Tag Archives: Mother Nature

July To May And Back Again

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Many of you and you know who you are, have been writing us cards and letters lamenting the fact that you missed the May wildflowers this year due to gross negligence on your part. While we can’t provide any sympathy, you should have gotten up earlier, we can give you a second chance. How often does that happen? Not very often, I’d say.

It is the middle of July down here at the lower latitudes and the Spring flowers are mostly long gone, replaced now with dead or dying foliage that is pretty damn ugly, but we have arranged, at no little expense on our part, to bring you Spring flowers once again for a very limited time. And by limited we mean not very long, it’s kind of like a botanical do-over and as it is very expensive to provide you with a large area of wildflowers and their supportive vegetation we can’t do this all day.

Fortunately because we have an excellent working relationship with Glacier National Park they have helped us by sharing the costs and providing their somewhat limited backdrops required to showcase the flowers in their best light. But even they with their vast resources can only sustain this wildflower curtain call for a few more days.

So if you want to see the colors, the forms, and the spectacular groupings Mother Nature is known for, you need to get on up to Glacier National Park, and get in line. No tickets or reservations needed but you’d best hurry if you want a good place to view them. All the good spots are filling up fast.

As always there is no need to thank us, your support is thanks enough, but if you feel the pressing need to help, and I think you know you want to, contributions of large sums of Twenties and Fifties, even the occasional handfuls of 100’s will work, (please, no 10’s, 5’s, or 1’s), loosely bundled in stacks of 100 or so are always appreciated.

Giants In The Shallows

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Thousands and thousands of years ago before our ancestors were living in trees and checking each other for fleas the earth was a very different place. This was way before menthol cigarettes and GPS in your Chevy suburban. The earth was covered in a lot more water and what is high ground now was low ground then. We still had mountains and valleys but many of the valleys were filled with the wet part of the inland sea and were used as migratory routes for huge and very large creatures that moved around the earth as they completed their life cycle.

They were very much like our modern whales except larger, dwarfing and doubling the size of our 90′ Blue whales of today. They moved about, swimming slowly and majestically, using the narrow canyons to get from one large body of water to another. Had you been there you would have heard their voices echoing off the canyon walls as they sang songs ancient to them at that time.

They were using these watery highways for a very long time as can be seen occasionally by the shallow but smooth troughs made as their bellies slid across the then sandy bottoms of the valleys. Today we see these slick rocky depressions in the stream beds as a smooth surface that the water flowing over and through has made even smoother.

They traveled the same way they do today in pods of undetermined size, mothers and calves swimming ahead and gigantic males following behind to protect them from what ever danger there may have been for them. But the huge males couldn’t defend them from what Mother Nature intended for the world. There was an incredible climatic event that enfolded at a speed unimaginable to us now, where the earth suddenly and without warning changed and was thrust up in a gigantic upheaval raising these valleys and the surrounding valley walls to a height of over 8000′ or more, trapping the unlucky travelers making their way through.

The water drained away and as it did it turned these few pods into stone leaving their shapes behind to show us they were here. The water was slowly replaced by soil made up of eons of trees dying and falling, mixing with the decomposing stone, turning into the rich material that now supports the profusion of wild flowers nestled up against them. The very earth that surrounds and supports these leviathans of the shallows. Today millions of years later you can still see their rocky forms forever caught in an endless migration. Mothers with their calves by their sides, caught as they slowly breached the surface so the little one could breathe. The large males still mostly submerged with just their giant tail fins standing clear of the water, still traveling through time on that endless journey.

This particular pod had been traveling through a valley that we now call Lady Moon and can still be seen by any one with the imagination and desire to see ancient travelers. And if you are particularly fortunate and listen closely you may still hear their ancient songs as the wind catches them off the canyon walls and carries them past you on its way to nowhere.

Time To Smell The Leaves

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When bears first wake up they are very, very hungry. They haven’t eaten since way last fall and they have to get something in their stomachs like right now. If it can be chewed they will attempt to eat it. Grass, old semi-used carcasses, any footprints in the dirt if some one walked by carrying something edible, peanut butter, nuts and/or berries, pizza, knapsacks with food in them, Chinese food either take out or eat in, gluten-free stuff, stuff with extra gluten, French food, cereal of any variety, tires that have run over roadkill, chili, chili dogs, dogs, manioc, coconut and coconut byproducts, leaves, buds, disgusting stuff that can’t even be written down, cook books, quarter pounders, quarter pounders with cheese, and lard. All of this and more is on the menu when the bear first wakes up.

So they go forth and ravenously eat anything that is remotely edible until they finally fill up that spot that says “I’m starving. Feed me.” After that happens they begin to become a little more selective in what they eat. Some even become connoisseurs and quite sophisticated gourmets, choosing only the choicest of the new offerings provided them by Mother Nature. Here we see Ms. Eula Ndego Jones, a new resident of Yellowstone National park, having come down from the famine stricken wastes of southern Saskatchewan through Montana and finally reaching the park just as the new leaves are unfurling. She carefully inhales the aroma of the young leaves before choosing the most delectable ones to eat. A few weeks ago she would have eaten the leaves, the bush and all its branches, plus about a pound and a half of the dirt around it.

