As I sat in the K-Bar, back in Gardiner, MT, with Brad and his entourage of delightful (the term is used glibly only in part) Yellowstone Association instructors, the man looked at me with a crooked smile. "You know, and no offense, but I was hoping you wouldn't get the job so you guys would have to come back here and hang around for a while."

I have never had anyone say that to me before. It felt... good. Good to know that Brad cares. Good to know that we have friends here. Good to know that we're welcome back. Good to know that we.... belong (?) somewhere in this world.

Out on the Dunes

Playing Catch-Up

I know I know, I've been serious lack when it comes to updating. In my defense, it's been a rough couple of weeks. Aside from living in a seedy hotel, complete with wild, blue-collar parties and dealers, we have been trying to orchestrate a move to Ft. Collins which makes our move to Scotland look like hopscotch (of course, the comparison is moot if you were one of those children who SUCKED at hopscotch, like me). It involved a cute little old house in Old Town, hippie tenants who disappeared randomly, a vacation to Great Sand Dunes National Park and Valley View Hot Springs in the San Luis Valley, a brief visit to Gardiner to get our stuff, and now landlords who have managed to disappear. One the upside, the tenants currently moving out of out new place have the most adorable daughter, Sophie. I spent several minutes today listening to her explain to me how she finds money in the seats of the car and all the things she's going to buy with her coins. That's pretty much all I got.

But it looks like we're getting things sorted. We should be in to our new place this week, and I start work tomorrow.

So how's that for playing catch-up?

Life in the Rockies, Day 2

Day 2 of our weekend getaway (plus hour-long drive to our weekend getaway locale), started with rain. It looked so gloomy all day that it took us until the afternoon to actually convince ourselves to leave our hotel room. But, as is always the case in the Rockies, the weather can change faster than my mood, and as soon as we hit the road, we were greeted with sunshine and fresh mountain air. It was a little chillier than yesterday, but I’m about ready for fall, so I was stoked. The Trail Ridge Road was open, so we decided to head to the other side of the park, utilizing the massively high road (over 12,000 feet, the highest road in any national park in the US) to get there. Going up and over, I can completely understand why they would take even a little bit of snow so seriously and close it so readily: there’s a good 4000-foot drop off in many places along the windy and very narrow road. We saw a couple of trailers up along there, and we marveled at how ballsy (stupid?) they must be.

It was nice to see snow, and in some of the best snow-covered areas you could make out the tracks of sleds, snowboards, and even odd skis from adventure lovers and thrill seekers. People mulled around the visitor’s center up top, some shivering in t-shirts, and others bundles in their fanciest winter digs. We cruised through, a ghost town on our minds for a destination.

We reached the Colorado River Trailhead in the early afternoon. The trail itself leads to several branches up and over the mountains in the northern end of the park. It winds its way along the headwaters of the Colorado River. It’s amazing that such a river, despite its recent shortcomings, has such humble beginnings. Several creeks come together to form a river crossable by a fallen tree, as Jonmikel did in the shot below. The Mighty Colorado.

Part of this trail led up to Lulu City and the Shepler Mines, a silver mining community once home to some 500 people back in the 1880s. It’s just under 4 miles in, and had homesteads, hotels, saloons, stores and a justice of the peace. Pretty hard core. We climbed up to the mine to explore what we could; most of it was closed off due to generally deadly conditions: toxic gas, rotting infrastructure, steep drops with deep, drown-inducing pools at the bottom. You know, the usual. The rest of the town was completely washed out during flooding when the Grand Ditch, an ugly yet historical scar running the length of several mountains in the northern part of the park that brings water from one side of the Continental Divide to the other (effectively cutting the flow of the Colorado River in half since the 1930s) to irrigate farms, etc. neat Ft. Collins, burst, causing millions of dollars in damage to park resources. It has only recently been decided that the company who owns the ditch owes that money back to the Park.

I could go on forever about the injustices done to the park and how corporations try to get around it all, but I won’t.

Despite the emptiness now surrounding the area, the setting for the former town is quite beautiful; I was thinking of building a homestead there myself. Sitting at the base of several mountains and right on the shores of the Colorado, it would make the perfect setting for a town, though from what I understand no one ever became rich from the mines. It was a great little hike, and mostly flat, which was great because we were both a little tired from yesterday. After a year at sea level, 9000 feet was proving quite challenging. I did get a chance to fiddle with the aperture, shutter speed, and film speed settings in my camera, and also started shooting in raw, to take better advantage of its capabilities.

