12/27/08

There is always something eerie about walking along the Oregon Trail. Aside from the sheer emptiness of much of the land that encompasses the trail (Wyoming is an awfully lonely place), you can't help but think about the masses of people that trudged, and died, along the trail. In places, there are graves still visible, victims of adventure or of the movable forces that are poverty and hope. Sometime its just a thin line of parallel ruts that dances in and out amongst the heavy grasses and dust and cows, pathways that whither into the dusty blue of the far-off horizon. Lines that seem to touch the sky and disappear up into it. Outside of Casper, WY , the trails takes a more rugged and tangible form, where the continuous droll of wagons won the war against miles of sheer rock, where history is dredged right into stone. You can help but step into a trail and walk along and wonder about all the other people who have done just that while making their way cross country in a possibly life-ending journey to possibly nowhere.

Looking down a single rut that rips through the rock on the Oregon Trail

Me, actually standing IN the Oregon Trail

This is an example of the some of the ruts that cut straight through the rock... I wasn't expecting anything like this, after all the faint trails through grasslands I've seen

Jonmikel, reveling in his history

Another site we stopped by was Register Cliffs (all you Oregon Trail fans should remember this one) where people traveling to Oregon or California stopped and carved their names into the rock as a memoir to their adventures. The earliest name and date are in French from 1826 on Bastille Day, as the area was first popular with French trappers instead of American nomads. What's really cool about it, is while the truly historical names are fenced off and protected, there are still places where people can write their names on the rock. While I know conservationists and other liberal types may cringe at this, I think its brilliant. The site is dedicated to providing a record of people who pass by, so why shouldn't modern travelers be accorded the same courtesy? Otherwise people 200 years down the road will think that people just stopped coming, which they didn't if you check out all the 2008 records. Its' cheating history.

Some dates on Register Cliffs... we didn't leave our names, though I certainly thought about it

12/27/08

On our way back from the infamous Big Sky land, we decided to take a side trip to Fort Laramie. Neither of us had ever been, though NPCA did an assessment a while back that was not well-received, so I knew a little about the National Historic Site’s history. Walking around was akin to Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, so despite the blue skies and ravenous sun, I was chilled through my windbreaker to the bone for most of the fieldtrip.

The historical recreation/preservation of the site is quite interesting and very well done. Some buildings have been well-taken care of, while other are purposefully allowed to remain in a state of ruin. Some have been entirely refurnished and recreated to their appearance in the 1880s, while others are maintained as they are. What I found curious (and not a little upsetting to me, personally) was the lack of interpretation for anything prior to the military occupation of the fort. The area itself had been used for over 50 years as a trading post, home to both American Indians and white traders seeking solace from the busy east, and, while those buildings have largely been replaced by newer, military-style barracks and posts, that history has been glossed over as if it were a mere smudge on the timeline. Fort Laramie played a huge role in trade relationships with oft forgotten indigenous people, as well as during the mass migration of restless whites known as the Oregon Trail. But you could hardly tell by taking the self-guided walking tour. While I don’t doubt that park staff are quite knowledgeable about this history, interpretation is limited to the fort’s military existence, which I think cheats history out of its right, and cheats American who grew up playing Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe out of their desire to see Fort Laramie as they did on their computer screen, however pixilated it might have been.

Jonmikel standing on the porch of the oldest building in Wyoming!

I finished up my basic research for a big 2nd Century Commission paper today. For those who aren’t up on NPS gossip, the Service is turning 100 in a few years, and so someone very important has created a group of equally important (read: well paid and over-educated, of which Sandra Day O’Connor is the only one I can think of off the top of my head) people to get together and decide whether they should continue to destroy the national park system or actually attempt to make it look like how we pretend in international circles it does look. Soooo…. My name might not be first on the paper (that honor will go to my boss), but it will be flashed up there on a marquis in front of several very powerful white men who may or may not decide that my job is worth the pennies a year I get paid to do it. Yeah, I’m pretty stoked.

It’s focusing on trends in the state of cultural resources in the National Park System. We’ve got inadequate storage for museum and archival collections, lack of planning for the management and maintenance of historic structures, entirely insufficient staffing needs (I even read about a park that has to use its writer/editor as a museum technician because they don’t have the money to hire anyone else), missing historical and other resource research (much of which is required by NPS regulation in order to develop management plans, which, funny enough, many parks are missing as well), and (my personal favorite) the fact that basically ethnography is treated like crap. I mean, we’ve been sh*ttin’ on the Native Americans and other minorities for centuries, why stop now? So the report has a lot to say, and I certainly hope that people listen. Or at least pretend to. Smile and nod. Or something.