But now, having regained some of the weight she lost through her long hibernation, she is being quite choosy about what she eats, taking delicate little bites from this bush and that, enjoying the moment, slowing down her intake just a little while she enjoys the warm spring sunshine. This is a time to enjoy the coming of the new season. It won’t be long before the elk start having their young and the calf selection will be at its premium, if the winter kill wasn’t too severe amongst the herds that is. But if it was then the carcasses will be plentiful and that will make living a lot easier. And there will be all those young ground squirrels that haven’t learned burrow safety yet so life is looking pretty good right now.

Spring is a time of rejuvenation and the animals here in Yellowstone have learned how to take advantage of it. I think we could all take a lesson from them about slowing down a little and savoring the moments of this time of year, after all Spring doesn’t last that long. I think we can forego the old carcasses and young ground squirrels though but those leaves might be nice in a salad with a few Fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Indelicate Perhaps But Necessary

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As we are the premier go-to place on the web for questions about animal behavior, we at The Institute constantly get letters and phone calls, texts and emails, even telegrams. People often shout at us as they drive by asking us questions about the things animals do. One of the most frequently asked questions is “How do bull elk scratch their…..”  I mean, “Why are bull elk antlers so big and long?”

For a long time we didn’t know. Didn’t have a clue. It seemed like an incredible disadvantage in fact having antlers that were like four or five feet long. The disadvantages seemed legion. When they travelled they always had to rent a convertible regardless of the weather, they couldn’t use the public facilities as the doors were too narrow, everything they wore had to be button up no trendy pullovers, other bulls would see them and immediately want to fight. It seemed like a bad joke had been played on them by Mother Nature.

Then late one afternoon in a meadow far, far away a small band of bulls appeared and began grazing. It was mid-summer in Yellowstone and although their antlers were reaching their full growth they were still covered with velvet and they hadn’t yet begun to form the needle sharp points that would make them so deadly in just a few weeks time.

What we didn’t know but were soon able to find out by listening to snippets of their conversations, was that growing those antlers with all that fuzz on them made them itchy. Really, super itchy, like when you think there’s tick on you but you can’t find it, only like a thousand times worse. They itched everywhere. On their backs, on their sides, behind their ears, even the bottom of their feet itched. They were itchy.

Then one of them, unable to get to the privacy of the tree line, couldn’t stand it anymore and even though he was in full public view, modesty be damned, he answered our question. This is why bull elk grow their antlers so long. No doubt anymore. This is why. So, indelicate as it appears, it is necessary, and if you ladies out there in webland have any doubts about this ask your significant other, for those of you whose significant other is male that is, and he will verify it. When you itch you got to scratch. Simple but most truths are. I hope we’ve answered your question once and for all and your curiosity is finally satisfied. This is what we do here, remember we’re from The Institute and we’re here to help.

Sunrise At The Institute

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This is the time of year when many people are filled with angst and fearful thoughts about what is going on in the world around them. The seasons are changing. It’s getting dark earlier again. Mother Nature seems to be in a rather petulant mood, sending storm clouds and unexpected winds, perhaps a smattering of cold heavy raindrops that at first you thought were going to be snowflakes but then turned into an ugly drizzle instead, just when you thought it was going to be a bright sun-shiny day.

The Institute has weathered many of these changes over the years and seeing the worry and discomforting feelings that arise during this changeover we have set our crack team of meteorologists to finding solutions to make this period a more stable and non-threatening time for you our loyal readers.

Our first task was to identify what it is exactly about this time of year that sends you into such a tizzy. We immediately set our survey department to work to determine the most worrisome problems in numerical order and came up with the top five reasons. As we felt this was a high-priority problem we suspended our usual mail, radio and TV ads to get information and took to the phones instead to get our information as directly and quickly as we could. We called everyone in our data banks and asked “What’s the big problem? What bugs you every fall? Have you sent us your free-will love donation yet and why not?” The answers we got were surprising. Here they are in order of importance.

Biggest Problems This Time of Year

1: Survey takers

2: Survey takers who ask us for money

3: Sunrises

4: Robo calls, especially those political ones

5: When Aunt Pheeb sends me out to pick blueberries when she knows the bear is out there and locks the door so I can’t get back in until the pail is full. She also puts peanut butter and honey sandwiches in my lunch bag when she knows I hate honey.*

* We almost didn’t include this one in our results because we know it came from Uncle Skid and you can’t trust a word he says, but since we could only contact about 7 or 8 people for our survey we had to include it to make the full five reasons.

