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Chapter Two

FROM HERE ALL THE WAY to Hawks Rest, across nearly a hundred miles of trail, what will drive the surrounding ecology more than anything else are the fires of 1988. The Clover-Mist Fire alone burned nearly 400,000 acres along our route, first charging through Yellowstone to the head of Miller Creek, then crossing the divide into the Shoshone National Forest—utterly ignoring forest officials, who’d stated that under no circumstance would they “accept” fires from Yellowstone. On September 8 the flames roared down Papoose and Crandall Creeks all the way to the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone, advancing 31,000 acres in a single day. Now, almost fourteen years later, vast jumbles of downfall surround a loose weave of standing dead spruce and fir and lodgepole. Every upright tree is wholly or partially stripped of bark, leaving either smooth blond trunks or highly mottled ones, sporting patterns much like those worn by leopards or giraffes. The same forest floor that was once mostly a blanket of pine needles is now a carpet of fireweed and lupine, strawberry and geranium. These are the ghost forests of greater Yellowstone. There is in every season but winter an autumnal feel to them, and the sounds they make are autumn songs. Partially toppled trees lean against those still standing, letting loose a medley of groans and rasps and creaks. These in turn are spiced by a concerto of wind blowing through bare branches—low rushes and hums and, strangest of all, soft, high-pitched strains that sound like young girls off in the distance, singing or mumbling or crying.

Having started to fall ten to twenty months after the burn, today from sixty to eighty percent of the trees have hit the ground. Looking across the drainages it’s possible to identify major wind events by the lay of thousands of flattened trees, as straight and orderly as strands of hair run through a comb. Choosing to go cross-country means crossing acre after acre of downed timber, a feat best accomplished not by stepping over but by staying on top of the logs, dancing from one to the next like the old timber jockeys of the Northwest, riding rafts of cut trees down the rivers to the sawmills. A handful of trail crews are roaming the countryside again this summer, frantically trying to stay no more than one or two steps behind the falling logs. While crews in Yellowstone are able to do the job with chain saws, in the wilderness of the Shoshone and Bridger-Teton National Forests the work gets done the old-fashioned way, with axes and crosscut saws.

Some Yellowstone visitors remain disheartened, even angry, by the destruction they see in the wake of these fires—refusing to believe that the event couldn’t have been prevented if only the Park Service and Forest Service had acted more swiftly. But in truth it was a remarkable year. Spring rolled in with higher than normal levels of precipitation, giving rise to thick mats of grasses and forbs. There were enormous fuel loads on the forest floor, in large part thanks to our having spent seventy-five years suppressing natural fires. Then in June the spigot went dry. By the time lightning began stabbing the earth several weeks later, the moisture content in downed logs was about seven percent—five percent less than kiln-dried lumber; moisture levels in small twigs were even lower, a dismal two percent. A series of dry cold fronts stoked the winds, which on several occasions reached speeds of a hundred miles an hour. Holding this set of conditions up to more than a century of weather records, it’s clear there’d never been anything close to a summer like this.

On July 21, by which point fire had consumed more than seventeen thousand acres in Yellowstone alone, managers decided to begin suppressing all new and existing burns—both those started by humans (which they’d been fighting all along), and those caused by lightning. A month later, on a single Saturday—the aptly named “Black Saturday”—more acres burned than in any decade since 1872; by the following afternoon the fires had grown to more than 400,000 acres. It may be true that a quicker response by firefighters might have saved isolated acreages here and there. But wildfire is one of the great elemental forces of the West and in 1988 it was no more subject to human control than a tidal wave or hurricane or earthquake. By the time that brutal season came to an end, seventy thousand fires had burned more than four million acres throughout the West and Alaska.

Of course, the romantic ideal of wilderness has long been a lush one, cool and green and all but free of death. In truth, with wildfire comes great benefits: significant declines in disease; major upticks in the quantity and quality of forage; and, because of the checkerboard nature of most burns, a mixed age class of timber that in time leads to a far greater diversity of bird life. While from a distance these burns may seem stark, those who get close will find here an almost dizzy sense of immortality. Beside our every step rises a flush of young trees four to fourteen feet tall—as often as not, lodgepole pine. More than any other species, the lodgepole is classic proof that fire has long been woven into the fabric of the Rockies. Depending on the frequency of fires in a given area (this is typically a function of altitude, since more fires occur at low elevations than at high), fully half the trees in a given stand of lodgepole will by age twenty begin producing serotinous cones. Covered with a hard, waxy resin that melts around 113 degrees, these cones open and disperse their seeds only in the presence of fire. Serotinous cones can stand direct exposure to flames for about twenty seconds, which is roughly the time it takes for flames to crown out and consume the canopy of a tree.

