Mike and the Grizzly Bears

 

I was sitting at my desk the other night, posting to this blog and waiting out the last hour before heading off to work, when a text came in on my cell phone.  It was my old friend Mike Buhler.  Mike was one of the sports writers who educated me in the ways of the newspaper business when I accepted the job as Sports Editor for the Delta News Citizen.

He had been reading the post I had just uploaded and texted me to…well, I guess to make me jealous.

It worked.

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You see, Mike has moved on to work as community editor for a newspaper in Powell, Wyoming, a small town in the northwest part of that great state.  That corner of Wyoming is the most beautiful part of a state known for its wild grandeur.  Think Yellowstone National Park and you get the idea.  Powell is 77 miles from Yellowstone.

As I said, Mike had just finished reading my latest post, which was one about cooking venison, and texted to tell me I should come to northwest Wyoming to hunt deer.

Deal!

I promised to make a journey back out to one of my favorite places I’ve ever seen and to go by and visit him when I did.  He didn’t have to do what he did next though; I was already sold on the idea.  Just the chance to revisit the area and see a friend, and the idea of going deer hunting in the most beautiful country in the U.S. was enough, but he sent me some pictures he has taken since moving there.

Mike and I share a passion for photography so I know his actions were innocent, just one photographer showing another how beautiful the country is, but it really made me homesick for a place I’ve never lived.

The photos he sent were of the Grand Teton Mountains as well as the Bear Tooth Mountains.  But he also sent some photos of a four year old grizzly bear named Snow that is supposedly the best known bear in Yellowstone.  Of course, that’s where he had taken the pictures.

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I was jealous because, despite the fact that our family had visited Yellowstone before, and owned land in the Canadian wilderness where grizzlies were considered common, I’ve never gotten any photos or videos of the burly bruins in the wild.  I have gotten some pics of them in captivity, zoos, a place called Bear Country U.S.A., and the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center just outside Yellowstone.

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We had the oldest five of our sons with us when we visited the Yellowstone.  Patrick hadn’t been born yet.  After driving through the national park, where we saw deer, elk, bison, and black bears, we stopped in at the Discovery Center to see the grizzly bears and wolves we’d missed in the park.

It was in the center that we had an experience which we still talk about now and then, and usually get a little chuckle out of too.

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Yellowstone is one of the most popular National Parks in the U.S. and draws tourists from all over the world.  We heard languages and accents we usually only hear in movies, and made new friends we’ll never see again, although it would be great if our paths were to cross sometime.  But a couple people we didn’t meet were the ones we remember best.

Their inflection was almost certainly from New York City, probably the Bronx or Brooklyn.  My experience has been that most of the people I have met from those two boroughs think they know everything in the world – or at least everything worth knowing.  More than that, they seem to think that what they think is absolutely true.

Anyway, Annie and the boys and I were looking through the Discover Center, sucking in the knowledge and enjoying the beauty of the animals, when we got to the enclosure that housed some beautiful full-grown grizzlies.  Several of my boys hung onto my every word as I explained to them how the big bears use their claws to dig in the dirt or flip over big boulders in pursuit of marmots and mice, which they gobble down like a toddler with a chocolate bar.

One of the big bears was sitting in the water of a natural looking pool that had been built into the enclosure.  Somehow he had acquired a chunk of rubber mat about three feet long.  Maybe he had ripped it out of his sleeping cave, where it had been installed to pad the concrete, or maybe he’d pulled it up from the bottom of the man-made pond he was playing in.  He would push it down to the bottom of the pool, then snap his head up out of the water, causing the rubber piece to flop around and fling water in a shower, drenching everything for several feet around.  My sons and I laughed as we watched the furry clown having so much fun.

Then a man about my own age walked up with a boy who looked to be six or eight.  I assumed they were father and son.  The two were talking loudly, as if everyone around was just dying to hear what the “N’Yawkers” had to say.

The father was proclaiming his knowledge about…well, pretty much everything.  When the subject of his speech got around to things that fell within my humble education, it was soon obvious that he was making up for a lack of knowledge with plenty of volume.

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“Dad,” the boy started, “What do dem bayahs eat?”  The way he pronounced “them bears” gave away the pair’s city of origin.

The father sighed as if he was a bored wise man imparting knowledge to simpler mind, “Dey eat honey.  Dey climb trees and pull down da hives so dey can eat da bees’ honey.  When dey get fat enough, dey hibahnate.”

Now, I knew that grizzlies sleep a lot during the winter but wildlife biologists long ago established that they don’t truly hibernate.  But I let it go.

About that time, the bear snapped his head up, whipping the piece of rubber mat around and throwing a spray of water.

“Look, Dad!” the boy said.  “Dat bayah’s got a beavah!”

“No, son,” the father shook his head.  “Dat ain’t no beavah.”  He raised his eyebrows and grimaced as if he were talking to a simpleton, “Dat bayah’s caught hisself a fush!”

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Scotty and J.B. started giggling at the two and I tried to shush them, but it was tough to do because I was having so much trouble choking back my own laughter.

 

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