On our way back to Ft. Collins, we drove up the Trail Ridge Road again, watching the sun set over the mountains and stopping to try and get a shot of the full moon as it rose. It was frigid up top, and the wind chill almost froze my little fingers off. Surprisingly, the snowmelt that covered the road in ringlets of watery streams had not yet frozen, but I did spend a lot of time imagining the Vibe flying through the sky and wondering if they would ever find it 5000 feet below…

We also stopped at Taco Bell (I know, right?) in Estes Park. It was staffed entirely by Jamaicans (or, because I am ignorant of specific Caribbean accents, Caribbeaners). I found myself wondering what their stories were, why several 20-somethings from warmer waters have found themselves in the Middle of Nowhere Mountainous Colorado.

Trail Ridge Road, over 12,000 feet and the cars that brave it

The Mighty Colorado - it looks like a creek!

A macro shot by Jonmikel... one of my favorites

One of my own macro shots of fungus... duh

All that's left of Lulu City

'Tis the Blessed Moon!

Rocky Mountain Day 1

After hanging out for several days in a seedy weekly hotel in Ft. Collins (awaiting one bureaucracy-inclined job offer and conducting interviews for others) and driving the housekeeper up the wall because we never leave, we decide to take off to the mountains for the weekend. Well, not strictly the WHOLE weekend, as Ft. Collins is within an hour of Rocky Mountain National Park, which is a daily commute for people in Montana (notably those who go from Livingston to Gardiner), so we kept our gloriously seedy (and surprisingly clean) motel room and just made day trips.

Ft. Collins may be in a funky location, but it’s nice to be at least close to the mountains. Apparently, the city (as an actual fort) used to be in the foothills (which is where I would recommend putting a city, as the mountains offer protection from severe weather), but it burned down and thus they moved it to a more tornado-prone area. Smart, huh? Regardless, as soon as we hit Loveland, we could see the snow on the mountains beyond, despite the warm temperatures at 4900 feet. The drive along 34 was excellent, and we found several properties we would just LOVE to buy if we could handle a 1-hr commute. Generally, things are cheap in the valley leading up to Estes Park because everybody is ditching their summer homes in these harsh financial times. Well, it’s something to think on.

The Trail Ridge Road, one of the main park arteries, was closed today due to heavy snowfall yesterday. Apparently, it was just wet and icy in parts, and as the Trail Ridge Road is the highest road in any US national park (and steep on both sides, to boot), I was okay with avoiding the risk. We decided to do a big loop around several lakes in the central part of the park. It turned out to be over 8 miles long, which I supposed was not the best reintroduction to high-altitude hiking, but I was eager to get some exercise and fun views in, so we went for it. We started at the Glacier Gorge trailhead and ended at Bear Lake, which is one of those stop-for-10-minutes-to-take-a-photo stops. The elevation gain was about 1000 feet, but I managed to stay hydrated and happy, and I’m not as out of shape as I thought I was. We stopped at the lakes, ate beef jerky and poptarts, and stared at Andrew’s Glacier, which would have added another 4.5 miles to the hike, and we started in the afternoon. We’ll do it soon, especially if we stay here.

We swung around and made a large loop around Nymph, Dream and Bear Lakes, making our way back down to 8000 feet. We stopped for a beef jerky break at Dream Lake, where we watched the idiot tourists try to feed ground squirrels. There are large signs everywhere telling people NOT TO FEED THE WILDLIFE, but I guess there is something about squirrels that scream “tame and friendly,” despite the fact that I watched a girl get bitten by one earlier in the day. I’m trying to decide if it was only a coincidence that her father, who was watching her blandly, was wearing a McCain t-shirt. Squirrels, just like coyotes and bears, can get awfully mean if people keep trying to feed them.

The reflections of an aspen tree in a puddle

Jonmikel's interpretation of shadows on grass :-)

A view from a little unnamed pond on the Glacier Gorge Trail

A panorama Jonmikel took on the Glacier Gorge Trail

As we headed out, we stopped to watch the elk rut near Beaver meadows. I have to admit, I was impressed that, while the elk created quite the stir (with the exception of the rare mountain lion, elk are the most interesting thing in the park), people were politely pulled off the to side of the road, making plenty of room for drivers uninterested in elk mating rituals to squeeze past without disturbing anybody. We found a spot and pulled over to watch only idly. The elk in Yellowstone rut right on the front steps of the Mammoth hotel, so there was something very tame about this small display. There were several small groups in this valley, accompanied by several small bachelor parties of youngins who had not managed to find any ladies this year. What caught my attention was the coyote who seemed very interested in the rut and was darting around playfully in the meadow, entertaining several visitors with its antics.

