Jukebox In My Head

I read a column on Fox News (second item) that suggested that Clear Channel, which owns about ten percent of the radio stations in the United States, “has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from Magic,” the new album from Bruce Springsteen, one of the kings of classic rock.

The columnist suggests that perhaps Clear Channel considers Springsteen, 58, too elderly to be played on rock stations and notes that new releases from John Fogerty (62) and Annie Lennox (who will turn 53 Christmas Day) are being similarly shunned.

Since I’m fascinated by the music industry and have never been much of a fan of Clear Channel, this item certainly piqued my interest. Could a radio conglomerate really be that stupid? And more importantly, can I get a self-righteous, clever blog post out of it?

I began writing the column, cute headlines (Clear Channel is Radio Nowhere) dancing in my head, but something just didn’t seem right. I had heard “Radio Nowhere” on the more adventurous Denver station KCUV, so I checked the websites of a couple of local classic-rock Clear Channel-owned outlets.

KBCO had both Springsteen’s “You’ll Be Comin’ Down” and Fogerty’s “Creedence Song” in its last-ten-songs-played list, with links to the videos for the songs. “You’ll Be Comin’ Down” was listed on the KTCL site when I visited. Perhaps these are the two exceptions to the Clear Channel rule, or the only two stations in revolt against their corporate masters, but then again it might be that the columnist doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.

So I guess the point I’m trying to make is as pithy as it is eternally true: Don’t believe everything you read. That’s hardly a new sentiment, but it can’t be repeated enough.

This is especially true when you’re reading something that is in general agreement with your own belief system. Each of us has a right to believe what he or she wants and to express that belief to others. But just because you read something that appeals to your sensibilities or that you agree with doesn’t make it true.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 07:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Porter Wagoner, the country superstar, died last night in Nashville. If you watched television in the nineteen sixties and seventies, you could never forget the lean Wagoner, beneath a blonde, manicured pompadour decked out in a hand-embroidered Nudie Cohn suit, the rhinestones glistening in the stage lights, Dolly Parton at his side, exchanging corny jokes that made me blanch or singing country songs together in almost ethereal harmonies. He was 80.

For a few years at The Kansas City Times, I interviewed musicians coming to town for a weekly column. I was, of course, mostly interested in talking to my heroes in the rock world. Sometimes that wasn’t possible and there was space to fill, and that’s how I wound up on the phone with Porter Wagoner, before a local appearance in Excelsior Springs, Mo., in February of 1983 Given that I knew little about him beyond those television appearances, he was as pleasant an interview as I ever had – sometimes those were the best ones – as he outlined his career for a novice.

Wagoner’s television appearances were my first exposure to Nudie’s suits. The second were the ones Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman and the other Flying Burrito Brothers wore on the cover of their debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin. Wagoner’s first suit had a covered wagon on it; Parsons’ was festooned with marijuana plants. It was the sixties.

As it happens, Wagoner was the first musician to sport a Nudie’s suit onstage. He made them famous, just as the Burritos made them infamous. The tailor died in 1984.

“Mr. Nudie was the man that made the stuff,” Wagoner told the young reporter just a year earlier. “In 1953 he came to the Jubilee and watched me during a rehearsal. He introduced himself, said he was from Hollywood and was a tailor. He said, ‘the clothes I was wearing, which were stock, western-cut suits, looked like a regular dress-suit with slashed pockets. He said they look fairly nice, but I needed something to wear so that when I went onstage, it will draw every eye in the auditorium on you.

“He said he would like to make a suit for me. I said I probably couldn’t afford it. He went back to California and sent me a suit – free. He said, ‘if it works, I’ll make plenty of money from you down the road.’ I got the suit, and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, peach-colored with rhinestones with wagon wheels and embroidery. I’ve been wearing them ever since then, and I was the first to wear his rhinestone suits. Later on, he made clothes for Elvis and Liberace and everybody else who wore rhinestones.

“Back at that time he made clothes for Gene Autry and John Wayne before he made mine. The suits back then were $350, a lot of money. The suits I bought this year were $5500. Mr. Nudie knew what he was talking about.”