12/26/08

Creek. Scuffle scuffle scuffle. "What is that? Do you hear that?" Silence. Creek creek creek. Scuffle. A jab in the ribs. "Go check." Groan, sigh, weight shifting. Stumble. Grab clothes and flashlight. Glare. Nothing to report, melting snow.

We had these funky sounds all night, that sounded more to me like a chipmunk trying to borrow into our roof than melting snow crumbling and sliding off. I'm not convinced that it wasn't, though there is no evidence to the contrary. But it did stave off sleep for a while, so when light began to sneak through the worn curtain in our cabin, indicating that it was time for new adventures, we both attempted to roll over and ignore it.

But we eventually found solace in the fact that the floors of the bathrooms were heated, and sometimes that's enough to get you out of bed. We had decided last night, after stuffing ourselves to the brim and rolling out of the bunkhouse back to our cabin, that we should at least go exploring today to work off some of the holiday cheer. The volunteers headed out to Fairies' Fall, across the valley and off-trail, a 32-footer than Jonmikel has seen before in the summer but that is oft forgotten amidst the draws of Tower Falls or any of the other well-known and on-the-beaten-track falls that require little to no commitment. They showed us pictures of the frozen structures, towering over the landscape and threatening to burst, and we were hooked. So we enjoyed the heated floors, zipped up our snow pants, strapped on our snowshoes, and began an early-morning jaunt over the river and through the... fields.

The falls aren't hard to get to, especially when, many decades ago, the old park road was located on that side of the Lamar River, opposite its current location. Old photographs of the creek, Amethyst Creek, abound, even some creative stereophotos, but new images are virtually non-existent. Even people who have worked in and around the park for years have never ventured to it, leaving us with a little private peace.

We managed to startle a herd of bison, who took that opportunity to frolic playfully and kick up mud and snow. We hopped across the frozen Lamar River and the various creeks surrounding it, at first going slowly and cautiously and eventually striding forward with confidence that no frozen river to claim us. When we hit the small crevice with the falls inside, we followed a playful coyote's tracks up and through and over and around to the statues of ice drifting almost 30 above us. You could hear the water inside the natural ice pipes, and when you stepped up close you could see the clear trickles flowing down into the melted river beneath. The ice was thick and glacier blue, frosted with last night's snow and wind, and with the coming daylight the imprisoned water threatened to burst through the clear bars.

We play around the creek, climbing under and around and through, daring the shards of stalagtited icicles in the hallowed out cave behind the falls to come crashing down on our heads. We touch the frozen pillars and are amazed at how warm the ice actually feels. When we feel the air beginning to heat up, and the sun begin to break through the almost-constant cloud cover, we decide to head back to the Ranch, knowing that should the Lamar River melt, it would be a long hike around to get back to our radiantly-heated bathroom floors. As we hit the river and creeks, we can see evidence of melt, see the water flowing underneath the now-thin layers of ice and snow. My foot slips through the ice once, the heavy and long tip of my snowshoe saving my toes from a frigid and wet walk back. The wind has even died down a little, and it feels almost like spring as the sounds of melting show and flowing water grow that much louder. The snowfall is small and the temperatures high for this time of year in the interior, and I hope that winter will come again soon, as much of the wildlife ironically depends on a rough winter to make it through spring and summer.

We also head home today, knowing that we have a cat at home who would probably like some human company soon, and has probably eaten our Christmas tree and puked up its needles on our carpet out of spite.

Fairies' Fall, this one is actually Jonmikel's but I swear I took one just like it!

Our home for the holidays, The Buffalo Ranch, from across Lamar Valley

12/25/08

It's popcicle carcass season in Yellowstone, with frozen bones and chunks of flesh littering the wilds of the park, usually accompanied by blurred patches of scarlet snow and matted and muddled prints from any number of predators and scavengers. On our way into the park yesterday we stopped by an elk carcass that was playing home to a restless grizzly who was not in on the rumor that it was cold outside and time to hibernate. We saw the body in the distance, saw the silhouette of the dozens of bear watchers with their expensive spotting scopes and puffy vests; we saw Bob Landis, the National Geographic filmmaker who spends about everyday scouring the park for something exciting to film, in his ruddy outdoor get-up, carrying a lens probably bigger than I am over a sloped shoulder. No bear. We must have just missed him, catching instead the hoards of onlookers and revelers excited to watch a griz roll in dead animal.