It didn’t take long for us to get bored (we saw elk everyday, all the time in Yellowstone, so seeing them in Rocky Mountain National Park was no rarity), and we managed to catch a great moonrise over Estes Park as we made our way back to Ft. Collins.

I have come to one important conclusion about Ft. Collins. People who live here are young and outdoorsy, and they really, really want to live in the mountains but are way too scared to actually live IN the mountains. So they have picked this nice, safe place on the plains, where you can see mountains in the distance, and now proceed to tell people all about their lives in the Rockies.

Everyone drives SUVs here, with the excuse that, Oh they get SO much snow that they just have to have an SUV (as a point of comparison, the only people in Gardiner, several hundred feet higher and actually IN the mountains, that have SUVs either live on a ranch or genuinely live up a mountain; everyone else gets around in the snow just fine in small, all-wheel-drive, excellent-gas-mileage vehicles). They all head out to Rocky Mountain National Park, about an hour away, decked out in the fanciest outdoor gear and those annoying walking/skiing poles (95% of the people who use them don’t need them, and which are also very anti-the whole Leave No Trace ideals, seeing as they disturb topsoil, encourage erosion and widen already needlessly augmented trails) to go hiking for a couple of hours. They all look right out of an REI catalogue; they are people who dress up to go outside. Their gear has no wear and tear, their boots are shiny, their SUVs have only a smattering of bug juice. Everything about Ft. Collinsers screams “country picnic,” not “Mountain Living.” They seem to like snow but hate the inconvenience of real winter. They love the mountains but only go to them on sunny, warm weekends. They want country life but are unwilling to leave behind their city-isms. They move out to the country for the peace and quiet and dark nights and starry skies and put up spotlights up all over their property to light the big scary night.

Have I become a Montana snob?

I wasn't expecting it to feel so much like home.

I spent an entire year in Scotland, traveling, studying, avoiding studying, and yet it never really felt like home. It felt more like a glorified, working vacation. Get up, think about work, go be tourists, come back, do some work, go be locals at the grocery store (seriously, you can tell so much about a culture by perusing the supermarket). The flat, while decent and wonderfully overpriced, never felt like home; it hovered somewhere between weekly vacation rental and dorm room. Regardless of which end it tipped, it was always simply temporary.

Gardiner, I expected to feel… isolated, alone, less familiar. But the sights, the smells, the hugs from friends and the double-takes from acquaintances, all reminded me why I loved this town to begin with. Erase the silliness and drama and everything that made life needlessly frustrating for a year, I love this place. I have friends here, and there is always something exciting to find only steps away. Even people I only spoke to once or twice recognized me in surprise and exclaimed, “Welcome back!” in a way that made me feel that yes, I was actually back. In Gardiner, I become one of those annoying people who stops in the middle of the road to talk with someone through the car window.

I just wasn’t expecting it.

And now it’s so difficult to leave. We keep running scenarios over in our heads, trying to decide how to stay.

On our way out, back to Ft. Collins, we drove through the northeast entrance to catch a ride on the Beartooth Highway. We kept our eyes open for any fun wildlife. We haven’t been able to get into the park much since we got here, so we were hoping for a show. Jonmikel said idly, “I’d really like to see a bear.” The last time we saw one was on our way out of the park for the last time last summer on our way to Scotland. Well, all he had to do was complain, and suddenly, close to the Specimen Ridge trail head on the west side of Little America, we come up on what looks like a serious animal jam. A handful of people are idling inconsiderately in the middle of the road (tourists…) but most are ceremoniously gathered on the tops of cars along the sides of the road, hoisting themselves up a bit to see over the ridge just ahead to our right. Jonmikel and I scan the area, Jonmikel being more familiar with the landscape and more able to detect out-of-place animals. Someone to our left, out the open window, points and gestures slightly wildly, “There’s the pronghorn.” This stumps me totally, as such jams are usually reserved for wolves or bears or a wayward bison walking down the middle of the road (in which case, the block is usually a roving bison jam and traffic inches forward regularly). Pronghorn, while cute and fuzzy and symbolic of Home on the Range, usually don’t attract the crowds. Jonmikel spots it through the tall grasses and points it out. I get a glimpse of the horns and :::boom::: the little guy takes off at full throttle across the field. The only time animals run that fast: something’s chasing them! We watch, carefully, and suddenly from behind the ridge and underbrush, a large grizzly comes barreling out after the “antelope,” its distinctive hump eliciting ooohs and aaaahs from the onlookers. Of course, the bear had no chance, pronghorns being arguably the fastest land animal after the cheetah (filling the same niche as the antelope in Africa, evolving the same traits, only the American cheetah went extinct ages ago, leaving the pronghorn to thrive), and quickly went back to its origin. I wondered if the bear hadn’t snuck up on the pronghorn and a baby, and was returning to snack on its young kill.