In studies done twelve months after the 1988 fires, almost a third of all the new plants in burned areas were lodgepole pines. On good soil, soaked with sun and freshened by loads of nutrients leached from the ashes, seeds were sprouting at the extraordinary rate of three hundred thousand per acre. Tens of thousands more ended up as food for squirrels, mice, and birds. Since most lodgepole seeds tend to disperse within several hundred feet from the parent tree, it’s safe to assume that the stock for much of this new timber came almost entirely from that which was lost to the burn in the first place. Therefore, what was lodgepole forest before 1988 will be lodgepole forest again. During the autumn following the fires, Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson told the Senate that the park “may well have been destroyed by the very people who were assigned to protect it. The ground is sterilized. It is blackened to the depths of any root system within it.” Actually, not only was there an early abundance of transitional plants such as fireweed, currant, and raspberry, but the vast majority of greater Yellowstone was soon rebuilding the same mix of communities present before the burn.

For botanists, hydrologists, and ecologists the fires of 1988 have been the Mardi Gras of natural events, full of surprises—the equivalent of a wildlife biologist getting the chance to unravel the puzzles posed by a major predator like the wolf returning to the ecosystem. It was startling to watch stream communities devastated by the burns recover quickly, only to unravel again under the weight of a large snowmelt the following spring. Likewise, though the sediment load nearly tripled in streams near the headwaters of the Lamar, its effects downstream were much less than expected, perhaps in part because the murky water was being diluted by clear runoff in unburned woods. Barely four years after the fire, sediment in the Lamar River was less than what would have been expected had the fires never occurred. Predictions of massive fish kills—from sediment as well as from a warming of the water due to the loss of tree canopies—never materialized. (That said, trout did perish in some of the more narrow, severely burned drainages—likely the result of intense smoke causing high levels of ammonia in the water.)

Other than in the most extreme conditions, throughout the fire zones elk and deer seemed to move easily, almost casually, around the edges of the flames; meanwhile, at the sound of hovering helicopters, the same animals tensed and ran. One curious black bear was even seen sticking his paw around the flames of a burning log. Though only a small number of species have yet been studied relative to the big burn, so far only two—snails and moose—are known to have suffered significant losses in population. Outfitters, especially, are fond of blaming wolves for a plummet in the moose population; in truth, these animals typically suffer after big fires, as such events often destroy the mature spruce forest that forms an essential component of their winter range.

Burns offer greatly improved vision, which allows us at least the illusion of being better able to deal with the one other major change that comes with having gained the Absarokas. This is full-blown grizzly country. LaVoy, Jane, and I stick closer together, our eyes scouring the land for movement, for certain shapes and colors, often catching our breath before realizing that what we’re seeing are stumps crouching in the burn. Reason would tell us not to be overly concerned. Out of 994 grizzly-human conflicts in greater Yellowstone between 1992 and 2000, by far the greatest share involved bears eating human food, killing or injuring livestock, or raiding orchards and gardens. Only three percent resulted in injury to people. In fact, since the 1970s, human injuries in the backcountry from bears have averaged roughly one per year. But, of course, all this means nothing when you’re lying in your bag at night listening to rustling outside the tent. It’s then you tend to think of the thirty-four deaths and injuries or, if you’re particularly masochistic, of the fact that bears aren’t inclined to put victims out of their misery quickly, choosing instead to eat first the rich organ meats of their prey. One evening, in a particularly fine show of chutzpah, on hearing a noise outside the tent I’ll leap out in my underwear like some sort of unhinged ninja, pepper spray in hand, only to come face to butt with a terrifying mule deer.

We continue to be utterly, splendidly alone. The trail climbs steadily above Crandall Creek, drawing the curtain back on a breathtakingly rugged set of canyons, cliffs, and, far to the west, long green ribbons of tundra. Shortly after crossing Papoose Creek the path braids and dwindles, and moving up the canyon we miss the route at the second stream crossing—a fact duly noted by LaVoy from the sudden absence of horse tracks. We carry on, though, unconcerned, moving west instead on elk trails, our eyes on Bootjack Gap and the eastern edge of Yellowstone, some three miles away. But these paths, too, continue to deteriorate; in several places they’re completely washed away by recent floods, leaving only a high, steep bank capped by a line of short, rugged cliffs. LaVoy and I stay lower down, scrambling over loose volcanic soil, at one point moving forward like a couple of over-the-hill Tarzans, swinging on the branches of the occasional lodgepole pine. Jane, on the other hand, seeks a route higher up the slope. Halfway through she suddenly finds herself trapped on precarious footing, stuck fast high above the creek, her only anchor a one-inch ledge of buried rock. Hamstrung, unable to move in either direction, she finally decides to free herself of her pack, letting it slide down the slope into a downed log, where I scramble to retrieve it.