Because we missed that guy, and heard a rumor about a cougar kill around Junction Butte, and headed out that way to celebrate Christmas in style. Nothing says The Holidays like bones and bare sinew. We hit up the kill and see evidence of an early-bird coyote who managed to be creative with his dietary needs, but no lions since the snowfall last night. The smell of decay was subdued by the frost and snow and cold, and so we take our time with the bones, poking and prodding and taking pictures and satisfying our morbid curiosities, perhaps hoping that we might catch a glimpse of an envious mountain lion hiding in a tree.

The creepy thing about mountain lions is... if you see one, she's probably been watching you for an hour, and for some reason, some secret desire, she chose not to run away. Food for thought.

We finished off the romp by following the Bannock Trail/Old Road around the back of the butte, following ruts that were, surprisingly to me, visible even under a foot of snow. The trail was used by the Bannock as a seasonal migration route through the park, though they never lived permanently in the area, and you can tell it apart from the old road (or the road that the military took while pursuing the Nez Perce in 1877) by the number of ruts: two parallel ruts indicate the use of wagons, while three parallel ruts indicate the use of travois, pulled by either dogs or, sometimes, horses. There is no evidence to suggest that the Bannock or the Nez Perce used wagons, though much of both trails have been obliterated by the human practice of building roads in the easiest place possible: where there already are roads.

Back at the campus, we settle in for a night of holiday bustle, a comfortable warmth and banter while those of us staying at the Buffalo Ranch, many of us strangers until yesterday, prepare all the trimmings needed for Christmas Dinner. It's warm in the cramped space, and smells like campfire from the manager's cabin across the way, a smell that seeps in through the cracks under the doors and through the window panes and spices the stuffing and potatoes and wine. There's sparkling cider and choirs singing Christmas music from an iBook in the corner and the clanking of pots and pans and people knocking into one another and laughing joyously, leaving annoyance for another day, and a motherly figure, one of the YA volunteers, who busies herself with the stuffing and turkey and by making sure we all have enough to eat. It's a squished hodge-podge of vistors from all over the country who don't know each other very well and who generally don't have permanent homes, and stories of all of our adventures and the curiosities only brought on by that spark of not knowing who you are sharing a meal with are shared around the table.

As the sun goes down over Junction Butte


Where the buffalo roam, though it was pretty cloudy all day

The mountain lion kill, a woeful elk cow


Close-up! And a chance to play with the depth of field...

Road junk left along the Bannock Trail/Old Road

Jonmikel and his new hat, putting on his showshoes

12/24/08

We got a last-minute invite to spend Christmas in the interior in Yellowstone at the Buffalo Ranch, a Yellowstone Association campus that doubles as a horse corral for the park service in the summer. It used to be an old buffalo ranch (clever, right?) during the time when NPS was trying to reestablish the bison population in Yellowstone. We know people who know people, so to speak, and got to stay there for free for a couple of nights. My recommendation: use the bathrooms man. If you aren't a fan of radiant floor heating now, you certianly will be afterwords. Do you know how nice it is to get out of the shower and stumble on a nice, toasty floor?

At any rate, we got there Christmas Eve and spent the afternoon showshoeing around Lamar Valley. Mostly, it was Kat and the Blustery Day, so we couldn't stay out long, and being several hundred miles north of The Fort, it gets dark earlier.

Yellowstone inspires poetry in most people, poetry of words or song or painting or photograph. It should inspire such in me, but it also brings with it a sense of melancholy. So many people spend lifetimes searching for a place that feels like home and rejoice when they find it. I found that place a couple years ago, and when I return to Yellowstone it feels that way always, but it is accompanied by a sense of loss knowing that at the end of the day, or the vacation, or the dream, I have to leave again. Like somehow, it's all fake, a blind, a movie set made to look real so you act naturally.

This is what happens when you take an overexposed picture and it turns out cool anyway!

At the Buffalo Ranch looking over Lamar Valley

The classic buffalo skull (everyone out west needs one!) on the door of the YA mini-store at the Ranch... open upon request

This was our little cabin at the Buffalo Ranch

Me goofing off in the snow

O Christmas Tree

A view of us and our Christmas Tree! My first REAL tree, a nice balsam fir, with a thick piney smell that really adds charm to our old, cold house! Oh, and our nice TV :-)