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| Yellow-bellied Marmot |
The next morning, it wasn't a park ranger that visited my camp, but a Yellow-bellied Marmot. I’m not trying to pick a fight with anyone, Yellow-bellied Marmot was his proper name. He watched me eat breakfast and pack up, waiting patiently for me to drop a morsel of food that never came. Sorry guy.
I've seen a lot of wildlife in the park. Eventually, I stopped taking pictures of every marmot I saw, because they were more numerous than people. Some animals were too far away to get a good shot without my telephoto lens, like the moose I saw on day one.
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| Pika |
Some were too fast, like the Uinta Chipmunks, Pikas, and what I believe was a mink sprinting across the trail. Some only came out when it was too dark for a photo, like the brown bats that fluttered over my head while I retreated to my tent for mosquito relief. And some were so startling that I hesitated too long to get my camera out before they ran off, like the elk, white-tailed and mule deer, and black bears.
Speaking of black bears, two more rangers warned me of the one at Phelps Lake. While hiking up the long ascent to Surprise and Amphitheater Lakes, I stepped aside to allow a convoy of park rangers, EMTs, and a woman with her left arm bandaged to her torso, pass by. From yards away, I could see her dislocated elbow was
not connected to her funny bone.
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| Paintbrush Divide |
Two of the rangers stopped to check my backcountry permit and itinerary. “Has anyone warned you about the bear at Phelps Lake?”
“Yeah, several,” I said.
“The bears are active because of all the ripe huckleberries. Hopefully that will keep them from approaching hikers for food,” he said.
“That’s a big trip,” the other ranger said while glancing at my itinerary.
"Why do they keep saying that, it’s barely fifty miles," I thought.
When they walked away, he mumbled something I couldn't hear, to which the other ranger said, “Yeah, he seemed legit.” Have I become something I wasn't before? Do I appear to belong in the mountains? I grinned and felt a sense of pride. Or maybe after a few days in the mountains, I just smelled like a legit mountain man.
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| Surprise Lake |
When getting close to my final campsite at Phelps Lake, I heard a bear in the trees beside me.
“Was this the bear?” I wondered. I jumped up on a log and yelled, “Hello, bear!” You know, to be polite. And to warn him that I was near. Most bear attacks, although incredibly rare, can usually be attributed to one or more of the following: an unintimidating backpacker hiking alone with food, approaching a mother bear with her cub, or accidentally startling a bear. I soon realized I had two of three going against me. I didn't want to add "startling a bear" to the list.
I could hear its heavy foot falls as it rustled through the leaves, perhaps searching for huckleberries. I clacked my hiking poles together, but it didn't seem to notice.
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| Lake Amphitheater |
“Hey bear..." I said in my calm Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday in the movie Tombstone voice. "I’m your huckleberry.” An old west saying that means, “If you want a showdown, I’m the man you’re looking for.” Yeah, hands-down the coolest thing I've ever said. It just felt right. And couldn't have been further from the truth.
I tried clacking my hiking poles together again. A panicky bear cub finally heard and ran up a tree. An adult bear was still on the ground. I crept along the trail beside it, making noise along the way so it would know I was there. I whistled, I sang Fat-bottom Girls by Queen. It just couldn't care any less that I was there.
So I continued to Phelps Lake. When I was close, a sign had been posted on the trail that read, “Ryan Grayson Party
(Party of one, I thought). Phelps Lake Campsites Closed." The ranger said the bear caused more trouble, so they closed the whole area. I also learned that I really like seeing my name on a sign.
I decided that since this was my last night in the park and I only had five more miles of trail to my car, now was as good a time as any to begin my next visit on this road trip. I walked up the nearest road and hitched a ride back to my car, a ride perfectly timed, as cold rain and lightning began to fall from the sky.
I think I'm ready for Yellowstone now.
The views from my driver's side window were so magnificent that I frequently stopped to take photos. Consequently, the drive took me seven hours, not two.
I know a couple of you will appreciate this, remember when Forrest Gump says to Jenny, "Like that mountain lake. It was so clear, Jenny. It looked like there were two skies, one on top of the other." The footage was him running on the Going-to-the-Sun road in front of a lake right after the sun drops below the mountains, when the blue sky still lingers around a bit before turning black. A field of golden grasses swirl around in the wind. I've seen that movie a dozen times and every time I saw that scene, I wished I could find myself in such the right place, at such the right time.
