Tag Archives: spring

Springtime In Scott’s Bluff

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Some of you out there have written in to say that Spring is happening in other parts of the country besides the Rockies. While we don’t dispute that statement entirely we still stand by our position that Spring is really a Mountain event best seen by visiting any part of the high country now. We suggest that you hurry west until you run into the area where the ground is pointing sharply upwards then proceed with caution so you don’t smack into something beautiful.

Now having said that we understand that some of you may have strong regional feelings, and for that we’re truly sorry, and even think, misguided as it may be, that Spring is beautiful near where you live. We can’t help you much with that other than to sympathize and make the offer yet again for you to come visit out here, in the mountains, the home of Spring itself.

In order to placate some of you that have sent in rather heated letters stating that you’d appreciate a little acknowledgement of your local beauty we have decided to show you a view of somewhere different today. This would be Scott’s Bluff Nebraska, a place on the way to the Rockies. It’s famous for being a spot to reach early in your trip, if you were tripping in a wagon train full of covered wagons on your way to California in the 1800’s.

You definitely wanted to be here in very early Spring if you were going to make it over the mountains and into California before winter set in again. So, as many of you who got here and saw the daunting task of the journey yet before you said “screw it I’m staying here” this became a regular sight every Spring and we have to admit, it is pretty. Actually it’s very pretty and we’re almost convinced that there are very lovely places if one does venture away from the mountains occasionally. I realize that this might be construed as a heretical statement but we try to be fair and impartial here.

Here’s another view of  the same area.

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See it’s nice.

Alright then. That should satisfy those of you who are convinced that Spring exists other places than here in the Rocky Mountains.

On A Mission

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Yellowstone National Park

This is what we call in the trade a B.O.M. or a Bear On a Mission. When Spring happens here in Yellowstone several things occur. A Lot of the snow melts. The Rangers are nice to everybody because they haven’t seen a soul in seven months. The Geezers are running because school isn’t out yet and you can drive around the park without getting caught in bear jams, or squirrel jams, or I think I saw a wolf jam. And the bears come out. Not that kind of coming out. The kind where they wake up out of hibernation, dig themselves out of their dens, and are now ready to resume doing all manner of bear things kind of coming out.

One of the most major, cannot wait, this needs to be handled right now things that have to be taken care of, is getting something to eat. These guys have not eaten since they went to sleep last November. It is now May. That’s like, what, (counting carefully on fingers) seven months. Most of us can’t get through seven hours without wanting to hit the buffet line at the all-you-can-eat pancake house. At this point one would not want to be standing between this bear and a Quarter pounder, or even a long dead buffalo just emerging from a snow bank where it has been fermenting slowly all winter. One does not want to be wearing any Eau d’ Pizza cologne either. This is particularly good advice as bears can smell very well. They would notice you.

The bear above smells something and has set off to find it. You can tell by his body language that he is determined, confident, purposeful, a Scorpio, likes long walks in the snow, no, wait, I was just kidding about the Scorpio stuff, he’s actually a Libra, but he is determined. What is on the other side of the snow bank is unknown but since he is a bear on a mission we can assume it is food related. Spring has sprung and with it all manners of really cool stuff. So if you’re not busy hop on up to Yellowstone and check it out.

Buffalo Spawn

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Boy oh boy oh boy are we here at *The Institute excited. It’s Spring and time for one of the greatest, if not the most unlikely, spectacles ever to occur in Nature. We’re talking about the Buffalo Spawn that happens every April along the Firehole river in Yellowstone National Park. This phenomenon was first discovered several years ago by one of our free range wildlife photographers working on a separate project in Yellowstone and we have been fortunate to document this amazing process ever since.

The Institute, as has been noted many times in the past, has many ongoing projects underway at all times and the one our photographer was working on at the time this spawning phenomenon was noted, was a study on why river banks are just wide enough to accommodate the water that flowed through them and no wider, when he noticed strange behavior in the buffalo herds. The buffalo began gathering at the riverside jostling and shoving each other until they began to frantically enter the water and begin moving up-stream. Sometimes singly or in pairs, cows and bulls alike struggled upstream against the current in a single-minded desire to reach the shallows at the headwaters of the river to begin their spawning.

No obstacle was too great to keep them from moving ever upstream, clamoring over rocks and boulders, leaping mightily up water falls, their coats and horns glistening in the sun as they swam exhaustedly against the raging current, struggling until they reached that final tributary where they had been created many years ago. There under the light of a full moon the cows released their eggs and the bulls their sperm and as the river slowly allowed fertilization the eggs containing the new buffalos began to tumble downstream through rapids and wide gentle bends until catching up against a snag lying across the  stream, or a pebble bed where they could sink into safety amongst the stones and germinate, the eggs rested, began to grow, and thereby begin a new generation of buffalo.

Life is never a sure thing here in Yellowstone and the eggs were at constant risk of being found and devoured by predators. Wolves hungry as only wolves can be searched constantly along the riverbanks looking for egg clusters that had attached to rocks or plants along the shore and finding them, greedily devoured them for the protein that future young buffalo calves could provide them while in their embryonic state.

 Grizzlies could be seen out in the middle of the river casually turning over great snags, the remains of giant trees that had fallen into the river to float downstream until they lodged themselves in the shallows and found a permanent home. Ripping the snags apart with their tremendously strong forearms and sharp claws, the egg clusters of the new buffalo generation were easy pickings for the mammoth beasts to find and consume.