Posted by Leland Rucker at 07:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Started watching the firestorms spreading across southern California Monday. The Los Angeles Times, as it did with the fires in Griffith park and on Catalina Island earlier this year, is reporting the breaking story via a blog that updates with new entries as reporters file dispatches from around the area.

Nobody wants to see people lose possessions or their lives in a fire. That said, look at the thousands of acres of Southern California burning on Google Earth, and ask yourself why in the world are people building homes in these places? When are we going to stop building subdivisions in potential firestorm zones?

Not soon, given what is being reported by the Times. According to some residents, quality of life in the forest is well worth the danger.

Any second thoughts about living in a fire zone?
“Not a one. There is no place like it.'’
A friend, Richard Sanders, explained.
“You are there in rural hills and a few minutes in urban here, if you want it,'’ he said.

Apparently, that’s not an unusual opinion amongst Californians. This gentleman obviously believes that people should be able to build and live anywhere, even in the middle of forests that often host Santa Ana winds and frequent firestorms. Further, he feels that our government, no matter the cost, should then drop everything and protect them from fires, even if it takes the military.

“G.D. Durrant is a gruff-talking senior professor of painting and drawing at Palomar College. He has an issue: Why can't all the military manpower at Camp Pendleton, Twenty-Nine Palms and elsewhere in the region be mobilized to save property and lives? There are military personnel and equipment all around. "I just wish they could utilize it," he says. "All these firefighters here are working so hard, and their accomplishment is so minimal."

But earlier today, on the front page, was this quote, the only one that makes any sense whatsoever.

“I’m just wondering why so many homes are built in areas so prone to wildfires. It seems like every year firefighters are risking their lives to save homes that are constantly in the path of wildfires. Why not leave the space open and build where there is no fire danger to begin with?” – Kathryn

I couldn’t have put it more diplomatically, or eloquently.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 07:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here we are more than a year from the next presidential election, and already I’m tired of the whole thing.

Let me rephrase that a bit more precisely. I haven’t really been following the “campaign,” although it certainly seems like Hillary Clinton and Obama Barack have been running for president since, well, the last vote was counted in the 2004 election. But really, despite the barrage of publicity, most of us are only now getting around to even thinking about who we will support in next year’s election. So at least as far as this voter is concerned, they have wasted the last couple of years of campaigning. Until next year, I really don’t give a shit.

Except for some clips on YouTube and The Daily Show (love the fly on that Republican candidate’s hair), I haven’t watched a second of the dozens of forums or debates, and why should I? I generally tune in to the presidential election about the time of the Iowa or New Hampshire primaries, and already pundits claim that Hillary Clinton has wrapped up the nomination for the Democrats. Does this make any sense whatsoever?

When Jon Stewart asked this question of Sen. Joe Biden, who’s running a low-key campaign far in the shadow of Clinton, he said that he thinks people have real lives to take care of (or, out here in Denver right now, imaginary lives through the Colorado Rockies), and don’t really have time to think about the next president until, oh, next year.

If you read the media or watch TV, it’s a whole different world. Already, black leaders have complained that certain Repubs snubbed their forum and inferred that it’s because they don’t care about blacks. Commentators spent more time analyzing Hillary Clinton laugh than her health plan (and isn’t that a bit early to release something like that?). Fred Thompson has been criticized for not getting in early enough and, by inference, not spending enough money. Can a person be president if he doesn’t wear a lapel pin with an American flag? More than a year to go, and we’re down to this, folks.

Everything that the candidates say will be scrutinized, overanalyzed and trivialized. And whenever they slip up and say something suspicious, there’s YouTube so we can all overanalyze and trivialize it. Whoever we elect, we’re gonna be sick to death of them.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 11, 2006
Pine Edge Cabins
Silver Gate, Montana

We were in the park early again this morning. The ride down was more like the one we’re used to – minus the ghostly look of the snow, which has melted for the most part from yesterday.