No sooner do I reach it when, out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of her falling with astonishing speed, heading for the same log that caught her pack, which is spiked along its entire length with stout, broken branches. After a forty-foot slide she comes to rest tucked under the fallen tree—cuts on her hands and arms, a bruise on her thigh, but by no small miracle, nothing more. Even so, all of us are shaken, knowing full well that the plunge could’ve easily resulted in a serious, even fatal puncture wound. LaVoy and I shake our heads, quietly calculating how long it would’ve taken for one of us to trek fifteen miles out to a phone to secure a rescue. Jane, meanwhile, stands by the creek alone, running the event over and over in her mind, hard on herself for not having either waded the creek or gone higher, onto the more solid footing of the upper cliffs.

It proves only the first of several trials brought on by our decision to stay on the north side of the creek, forgoing the official path for those pounded by elk. Given that these animals rarely travel in stream bottoms, thus avoiding possible ambush by predators, the path stays several hundred feet above Papoose Creek on a fearfully steep side hill, hugging a series of narrow ravines. In places the paths are entirely washed out, leaving for purchase only tiny, broken ledges a few inches wide. Jane’s strategy is to go slow, while LaVoy and I scamper across thinking light thoughts, trying to move fast enough so that if one foot slips off we’ll be able to recover with the following step. Most of the chutes contain sizable snowmelt streams; crossing them means a delicate dance of leaps and hurdles and hops. After every such crossing the trail vaults steeply upward, levels out, then rounds the next headland only to repeat the same pattern. Over and over. More than a dozen times in all.

And so it is that we come at last to Bootjack Gap, and Yellowstone. Exhausted, hungry, tired, humbled.

Over dinner, the sour taste of her nearly disastrous slide all but washed away, Jane turns philosophical. “I figured out why it’s so important for me to be out here again,” she says, referring to this being the first summer in seven years she hasn’t been in the wilds, leading courses for Outward Bound. “I need to feel vulnerable.” Life, she confesses, has become safe, and the days she’s lived best have always been those at the edge of her comfort zone. It wasn’t that the slide was a good thing; clearly, it might well have resulted in tragedy. But it forced her across a threshold of sorts, left her with a presence of mind unknown in more common hours.

Three days later, hiking up the Lamar River, trailing behind LaVoy, I happen to look across the river and see what looks like a shrub some hundred and forty yards away. Suddenly it moves, revealing a fur-covered butt.

“Stop!” I whisper, and all eyes turn to a magnificent six-hundred-pound grizzly, huddled over a gravel bar busy with some unknown project. His eyes are squint, his muzzle gray, and thanks to a favorable wind we’re able to stand and watch and even photograph for several minutes. No sooner does the breeze quiet, though, when he registers a look of alarm. Shifting his weight to his front feet, straining forward with great determination to place his nose higher in the air, he suddenly catches our scent and is off like a shot.

While it’s just the reaction we’re hoping for, it’s nonetheless curious why such a powerful animal would choose to run at all. Much, if not most of the reason, is no doubt the fact that, since at least the days of Lewis and Clark, humans have consistently removed aggressive bears from the population. In 1898, biologist George Shiras wrote that “the day has gone when any bear in any part of the United States will wantonly attack a man when it is unmolested.” Fifteen years later, the great naturalist George Bird Grinnell expressed disappointment at seeing grizzlies rushing away from his hunting party. Still, he explained, such behavior agreed perfectly with accounts he’d gathered from trappers and hunters. “A grisly bear will, in most cases, run away from a man on getting his wind, unless previously wounded, or under such circumstances as to make him think that he cannot escape.” This removal of aggressive animals continued in Yellowstone through the 1960s and ’70s, when those bears with a habit of causing problems were either relocated, taken to zoos, or killed. LaVoy has another thought on the subject.

“Maybe that bear’s like some of us,” he says of the big bruin on the Lamar. “Just trying to protect his personal space.”

The fords of both the Lamar River and Mist Creek are deep and swift, so we cross together, arms to shoulders in a tripod formation. It works well enough, though by the time I reach the far banks the icy water has turned my legs and feet completely numb. From there the trail climbs to upper Mist Creek through lush meadows, their green folds dotted with bison, a half dozen of them grazing under a brilliant sky. And finally, we drop over Mist Creek Pass into the Pelican Valley, landing there early in the morning on the Fourth of July. To the south is the mouth of Astringent Creek, so-named for the high concentrations of alum in the water, full of shrink and pucker. So much so, in fact, that according to nineteenth-century lore all the animals living along its banks were miniaturized—gaggles of poodle-sized deer, beavers no bigger than tea cups.

