small shape, moving. Wolf?
We’re approaching a pullout where thirty people stand, looking out at the grasslands. Mark angles into a narrow slot and we pile out of the car.
“What are you seeing?” I ask a tiny, dark-haired woman. She wears a black fleece vest and hat. She stands next to a scope.
“A wolf, eating a baby bison that died. It’s Middle Gray, one of 06’s daughters. Would you like to look?”
“Yes, thanks,” I eagerly nod, and move to the scope. I lean in to the eyepiece and see my first wolf. It’s far away, but I can see it tearing at the honey-colored carcass, then moving away, circling, returning for more. She tears flesh, looks right, left, then moves in for another bite. A mouthful, a lift of head. The carcass at her feet retains its shape, a bison calf, legs outstretched, neck extended. Its torso is half eaten, and an animal I’ve never seen except in films and photographs is lowering her head to rip more flesh from its bones.
Cool morning air brushes my cheek. I tug my hat over my ears. Voices blend and soften. A coyote approaches the wolf; the wolf turns and snarls. The coyote leaps backward, then paces ten feet from the calf. An eagle circles. Adult bison stand, immobile, a dozen feet away. I straighten, move away from the scope, and the valley expands. I find the partially eaten calf. Twenty yards to the right, another calf lies on the ground, a cow bison standing guard. From the hum of voices comes explanation: the calf being eaten was killed by a coyote kick. The calf at the adult’s feet, stillborn. Is the cow its mother? She stands alone, unmoving. There must be an understanding that what lies before her is wrong. I don’t dare suggest she feels something for her dead baby. But I wonder. A group of bison, ten or so, drift over to join the solitary mother, and they all stand around the calf on the ground, occasionally nibbling the grass at their feet. Camaraderie, some kind of bovine mourning process.
“Would you like to look through my scope?” The quiet voice enters my reverie, and I turn to see a woman with short, well-cut gray hair looking at me.
“Yes, thanks,” I reply, and move over, place my eye against the eyepiece. She is taller than me, and I lift to my toes to look through her Swarovski scope, positioned to allow view of both bison calves. A coyote darts in to take a bite of the by now well-eaten calf. Mom and company continue to guard the other. A few sandhill cranes prance in the marshland to the right, and I watch as a golden eagle circles, then dives down to the calf, driving off the coyote.
To my left is the Pied Piper of wolf watchers, Rick McIntyre. He sits on a camp stool, watching the wolf. The hair under his cap is a faded red, his skin is pale, and he is so thin I wonder how frequently he bothers to eat. Wolf watchers envelop him. He ducks his chin to speak into a recorder and I catch a handful of words: Middle Gray, calf, road. He’s been here since the beginning, since the first wolves were brought back into the park, almost twenty years ago. Photographer, author, a man who’s followed his passion from park to park for more than thirty years. His job here is to help park visitors see wolves. He utilizes telemetry—tracking collared wolves via radio signal—a scope, and information collected by dozens of park visitors and dedicated wolf watchers, some of whom live right outside the park’s eastern border and watch wolves almost every day of their lives.
He responds to my greeting with a gentle smile.
“Are you getting to see some wolves?”
“This is my first morning, my first wolf,” I reply.
“Ah,” he nods. “I hope you’ll see more. I need to pack up and move down the road, clear a space for Middle Gray to cross as she heads back home.”
He places his stool in the back of his SUV, hops in, and drives onto the road. I search the valley for Middle Gray, who is no longer eating, nor is she circling the carcass. She is a dozen feet away from it, heading east. She trots smoothly, in a straight line across the ochre earth.
A million years ago—a blink of the earth goddess’s eye—the dire wolf lived in North America. From matter had come insectivores and creodonts. As time passed and each evolved, the ancestors of animals on earth today emerged. They lived in a world untamed. Rocky hills and uplifted moraines, flowering plants, scrubby grasses. Conifers, dense and dark, covered the land. Screeches split the air, howls echoed. Thundering hooves, death screams as prey lost to predator. Not a word spoken, just lapping of windblown water, splashing creeks, the steady drum of rain on dusty soil.
The dire wolf, toes splayed wide, trots between far flung trees, seeking her pack. Separated during the last hunt, distracted by a stream and seduced by her thirst, she trails the others by half a mile. In the far distance are moving bodies, and she increases her speed. Maybe they’ve closed in on a bison, maybe they need her. The pack works together, sometimes as many as twenty, thirty, trapping a horse or bison then attacking, their teeth razor sharp and quick to draw blood. Five feet long from nose to tail, her shoulders are more than two feet from the earth, and she weighs 115 pounds. Her mate is ahead but she’s drawing near. A bison is besieged. He butts the wolves with his huge head, unable to stop them from tearing at his flanks. She reaches the pack and jumps at the dark animal’s rear leg, her teeth ripping skin and muscle to scar the bone underneath. When the bison topples, the whump of his body hitting earth vibrates beneath her feet and echoes across the rimrocked plateau.
Tens and hundreds of thousands of years elapsed, her progeny roaming the plateau, crossing hills and plains, continually in search of prey. Bison and horses, and occasionally a giant ground sloth, a mastodon. Then 750,000 years ago, Canis lupus, the gray wolf, traveled from Eurasia to North America. It settled onto tundras, mountains, and plains, from the Arctic to the southwestern tip of the continent, existing alongside the dire wolf. The gray wolf was well established before Native American and Inuit peoples arrived, and hid amidst the tall pines, watching as human beings moved onto its land. Near the close of the Pleistocene epoch, over eleven thousand years ago, the dire wolf began to die off as the number of large prey animals decreased. The gray wolf, which ate small as well as larger mammals—perhaps because it was less dense than the dire wolf, more agile, able to dart and sprint—adapted better to these harsher conditions and by seven thousand years ago, became the primary canine predator in the Northern Hemisphere.
The world of the gray wolf’s dominance is large and stark, naked of human beings, flush with foliage, trees, rocks, water, predators and prey. Animals rove, den, and spend their lives dodging those that pursue them, or pursuing those that dodge. Species and plants evolve, and the land matures. Weather dictates behavior, cycles govern existence. Life emerges, and ceases.
A gust of wind throws hair across my face. I brush it away, clear my eyes, scan the sightseers for Mark and Kirsten. They both look toward the river, where it bends and overflows its banks, where cranes high-step and birds erupt from hidden swales and swirl into the sky. We traveled here together, spent last night in Cooke City, will camp tonight in the park. They had planned the trip, then asked if I wanted to join them. Daniel, too. Mark would fly his old Cherokee, and we’d visit Idaho, then Yellowstone, then Missoula. I’d said of course, but Daniel couldn’t take time away from work. I packed everything I thought I might need, threw in more socks, and asked if my bicycle would fit in the plane. Mark’s brow furrowed. He said maybe, if all the camping gear and our bags left enough room. A seven-day trip was too long for me to go without cycling. Mark had planned a stop in Pocatello, Idaho, then a night’s stay in Rexburg, seventy-five miles away. I could ride between the two towns, could probably ride in Yellowstone, too. I packed my cycling gear—helmet, shoes, granola bars and electrolyte chews—in hopes that all those sleeping bags, tents, mattress pads, and cooking supplies would squish.
The bike fit.
We’d flown from Salt Lake City to Pocatello, where I hopped on my bike and pedaled north. Before I left home I’d called the Idaho Department of Transportation to ask about