The Lamar was silent, buffalo the only herd animals in sight. We stopped at Slough Creek and drove north down the road toward the campgrounds near where we left last night. There are a host of Wolf Watchers set up here. Rick McIntyre’s telemetry says the Slough wolves are out there. They are howling up a storm. But like last night at sunset, nobody can find them.

I feel a bit like those ivory-billed woodpecker folks who spend hours and hours in swampy, water-moccasin-infested water looking for something, anything. Everything I spot in my scope, upon closer inspection, turns into a rock or a bison.

This goes on for about a half hour. Nobody else can find them, either. Finally, Deirdre motions us over to the scope, and there they are under a stand of dead aspen. At first I see three, then three blacks and the grey, but after awhile all eight are in various states of lounging. Seven females and the alpha male Number 490. The Slough Creek pack that we watched yesterday. We get a half hour of wolf stuff. Lying down and raising their heads to look at each other. Urinating. Stretching.

Someone says there is a kill about a half mile away down by Slough Creek. Perhaps they are resting and howling after last night’s gorging.

A bunch of coyotes shriek back, but the wolves’ long, more mournful howls and harmonies dominate the airspace. The grey gets up and walks down a swale, sitting down maybe 30 yards away before walking back up and joining the rest again for another round of howling.

When they got up and started moving uphill, you could see the individual wolves, especially after a friendly older fellow brought out a Questar telescope. In the telescope, you could see expression and color in the wolves’ faces more than a half mile away. Soon they out of sight heading north over the hill.

Our reverie is disturbed by a shout from the woman with the beatific smile who we met yesterday. She has scoped a grizzly bear walking along a high ridge far above us south of the road. It’s the same ridge where we saw the Slough wolves running as we left yesterday. This one looks pretty large, especially the hump, but it’s hard to tell much from this distance. He finally disappears into the timber stage left.

About ten minutes later, following exactly the same trail, moving a little more quickly, is another grizzly. A little later, someone picks them up on an even higher ridge following each other over the pass into the Lamar Valley.

We are moving on to the Norris Geyser Basin today, which one website describes as perhaps “the hottest geyser area in Yellowstone.” In 1929, it says, an oil rig sustained damage trying to determine subsurface temperatures that rose to 401 degrees.

The barren, sulphurous environment at Norris is a result of the extreme acidity that makes it difficult for vegetation to grow and easy for algae and bacteria to thrive. We read that the sulphur, which has a smell that most people find unpleasant but that I have grown to like as a part of the hot-water experience, is pretty toxic stuff.

Steamboat Geyser, though less-known and less-active than Old Faithful, is actually the world’s largest geyser. Today, like all days we have been here, it is gurgling and spitting erratically out of the rock, almost ominously. The eruptions measure from two to perhaps ten feet, like a cauldron waiting for its chance to blow. When it really explodes, water cascades up to 300 feet. Steamboat exploded in 2000, in 2002, and twice in 2003, on March 26 and April 27. Below, about thirty feet from the hole, a steam vent loudly exhales like a locomotive in an old cartoon.

The Norris landscape is ever in turmoil and change. Leo Whittlesey notes in Death in Yellowstone: “An 1883 park employee, George Thomas, cautioned travelers that walking at Norris had to be ‘slow and careful’ because of the danger of ‘dropping into a hole and being scalded to death.’ Five years later, a warning sign was posted: ‘Visitors ought not to cross this basin without a competent guide, and then it is at the risk of their lives.’

Photos show that by 1905 wooden planks were being built (and rebuilt) to allow people safer access. Whittlesey can find no actual deaths at Norris, although that doesn’t mean early travelers might not have met their end by falling through into some remote hot pool.

The chaos continues. In March 2003, about the same time Steamboat Geyser blew twice in a month, a new thermal feature appeared west of Nymph Lake. Porkchop Geyser, a familiar landmark since its appearance in 1971, erupted and left the temperature of the water in the pool significantly hotter, which closed the area for awhile and necessitated the moving of the trail away from it. Porkchop is more active than the last time I was here.