It was a nice farewell (for now).

By the Way...

On our way up to Bozeman the other day, I forgot to mention several interesting encounters. First, we saw a skunk, dead on the road, just south of Yankee Jim Canyon. While there are plenty up in Tom Miner Basin, they are very rarely seen in the Park, so seeing one dead so close is always noteworthy. Also, we helped to rescue three very lost and very stupid dogs coming through that same canyon. They were hanging out on the road, a steep incline up the canyon on one side and a quick and unsteady descent to the river on the other, with no escape. They were trying to greet every car that came by, and the women in front of us stopped to collect them. She got the first one, a well taken care of golden retriever, with ease, but the other two ran scared for a good 15 minutes before chunks of cheese provided by another stopped good Samaritan lured them in. We stopped traffic in all directions, and finally a US Marshall driving by stopped to call in the strays. Someone mentioned that earlier in the day he had seen them up in Tom Miner, which means that these idiot dogs were not only lost, but that they also probably swam across the river, which is no easy feet through Yankee Jim (several canoeists and kayakers have died in the rapids through there).

There was also a bald eagle hanging out in Paradise Valley, taking advantage of the exceptionally wet weather in the area by hunting with ease. I will never get tired of seeing these guys; they’re so big and beautiful, it makes perfect sense that we’ve chosen this animals as the sign of our country. And all the water here is amazing. The waterfalls are full and flowing, the ponds are still squishy with mud that, under recent normal conditions, would have been dry and empty by July. There is even more green in the hills, where last summer than burnt tan and dusty yellows had taken over early in the summer, paving the way for several fires that season. No fires of note this season, an amazing feat in itself. The Yellowstone we returned to is more of an early summer, late spring Yellowstone than an early September Yellowstone. It’s amazing what a good winter can do, and I hope there is at least one more that will help to balance some of the problems we’ve been having here. On the way up, we noticed how devastating the pine beetle kill has become, especially in the older growth where fires and cold winters have not yet killed off the annoying killer bug.

Goodbye Thesis!

Today was the day: the final day my master’s dissertation (as they say in the UK, as opposed to thesis) is in my hands. All I had to do was print it off. Sounds simple, right?

You’d be wrong.

A4 paper. This is what divides the world, that and the metric system. The rest of the world uses A4 (which is approximately 8.3” X 11.7” and makes way more sense in millimeters), while the US either uses Letter (8.5” X 11) or legal sized (no clue, but its long). You say “A4” and people know what you’re talking about, so it’s not like I’m crazy. They just that stern, sad look and say without hesitation, “No, we don’t have that.” Nobody had it. A4 paper does not exist in Montana, it’s a myth, a legend, the Shankara stones in my very own Indiana Jones episode. Yes, there was running and jumping and whip cracking. There were crazed natives and incarnations of Shiva, and it wasn’t until I had hit rock bottom that anybody (a nice little man with a pocket protector at Office Depot) even SUGGESTED that I could just have legal sized paper cut down to an appropriate size. Props to him for actually being HELPFUL.

The first quite was devastating: Kinko’s could cut down paper for nothing less than $1.40 a page. I needed at least 218 pages, so that was a deal-breaker. But the locals, Insty-Prints (they do the fliers for the Yellowstone Music Festival) said, “Sure, it’ll cost you…. $3 to do an entire reem, plus the cost of the reem. Whew. Whatever crap Kinko’s was doing to actually think that $1.40 per page was just, they should really take a few steps, 12 to be exact.

But it turns out that Insty-Prints binding machine was broken. So after the cutting and printing ordeal, we pack up and hustle over to Staples, where the lady behind the counter bemusedly assured me that yes, she would bind A4 paper and no, I wasn’t the only crazy person who asked for A4 printing. How sweet of her.

It was actually way more stressful and exciting than that, but after telling the story several times, it kinds of loses steam in a blog.

But it is all done and off. After months of being ready to be finished with this whole school thing, I finally am!