The real surprise for us was “Sunrises”. That was an unexpected reason for worry. Since we only had a few moments to ask our questions before they slammed the phone down, we weren’t able to quantify why sunrises were a point of concern for you. Vexed, we racked our collective brain for possible reasons. Unfortunately we came up with nothing, Zippo, nada, nilch, not a thing. But !, and I cannot stress the importance of this, since this was a large concern for our responders, or in this case responder, we felt obligated to do whatever we could to alleviate this problem.

Tossing this hot potato back to our meteorologists and weather modifiers we gave them several hours to come up with a solution. And they did. Due to a legitimate fear of finding themselves back on the unemployment line they came up with a pretty darn good fix. Since the primary cause of fear was the fact that many people couldn’t see the sunrise due to things like blinding snowstorms, or intense darkness or having their eyes closed and thus became convinced that there wasn’t a sunrise thereby producing the angst and unrestrained panic that made them all crazy-like, we decided to tie the sunrise to not only early morning, but to the actual dawn part of the day. That’s the beauty part. That’s what makes this work.

That way people could depend on the fact that the sun would come up everyday, even if they couldn’t see it due to inclement conditions. They would know it was happening and be reassured. We also decided to add a spectrum enhancement that would occur every three or four sunrises that would be so spectacular that people would be talking about them for the next several days to get them over the next few days in case they didn’t get to see the sunrise, again due to crappy weather conditions.

These may seem like simple solutions after the fact, but if they were so simple why didn’t somebody come up with it before. Like maybe those guys sitting around in those big high paying think tank jobs, where they get to just sit around all day and think of stuff. There’s a waste of the taxpayers dollars if I ever saw one. This problem has been around for a while and we’ve fixed it in a few hours and do we get the big bucks? No sir-ree bob, we don’t. But your thanks are payment enough, so don’t worry, we’ll still be here to solve the worlds problems and do the hard thing when it needs to be done, because we’re The Institute and we’re here to help.

P.S. the image above is a sample of our new and improved uber-enhanced sunrises that we expect to be turning out by the boatload for your viewing pleasure.

Blue Thursday

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I always call today Blue Thursday because it is the first Thursday of September and it won’t be long until every Thursday and Tuesday and Friday and Wednesday will look like this all winter long. That is, it will if you live right on the very edge of the Grand canyon. If you don’t then your view will be somewhat different. It will still be Blue Thursday though no matter where you live, the view will just be different.

This is the time of the year where Mother Nature messes with your head. It’s sort of a little joke with her to screw you up, it helps her pass the time during an otherwise boring seasonal change over. Things like where one day you’re sweating like a donut in a police station and the next you’re as cold as an ex-wife’s heart. I wouldn’t complain about it too much though if I were you, she can do a lot worse, Mother Nature that is, and I for one do not want to cheese her off. Think of the Dark Ages where she killed off half the world’s population just because somebody said something they shouldn’t have. In her view we don’t have to be here you know, this is just a courtesy on her part because we amuse her occasionally.

If you look at the image closely, go ahead click on it, I’ll wait, you’ll see white stuff laying all over the place. We all know what that means don’t we. Snow shovels, snow days, dashing through the…, S’now business like Show business, Teenage Mutant Ninja Snow Turtles, S’now way Dude, I’m not eating that, and lots of other stuff that is nasty, cold, wet and uncomfortable. But I’m not complaining! I put that in, the I’m not complaining part, just in case Mother Nature reads my blog, I don’t know if she does but why take chances. I know this other blogger that made fun of this witch and now he has a head shaped like a Raccoon’s butt and all he can eat are buttermilk smoothies. I’m just saying. Watch what you say.

Yes I know that some of you might find that scene above beautiful, maybe even serene, certainly restful. There’s no drama involved, everybody kinda likes blue, and the open spaces make you feel like you’re a small little, slightly overweight bird with short stubby wings, flapping like crazy trying to make it to the other side, but remember, this is early in the morning, you haven’t had your caffeine of choice yet, it is really, really cold out there, the wind is clocking right at a blustery 35mph, and there is every chance your car won’t start and you’re going to have to take the bus to work today. That’s why I call this Blue Thursday, and I suspect you might too.

Let me know if you have any real trouble adjusting to the change and we’ll think nice thoughts about you. Otherwise start digging out all the down stuff you own, I think we’re in for a big one this year.

Abstract Art

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Nobody does abstract art like Mother Nature. Walking through Upper Antelope canyon is a spectacular event in itself and it is only made better by experiencing a view like this. This is not a static view. Moments later there wasn’t a trace of this combination of light and dark and all the shades in between, left. The shapes stay the same, this is about as close to eternal as you’re going to come in the natural world, but the light filtering in from the ceiling above and its intensity that allowed it to bounce and reflect from wall to wall, ceiling to floor and back again, compounded the layers of color until this particular moment in time was formed.

This isn’t an image the photographer created by causing any of this to happen. This is just a reaction to the sudden creation of an incredible moment and having the common sense to push the shutter while nearly blinded by beauty. Contrary to what you may have heard I can do common sense and this may be one of my finest examples. I need to be immersed in wonder like this as often as possible. And to share it with you.