I heard hooves on the rocks behind me. It was a mountain goat. Then it was two and a baby, then a half dozen walking all around me. My camera never clicked so much, well not since 24-hours earlier when I found myself in a herd of Bighorn Sheep.
“Drop the pole, you stupid deer!” I yelled and the pole dropped to its feet.
During breakfast back at camp, the deer came back. I followed her around for a little bit, taking pictures of her by the lake. Maybe I should say she lured me away, because when we were far enough away, she ran for my food. 
“I’m sorry I sat there so quietly at Mokowanis,” I said. 
I hiked along the shore to the southern tip of Elizabeth Lake, then through wildflowers where butterflies fluttered about as though a gust of wind blew off petals and whirled them around me. Beyond Elizabeth Lake, the trail became more overgrown and unkempt. 
“Hmm, that bear poop was still moist,” I thought as I stepped over it. Still moist, even though that spot had been in direct sunlight all day. “It must have been recently shat,” I thought. After a year of this, it’s interesting the things you take note of. I also noticed I was in a patch of thimbleberries (i.e. bear food) and began to pay more attention to any rustling in the leaves.
I knew I was close when I began to hear the Belly River, which begins at Helen Lake. I stopped to listen to it with my eyes shut. I absorbed every other sound as well, the beating of insect wings, the wind hissing between branches of pine, three different types of birds chirping, some rapid cheeps, some sporadic elongated whistles, then suddenly the thumping sound of helicopter blades. Was it for a tour or a search-and-rescue? A 19-year old guy who never came back from his recent Glacier dayhike, was still missing. 
I remember seeing a picture of it when I was in fifth grade. At that age, my world was a sixty square mile patch of flat Indiana corn fields and small towns that John Melloncamp might sing about. Photos
of Yellowstone's colorful pools of boiling water, bubbling mud pits, and geysers shooting water into the air, were so different from what I was used to, that they might as well been
photos of Mars or one of the moons of Jupiter.
The picture I saw in my fifth grade classroom, was an aerial shot of the spring taken from a helicopter, so I had to get higher if I wanted to see it as I remembered it. I saw the hills along the backside of the spring and decided, damn the rules, I have to get up there. 
- - -
She found me a route, a fifty-mile loop of the park that would take me through Granite Canyon to Marion Lake, and then onto the Teton Crest Trail along the Death Canyon Shelf and into the Alaska Basin. On day two, I'd pass Lake Solitude and climb to 10,700 feet before descending into Paintbrush Canyon to camp with a distant view of Jackson Lake. And then I would meander down the mountain and hike along the shores of String Lake, Jenny Lake, and climb back up to nearly 10,000 feet to camp near Surprise and Amphitheater Lakes. Finally, I would hike back down to the valley skirting Bradley and Taggart Lakes and arrive at my final campsite beside Phelps Lake.
“You have a big trip, and a big day,” he said. “If you want to get to Alaska Basin, you better get moving.” It was nine in the morning and Alaska Basin was only fourteen miles away. The Appalachian Trail has redefined what I consider a big day.
It sprinkled a little on the first day out. A cold rain, which oddly enough, did nothing to dampen my mood. Perhaps because the scattered showers also whipped up the smell of ozone and dirt. Maybe it was the way the lakes reflected those little bits of electric blue sky hiding between the advancing silver storm clouds, or how the rings of water droplets distorted that image. Maybe it was because I was surrounded by thousands of vibrant wildflowers that, even under diffused sun light, brightened the landscape.
As eons passed, erosion more easily stripped away the softer rock around Devil’s Tower, leaving the 1,208-foot column that I stare up at today. Knowing how long such a process takes, makes me more passionate about protecting it, and more grateful for our National Parks.
When I opened my eyes this morning, a great view was waiting for me without even having to turn my head. I didn't expect it, since I arrived at night and had never seen the park in the morning. That's when I saw how beautiful it can be. The low sun brought warm hues and long shadows to every rock formation jutting up from the ground below. I scanned the view tracing the horizontal bands of sedimentary strata that continues from pinnacle to pinnacle.
Once the sun finally begun to set, the temperature dropped thirty degrees and the location of my second camp gave me a perfect view of the sunset. If the days were this cool, the Badlands would be paradise, but there are two more days over 104 degrees, so I think I'll get back in the car and move to the next spot on this trip. I still don't know where that will be.