By the time we got back to Silver Gate, the clouds overhead are moving west and south, and at ground level, the wind is keeping the Montana flag down at the general store almost prone in the opposite direction. Such is climate in Silver Gate. We'll be home tomorrow.

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Tuesday October 10, 2006
Pine Edge Cabins
Silver Gate, Montana

We were in the park before 6:30. Everything in the Lamar Valley is wrapped in a foggy shroud, the conifers white with yesterday’s snow, wraithlike, ghostly. Very cold and very beautiful.

We are rewarded once again for our diligence, as we get to see a total of eighteen wolves in two packs operating in the Little America area.

We stop at an overlook near the west end of the Lamar Valley. Rick McIntyre’s yellow Xterra is parked there, so we pull in next to him. McIntyre, who lives in Silver Gate year round and is the nerve center of wolf watching in this part of the park, says telemetry indicates there are members of the Slough Creek pack high on a shelf above the river near a scattered herd of grazing bison.

McIntyre and some other Watchers are walking up Cardiac Hill, a lookout point high behind us. From there, you can see more deeply into the shelf, which leads out of the valley to the west. We spend awhile glassing the area with Bill, a Wolf Watcher from Kansas that we have seen every year. He says that he and his wife and their dogs have been here a month, with two weeks to go. “Then we go back to work to make enough money to come back in the spring,” he grins, pulling on his long, white beard with a strange grin. “It’s a vicious cycle.”

After about twenty minutes, McIntyre is trudging back down, his voice crackling in the radio that the wolves are heading west out of the Lamar in the direction of Slough Creek.

We drive the couple of miles over to a pull-out near Slough Creek and glass for awhile. A short, cherubic woman is first to spot members of the pack running west along the timberline. We spend the next hour or so leapfrogging the Slough pack members as they parallel the road, running in that familiar wolf lope.

They disappear behind swales and into patches of timber and then pop back out into view. Some stay together; others lag behind, sniffing and playing, like all canines. We keep moving west, setting up ahead of them, watching awhile and then heading off again to get ahead and watch them pass again.

At one pull-out, McIntyre quietly says that if we shut off the engine, we can hear the wolves howling, and he is right. A couple of times in the scope I see a wolf raise its head and mouth a howl, but the sound doesn’t come until a few seconds later as it travels to us.

At another stop, as we’re getting out the scope, a coyote with reddish brown ears runs right past us heading north, glancing every now and then over his shoulder. He pauses at the road before bursting across and continues to wander north as far away from the pack as possible. I am reminded of Bob Crabtree’s comment about coyotes in the wake of wolf reintroduction: There are half as many coyotes in the park -- but they are damned smart coyotes. This one might live to see another day.

We get out to the turn-off known as The Boulder in the Little America area, which offers a commanding view to the north that stretches for miles. A squadron of Watchers are scoping a high ridge far away. We join them, and soon enough, we have the Hellroaring pack in our sights, climbing and loitering near a small herd of about a dozen elk near the crest of the ridge. The elk seem to be on alert, which they should be, but the wolves don’t seem to be remotely interested in hunting.

This is our first look at the Hellroaring Pack. I have read in Ralph Maughan’s blog that this pack tends to hang farther west near the Yellowstone Valley. And for all we know, the ridge they are traversing might be above the Yellowstone River – it’s that far away.

In the binoculars, the ten wolves are very small dots with black or grey coloring. Even in the spotting scopes, they are smallish, walking above a big tear in the ridge. Several are loitering along the edge of cliffs.

Other Watchers are looking in the direction of the Sloughs, three of whom apparently crossed the road behind us while we were watching the Hellroaring wolves. The intercom is chattering with questions and reports: “I see three blacks and the grey, one of whom lifted his leg”; “do you see number 490 in that group?”; “has anyone seen that one cross the road?” McIntyre’s even, polite voice dominates the conversation.

Three Sloughs, two black yearlings and a three-year-old grey, are passing through a swale below us, a couple hundred yards off.

