for such things or you yourself could fall prey to its ooze and all that would be left of you was your hat floating on the surface. And, who knew how deep those infernal pits were?
Back to the meadow at hand… So, I ventured out care free and careless into that verdant pasture of paradise found. One step, two steps, three, four, when uh oh...I sunk. I mean I sunk so fast to my knees that I scarcely knew what had happened. Thick, dark, clinging mud was sucking me downward faster than I could react. Cindy and Dusty called out to me seeing I had fallen beneath the level of the grass so that they could not see me any longer. I wasn’t ten feet away from the group yet no one could see me I had sunk so deeply. I was still sinking, slower, than at first, but sinking nonetheless. I couldn’t pull my legs out. I couldn’t pull my feet up. I had done it. I had fulfilled my childhood-long fear of falling into quicksand sure as I’m typing this sentence. It was really happening. And, no one could see me to know where I was. I shouted out, “Help!” I was really scared. I felt my face flush and my heartbeat soar. This was the real deal. I couldn’t feel bottom.
As it happened, not two weeks before I had seen one of those survival TV shows that usually has an Australian getting into and out of impossible trouble in the bush or jungle somewhere. He’s demonstrating survival skills and you’re glued to the tube hoping you learn some life-lesson that you’ll probably never need. Well, this time it came in pretty handy. This Australian fella demonstrated how to get yourself out of quicksand. We all know that Australia is chock full of quicksand, that’s just a given. His technique, viewed and stored somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, flashed across my field of vision. I could plainly see his moves play out right in front of me. I began to imitate what I had seen. First, I leaned forward as far as I could which is counter-intuitive to what you feel is the right thing to do. I spread out my weight more horizontally. Next, I wriggled my feet and legs to create pockets of free space while I strained for the “shore’ of the safe, solid ground. Being more horizontal helped a lot. I quit sinking into the bottomless-ness of the hole I was in.
Gradually, I worked myself free a little at a time so that I could clasp a sapling and pull myself free of the goo. I had tied my boots on pretty tightly so I didn’t lose them, but I was a muddy, wet mess up to my thighs. Fortunately for me it was fairly warm and being wet wasn’t a hypothermia challenge. All of this quicksand adventure probably took less than a minute to occur. Of course, it seemed like 20 minutes. Time slowed down to a crawl during my dilemma. All I can say is, thank God for Australians. Save for their knowledge we would not today know how to live among pygmies peoples, wrestle crocodiles, or escape quicksand.