It was along Astringent Creek that on a snowy March day in 1894 a small detachment of U.S. Calvary was making its way by snowshoe toward the Pelican Valley, tracking a notorious poacher from Cooke City named Ed Howell. Though greater Yellowstone had always been long on poachers, Howell was more infamous than most—a blustery, belligerent son of a gun who’d just as soon shoot you as take a chance on any trouble you might bring him down the road. Howell and a partner had left Cooke City that spring pulling a sledge, heading for lower Pelican Creek where they planned to kill wintering buffalo, dress out the heads, and take them out by pack horse after snowmelt, selling them for two hundred, even three hundred dollars apiece. True to form, Howell had a major squabble with his partner and had run him off, by all accounts with the business end of a gun.

By the time the Calvary caught up to him, Howell had already cached a half dozen scalps in various trees, and was happily going about shooting several more animals in the valley below Astringent Creek, unaware he was being watched from above. If Howell’s luck was running low, the Calvary’s was running high: the wind was blowing hard, making enough noise to allow the troops, armed only with pistols, to cross two hundred yards of open country and make the pinch. At first Howell was calm, coldly informing the soldiers that they’d all be dead had he seen them first. Then, in a move befitting a true villain, he turned on his dog in a rage, attempted to kill the animal for having dropped the ball on guard duty. On their way to deliver Howell to the hoosegow in Mammoth, the Calvary happened across a party of conservationists exploring the park for the enormously popular New York weekly outdoor journal, Forest and Stream. One of the magazine’s writers, Emerson Hough, dashed off an account of the heroic capture of the nefarious Howell and had the soldiers take it to Fort Yellowstone, where it was wired to editor George Bird Grinnell.

Americans had grown increasingly frustrated with greedy pillagers, from timber barons to ruthless commercial hunters, who routinely raided the public larders of the West. Poaching had been a scourge in Yellowstone from the very beginning; in the spring of 1875 alone, Park Superintendent Philetus Norris estimated that “over 2,000 hides of the huge Rocky Mountain elk …were taken out of the park.” George Bird Grinnell was not only a brilliant spokesman against such waste (he was particularly incensed that in the end Howell’s only punishment was to be expelled from the park), but also well connected to those who could do something about it. “So long as these lewd fellows of the baser sort…know that they will not be punished for their invasions of the Park,” he later wrote, “ten regiments of troops could not protect it against their raids.” Enlisting the help of the Boone and Crockett Club, Grinnell began an intense lobbying effort for expanded protection of Yellowstone’s game animals. In the end Congress said yes to what many consider one of the most significant pieces of wildlife conservation law in American history. It was called the Lacey Act, introduced on March 26 by Iowa Republican and conservationist Congressman John Fletcher Lacey—remarkably, only thirteen days after Ed Howell had been pinched by the Army here in Pelican Valley.

We’re coming fast to the front country now, and that alone has me on edge. To come out of the wilds after nearly a hundred miles, where but for the lower Pelican Valley we’ve seen just two parties totaling six people, into the crazy bedlam of curio shops and snarled traffic, is like a man taking breakfast in Provence and then dinner at Walmart. Then again, even circuses have something to recommend them. We stumble out of the wild in mid-afternoon on July fourth. A good friend, writer John Clayton, has driven my van to the Pelican Trailhead, loading it first with fat sandwiches, gossip from home, and two gallon-size bottles of Red Lodge Ale. The four of us roll up the highway like so many bohemians, the van piled high not just with people, but with our entire store of food and equipment for the summer, which Jane and John will drive down to a Wyoming outfitter who will then bring it to Hawks Rest by mule string. The staff at the laundry, store, and showers are incredibly solicitous, but, of course, it’s still early in the season. Either that or they’ve opted for some sort of surgery to supersize whatever organ is responsible for allowing a person to be asked three hundred times in a week where the bathroom is without going nuts.

At the campground, kids shuffle and dodge and ride their bikes around the loop roads at high speeds, kick soccer balls and throw Frisbees and eat ice cream, try to figure out how their older siblings managed to ditch them. Meanwhile their parents are strolling hand in hand, smiling, many speaking German or French or Japanese. A guy about twenty is in the bathroom furiously power-washing his mouth with an electric toothbrush, while just outside the door a young woman is parked on a bench, reading Molly Ivins. With darkness comes the twinkling of night lights from a hundred campers, and in the air the smell of burning wood. Big men sit in sling chairs feeding big fires. They seem remarkably content—glad, maybe, to be so fully in control of their world, even if it is just a patch in the woods thirty by forty feet. By ten o’clock the village has nodded off to sleep.