McIntyre is sitting at his scope, talking into a tape recorder with times and observations. He turns from the Hellroaring Pack to the Sloughs and back again, occasionally picking up the walkie-talkie to summon and direct his spotters. A couple elk cross the road in the opposite direction of the three wolves, alert, their heads up, noses in the air. They know who’s patrolling the area.

Someone on the radio indicates that Number 490, the Slough pack’s alpha male, crossed the road and then re-crossed back to the south. I hear McIntyre on the intercom telling a Watcher in a pick-up down the road to stop and watch the truck’s red lights come on almost immediately. The wolves are apparently just around a corner.

The Hellroaring pack moves away and up the ridge before bedding down, where they disappear into the sage. We are not macho enough to linger and wait for them to awaken, though some of the more serious and dutiful Watchers will do just that. So we leave after locating three Slough wolves north of the road and watching five others, including Number 490, running back east up a long hill in the direction of the Lamar again. The Watchers are still watching both packs intently as we drive off.

In the afternoon we head out again, with Anne in the van as guide. We don’t have any telemetry, so we’re just going to drive out and see what we can find. We have stopped across from Specimen Ridge, which looks completely different than this morning, when it was covered in white. I can see a bear with my naked eye strolling out across the meadow a couple hundred yards off. In the scope, we find that it is a grizzly, so we watch it for about twenty minutes as it wanders the plain before disappearing beyond the tree line.

This one is slick black, almost blue-black, with a sleek body and what appeared to be a little fat under his belly, like a good bear should possess at this time of year. Its large head would seem to indicate a male, and the head rises often like he’s taking in scents – I wonder if he can smell us? Just before we got here, someone in the car next to us says it rose on his back legs to look around and that it “looked just like a man.”

Which once again reminds us of the similarities between bears and humans. If you look at a skinned bear, it is said that it looks exactly like a human. Our diets are similar; bear researcher Chuck Jonkel says, “If you like it, chances are a bear will probably like it, too.” And, until humans created the repeating rifle and nearly wiped them from the face of the lower Forty Eight, we were equals, vying for our parts of the food chain.

This grizzly is heading up to the high country for a long winter’s nap, and I still don’t discount the theory that we are jealous of these magnificent distant cousins, for their strength, their built-in reproductive constraints and the chance to sleep half the year away. If only they had web access up there in the den …

Watching this grizzly here in Yellowstone reminds us that, like wolves, they are here only because we humans allow them to be. Their respective fates are entirely up to us. If we decide we can’t live with bears, they would become extinct. And they could still wind up that way, from drought, loss of habitat or one or more vital food sources or poor human decision-making -- like the current U.S. Fish and Wildlife plans to delist the grizzly from the protections of the Endangered Species Act. It might be time to talk about delisting wolves, but the fate of the grizzly is much more perilous.

The couple who are watching alongside us are providing comic relief. They keep pointing at a few elk and are chattering amongst themselves that the bear is somehow going to “give the elk a run for their money” or sneak up behind them, even though the bear is moving in the opposite direction.

The bear soon ambles into the timber and out of sight. We follow McIntyre’s Xterra over to Slough Creek, where his telemetry indicates that there are wolves. We spend the next 45 minutes until dark looking in vain along the north ridge.

Oh, but they are there. We can hear them well enough, along with a group of coyotes screaming and yipping somewhere in the same general direction. Some of the Watchers apparently can see them from another location behind us. Hearing them is just as good, however, and they keep up a steady howl pretty much the whole time.

Besides, the sunset is absolutely gorgeous, red stripes in the clouds all along the broad western horizon. We have already seen a grizzly, more than 15 wolves, several coyotes (we saw none last year), raven, elk, deer. And a chorus of grey wolves serenades us into the dusk.

Today was as productive as any day we have ever had up here. You just keep giving yourself chances and see what happens.

On the way back, Anne pointed out a beaver dam starting to take shape across Soda Butte Creek just above its junction with the Lamar. Willow bushes, almost non-existent when we first started coming six years ago, are turning red and are again becoming the dominant flora in the wetlands around the stream.

