After settling in to our new campsite at Indian Creek and a quiet evening, we planned for the next day out to be exploring a far-flung corner of Yellowstone, the Lamar Valley.
We were on the road by 6 AM, and watched the sun rise over the vast valley in primordial splendor as the plains below us emerged gently into view. As we topped the rise to begin our descent into the valley, the powdered gold air of dawn filled with the eerie song of wolves. We tried to find them, turning off on various dirt roads to try to get closer—but they stayed out of sight, over a ridge and beyond a stream, haunting us.
Once we reached the valley’s floor and the light was brighter, we discovered that buffalo were everywhere, mating, fighting, grazing, milling about in dust wallows, nursing their calves, and ignoring the gawking of us humans.
The valley, especially in the morning before other visitors, was like turning back time a couple of hundred years. The place was unchanged by the relentless march of humanity; the only marker that we existed was the ribbon of road running through it.
I spotted what I thought was a wolf, but when Mike turned his long lens upon it, the critter turned out to be a large and well-nourished coyote, his russet and gray tail large and fluffy with health. We watched him hunting small game around the edges of the bison herd, crouching on his belly, creeping forward, and then leaping down on his prey from above. By then it was clear he was not hunting the buffalo, but using the herd as a distraction to grab his target.
Past the buffalo herd into a forested area around the Lamar River. There we spotted an osprey, perched above a stream near the top of a pine, sunlight bathing his cinnamon-flecked ivory breast. That seemed a good signal that the area had fish, so we pulled off to the side of the road and casted. The water was so pure that the fish watched us below as if we were the ones in an aquarium, easily evading our crude attempts to capture them.
One difficulty with our time in Yellowstone is that our little rescue dog Koa is not allowed anywhere but on the pavement in the Park; he has waited resignedly in the vehicle as we did different activities. Fortunately, we’d been able to find shade and keep the car cool enough, though the windows could not be cracked more than four inches because he was able to clamber out through a larger gap and crossed a road to come to find me, a terrifying feat of doggie athleticism I wish he couldn’t perform.
Near the Northeast Gate at the end of the Lamar Valley, we spotted white mountain goats perched on a vast, striated gray rock wall carved by rain into branching hieroglyphs marking the seasons, a golden meadow of late summer flowers at its feet.
Eventually, we exited the park and in the little town of Cook City, Wyoming, just outside the Gate, found a good meal and some excellent homemade huckleberry chocolate fudge.
In the nearby coffee and book shop, I discovered Alexandra Fuller’s first novel in hardback, and bought it as a special treat.
Alexandra Fuller’s childhood memoir, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, about growing up in South Africa, was one of my biggest inspirations for writing my own memoir, FRECKLED. By reading that book, I found the “voice”—warm, matter-of-fact no matter what the horrors—in which to tell my own story. Fuller lives in nearby Jackson, Wyoming, and I was intrigued by her novel Quiet until the Thaw, written as it was from a Native American’s point of view.
***I ended up enjoying the book and reading it as I lay in the sun beside Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park. Highly recommend if you like a poetic and haunting portrait of a people in transition.***
Driving back through the Lamar Valley we found the road to be choked with cars, sightseers and bison crossings; we were so glad we’d come through early when the valley was just waking up and the views were uncrowded.
Also, I highly recommend huckleberry fudge, if you can find it. 😉
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