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Monday October 9, 2006
Pine Edge Cabins
Silver Gate, Montana

When we got up, it was white-ish, and I opened the front door of the cabin to horizontal snow blowing straight down from the pass west into the park, so we’re sitting here warming up as it gets light. The heater in the back bedroom keeps the whole cabin pretty toasty. Billie is frying turkey sausage, and I think we will take a walk after breakfast and see whether we can get into the park or not.

Our Aerostar is not equipped with a windshield scraper – didn’t Avis know where we were going? – so I head down for the general store, where Henry Finkbeiner and a couple of friendly Labs are at the desk. Though I have only met him a couple of times, Finkbeiner is one of the reasons we like Silver Gate.

“That was the early days,” he says as I tell him we are the people from Boulder who first rented a cabin in Whispering Pines in 2001 and to whom he loaned his spotting scope for our first wolf-watching trip.

A successful Atlanta urban developer who refurbished old buildings into lofts before it became fashionable, Finkbeiner bought a bunch of buildings in Silver Gate in 2000. Wearing several hats – he is an excellent wildlife photographer and also guides camping trips into the park and who knows what else -- Finkbeiner has been slowly building an eco-tourist business. He has a long ponytail, and he has lost weight since moving up here. “They could have arrested me for the fire I got going last night” in his sweat lodge over by Soda Butte Creek in Whispering Pines, he says, laughing.

He talks about his plans for turning the Range Rider, a two-story barnlike cabin-style building that has served as lodge, tavern and whorehouse, into a non-profit children’s camp. “Course everything here is non-profit,” he adds with a grin.

He says he’s still working on the Pine Edge cabins, now open year round. He’s trying to get the other old motel next door open as well. Through the efforts of Bob, his manager, they are still renting the romantic and evocative Whispering Pines, the old cabins where we stayed the first couple of trips up here. On a walk we see some guy is working on one of the Whispering Pines buildings. Finkbeiner says they will keep it open at least for the foreseeable future.

Billie has joined us, and she thanks Henry for the gift of five free nights at Pine Edge donated for the Sinapu benefit, which brought $1600. Finkbeiner doesn’t seem to know about it, and says that Bob probably set it up.

Finkbeiner still would like to create a wildlife corridor on the other side of the creek, he admits, which might necessitate the demolition of some or all of the Whispering Pines cabins, leaving the conifer forest where it sits as part of the corridor. He knows that you can’t keep animals out of Silver Gate because “it’s right in the middle of where wildlife live.” But he says he would like to at least try and give animals a place to move through without interference. “It’s part of our commitment,” he said.

He says that the growing season in Silver Gate has increased by six weeks in the six years he has been here, which makes me start wondering how much this might have to do with the re-appearance of beaver and willow bushes in Soda Butte Creek. We generally are attributing that to the return of the wolves, but I’m guessing that the climate might have something to do with it, too.

Finkbeiner’s environmental activities have caught the notice of Montana officials, and not always in positive ways. He asks people not to run snowmachines on his property, “nicely,” he adds, which doesn’t endear him to the Cooke City snowmachine culture. He took down the old Whispering Pines neon sign after the state began bugging him about it, and I notice the Range Rider sign is gone, too. “Violence comes in many different forms,” he says of the hassles.

The weather has cleared enough to drive over to Mammoth Springs after finding no charismatic megafauna in the Lamar Valley or Slough Creek. A couple of bull elk, one with an enormous rack, have their harems feeding in Mammoth Springs. A nice, recently revived fountain on the lower side of the springs has taken out the walkway up to the next level. And we strolled through the acidic burn-out fountains that once flowed and whose beauty lured early visitors to this area.

After we get back, I tromp back down to the general store, where Paul, the photographer friend of Henry’s we have met in years past, is behind the desk. As he writes out the wi-fi password on a piece of paper – yes, we have net access in Silver Gate -- he describes the service as “somewhere between dial-up and broadband.” In truth, it is closer to the former than the latter.

Paul also shows me the .pdf layout of a book to which he is contributing about Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. The photography is just stunning. Should be out in the spring. If the Net gets shaky and I really need it, he says, bring the computer down to the store and it will work better.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 06:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sunday October 8, 2006
Pine Edge Cabins
Silver Gate, Montana

We left Thermopolis this morning. On our way to Cody, we saw the Squaw Teats formation for the first time, though just barely, at exactly the spot where our Roadside Geology of Wyoming said it would be. When I typed Squaw Teats into Google, the first entry linked to a 2000 story on stateline.org that says that “more than 1,000 different geographical features had Squaw in them” in the United States. Some states, Maine is mentioned in the story, are working to change all those names. Apparently, this Wyoming rock formation has escaped the wrath of politically correct Native Americans. It’s a wonder somebody hasn’t complained about Teats, too.

Looking at the map, there is serious wilderness on our left. That is the Wind River Range out there, and it contains many of the highest peaks in the state. No major roads for sixty to eighty miles in any direction and hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness, it is an important buffer for wildlife coming in and out of Yellowstone from the east and south.

If the state has its way in a protracted struggle with the federal government wolf delisting plan, it would also be a place where a Wyoming citizen could kill wolves, for any reason, a position contrary to the wishes of the federal government, environmentalists or anybody with a lick of sense in their heads. This wilderness is the wolves’ best protection, and Wyoming wants to turn it into a shooting gallery. Assholes would line up twenty deep to kill a wolf.

After we stopped for a couple of forgotten items and lattes in Cody, we head out Wyoming 120 and then Wyoming 72 for Red Lodge, where we pick up Beartooth Pass. After stopping for the sublime banana-cream pie at the Hungry Bear restaurant in Bearcreek, Montana, we head up the steep drive out of Bearcreek valley, above the lovely-in-the-fall town of Red Lodge and onto U.S. Highway 212.

The 70-mile-long Beartooth, opened in 1934, was called “America’s most beautiful highway” by Charles Kuralt, but it still doesn’t bring a wave of tourists into the northeast entrance to Yellowstone. It crosses from Montana into Wyoming and back again during this part of its route.

There are two passes that lead into the northeast entrance, and we try to use both. This year we are going in over Beartooth and back on Chief Joseph Scenic Highway. Beartooth was closed last year after mud and debris slammed down and damaged the switchbacks in a couple of places. Beartooth is only open about five months max anyway, and it usually closes sometime in October.

The valley west of Red Lodge, heavily reminiscent of German alpine terrain, was socked in a heavy fogbank, which continued more than 4,000 feet through the narrow switchbacks, hairpin and U-curves that lead to the mesa at the top. We pulled out at one spot at about 6,000 feet and were blessed with a view of what we had just driven through, now looking like an overdose of whipped cream lapping at the entire valley.

At this turn-out, I finally solved a personal mystery. We stopped at this same spot on our first trip over this pass in the nineteen eighties, and I remembered the Precambrian rock across the valley looked like the crumbling remnants of ancient civilizations. When we came across two years ago, I couldn’t find this place. And though I couldn’t see ancient Jerusalem this time, I realized that it was the same rocks. The shadows of the early morning sun had given me that moment almost two decades ago.

As we climbed to treeline, snow was blowing across the road and sticking, and the swirling clouds limited our exposure to the twenty peaks of the Beartooth Range that are above 12,000 feet. You never think that you’ll ever reach the top after what seems like hundreds of switchbacks. It was a stirring passage, and the Aerostar performed admirably all the way up to 11,000 feet and back down.

Riding across the mesa at the top, I always like looking back down into the Bighorn Basin from whence we came this morning, but it was far too socked in for those kinds of views, which gave us time to concentrate on the wonders along the side of the road itself -- rows of cliffs, scattered rocks and fissures and frigid lakes. The western slopes were blissfully free of snow, and we were in Silver Gate by three. By 4:30, with Anne Whitbeck, our friend and longtime wolf guide onboard with her walkie-talkie, the Aerostar was heading into the park.

Anne caught us up on the latest news about wolves, bears and the Wolf Watchers who keep track of them. The road across Dunraven Pass is closing tonight, and there has been activity up there, both wolves and bears.

And she informs us that Beartooth Pass also closes tonight.

No wonder it was so weird up there at the top of the world this afternoon. We were among the last few to get over before it was closed.

Anne’s unerring senses are on once again, and we spend half an hour with four black bears in the high forest along the newly paved road.

First was a mother and cubs who walked along about fifteen or twenty feet from the road on a shelf about ten feet below us. They were foraging in the snow, mostly oblivious to the 20 people taking snapshots, pointing and shooting – when will these show up on YouTube?

They are in search of pine cones, and the mother gives two lessons: 1) how bears find food and 2) why they tell you not to climb a tree to get away from a black bear. Mom suddenly bolts up this conifer, and in less than a minute she is near the top, about 35 feet, after no real effort whatsoever. When she gets to the top, she begins to break off limbs with pine cones and dropping them for the young ones. (Her move appears to signal that she isn’t concerned about our proximity to the cubs, although I’ll bet she could come back down just as quickly and easily.

About a minute later, one of the cubs climbs an adjacent tree, just like a pro. Black bears learn to climb trees to avoid danger at a young age, and there are good reasons for that. I have seen a black bear treed by a grizzly over in Slough Creek, so if you’re a black bear, it’s a good skill.

But the cubbie, once it gets to the top, doesn’t seem to know what to do and is just swinging back and forth up there in the wind. Soon enough, both of them climb back down just as easily as they ascended, and soon the trio have disappeared down into the shadows of the forest. About a mile farther, we get a pretty good look at a cinnamon black bear beneath Mt. Washburn. It seems to indicate a desire to cross the road at one point but scampers back up in the trees high above the road as the voyeurs gather. Good bear.

It was our first time over the pass on the new road, which was completed again this year, and we stopped at a new pull-off with signage about the activity here – the major eruptions that have taken place here and the magma changes below Lake Yellowstone going on today.

One of the reasons we climbed Mt. Washburn two years ago was to stand at the northern end of that last eruption, and this place offers another good angle on the gap created more than 250,000 years ago. As the sun went down, the snow-capped mountains to the south turned first a fiery orange, gray and, finally, metallic blue.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 07:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I grew up in the album generation, but to tell the truth, I’m not much of an album guy anymore. Don’t have the time or inclination. I just like good songs, ones that make me hit the repeat button as soon as they end. Here are the latest songs I keep wanting to hear again and again.

Jason Isbell, “Brand New Kind of Actress” (Sirens of the Ditch): Isbell was my favorite of the three excellent songwriters that comprised Drive-by Truckers, especially his Southern power-chord anthem, “Never Gonna Change,” which I still play a lot when I need some up-tempo rock. “Brand New Kind of Actress” is in the same vein, thick, almost Rolling Stonesish chords, wound around a lyric of violent romance.

Anders Osborne, “Spotlight” (Come Down): OK, I’ll be the first to admit that I like this quiet acoustic tune because it reminds me of Van Morrison in my favorite Morrison period: Moondance/His Band and Street Choir. That’s unfair to Osborne, a New Orleans musician who is hardly a Morrison imitator. But I haven’t gotten around to listening to the album yet – I keep putting this back on.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, “Gone, Gone, Gone (Done Moved On)” (Rising Sand): Bluegrass chanteuse Alison Krauss got brownie points with me for covering Stevie Winwood’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” a few years back. But who would have predicted that she could team up with ancient rock legend Plant and dust off a little-known Everly Brothers gem with such command and authority?

Omar Kent Dykes & Jimmie Vaughan, “On the Jimmy Reed Highway” (On the Jimmy Reed Highway). Dykes, formerly of the Howlers, and Vaughan pay tribute to a forebear, the idiosyncratic Jimmy Reed. With a lot of Austin regulars sitting in, the album sounds like a night at Antone’s, the venerable blues club. But what grabbed my attention was the name of Lou Ann Barton, one of my favorite singers, who provides back-up on several tracks, including this one.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 07:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)