But life always finds a way. And many of the eggs escaped detection and over time developed into their next phase of development which of course is the ‘buffpole’ stage where they began to grow their little hooves and tails and assume the shape we recognize as ‘Buffalo’. By now they had been fed steadily by the nutrients in the river and were beginning to break free from the egg sack that had enveloped them. If the light was just right these small fry could be seen forming little groups or herds, galloping from one place of safety in the water to another, gaining strength and nimbleness needed to leave the confines of the river and move on to land to begin their new lives as the Giants of the Plains, the buffalo.

Once established on land the new young buffalo, now known as ‘calves’, would be adopted by an adult female or ‘cow’ and be nursed and shown how to graze. They grew rapidly and were now totally independent of the river from which they formed. Yet you can still see some remnants of the behavior established in their early stages, such as when they gather in large groups or ‘herds’ and run thundering from one place to another for no apparent reason. This is a hold over from their schooling behavior when they were freshly formed fry in the river, and now it has become established as part of their genetic behavior on the land.

If you want to observe this spawning behavior of the buffalo you must hurry to Yellowstone because it doesn’t last long. Once it starts the buffalo are tireless in their obsession to get upstream and complete the spawning process that ensures that the new herd will be replenished. It is often over before you arrive, in fact if you are reading this now in May, you’ve already missed it. Sorry, but we can assure you that it does happen as proven by the huge number of buffalo seen grazing in the vast meadows of Yellowstone National park. After all where else could they have come from.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

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.

Spring Rain

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Monument valley is normally a hot, dry, dusty place. A desert. You need to carry water as you trek across it lest they find your poor coyote chewed bones spread across the dunes. But in the Spring things can change dramatically as you see here. Storms come rolling in out of the Baja and dump a huge amount of water on land that is ill-equipped to hold it.

As the rain hits it begins to run off the land filling the arroyos and washes to capacity, picking up sand and small rocks, tearing along in a ferocious torrent until it begins to move the larger boulders and other debris along with it. A short distance away there is a famous slot canyon called Antelope canyon where you can see full-sized tree trunks lodged 50′ up in the crevices of the canyon walls, placed there by water from a storm just like this one raging through it.

This day the storm was one of the milder ones. There was rain but it didn’t last that long. There was runoff but it was manageable. Fog and low-lying clouds obscured the buttes and towers giving the observer a  very different picture of Monument Valley. No stagecoaches tearing along the road in front of the Mittens and Mitchell butte today. And if there was you wouldn’t have been able to see it as the visibility was practically zero down at ground level.

This was a day of looking at the valley from a distance. There was no admittance into the valley as the roads inside are made up of sand and clay and turn into a quagmire as soon as water touches them. Driving on them without four-wheel drive was next to impossible and pretty close to impossible with it, as the muck sticks to your tires and will soon fill up your wheel wells with a solid granite-like mixture you have to dig out with a small spade.

This condition doesn’t last very long because as soon as the sun comes out it dries everything up and the road returns to its near concrete-like state. This is a strangely beautiful time to view the valley, one not seen all that often. The mammoth rock formations appear out of the fog like huge ships passing by in the strange muted light, soundlessly, leaving no wake. Every sound carries across great distances. You can hear the final streams of water falling down the stream beds, rocks striking each other until they come to a new resting place. There seems to be a dearth of bird calls, the ravens quiet until the fog begins to thin and drift away. Then they call out in single note if you can call a ravens call a note, it’s more like a raspy croak, checking on each other to see how they fared through the storm.

The weather is changing despite the denials of some of our leaders and it is uncertain what the future will bring. There is a drought going on out on the west coast and since many of these desert storms begin there the question is will we see rain in the desert in the spring. I believe I’m just going to go and see for myself. Come on along if you want.

Long Winter

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Well it’s been a long winter here at The Institute and there was a point where some despair was settling in, but as often happens when you set your resolve and say ” Darn it, it’s been a long winter and I sure as heck am sick of it, but I know that Spring will come, because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me” things will change and they did.

The last part of the quote we borrowed from an intern named Stuart who used to work for us and is one of the few that went on to bigger, and some say, better things. In fact he was the only one we know of that isn’t still on public assistance after leaving here. However the jury is still out on whether that is an improvement because becoming a bigwig in the government isn’t everyone’s idea of bettering themselves.

But we made it. It looks like Spring is here, our Aspen have those tiny little neon green leaves that nearly glow they’re so bright. There’s small little red buds peeking out from under last years canes on the rose bushes. Stellar Jays have arrived in flocks of indigo blue flashes as they flit from tree to tree. One day not long ago an entire herd of robins came and sat in one of our snags and completely filled every spot available for sitting. Usually you just look up and there’s a few robins but that day there were dozens and dozens. That’s pretty darn spring-like.

We wanted to show you some pictures of Spring here at The Institute but our cameras are still in storage and we can’t find the blowtorch to thaw the lock on the door so this shot of Spring in Arches National Park will have to stand in for us. It’s pretty close to what things look like here anyway so we didn’t think it would matter that much. The green on that tree is almost exactly the shade of our green, you just have to disregard the sand though as we don’t have nearly that much lying around.

Spring always causes a flurry of action here at The Institute. The snow melts away and we find the road again right where we left it last fall. That’s going to make our coming and going easier. The overflow of interns we had last fall begin to dig out of the caves they spent the winter in. We had a larger than normal number of interns for some reason, we think it was for the free food and the chance to watch HBO up at the big house once in a while. The dorms were packed and couldn’t handle even one more body. We need to pay attention to the fire code here as having over ten or more people in a single room often leads to friction and that leads to heat and that leads to fire and it’s awful. Plus we don’t need anymore adverse publicity after that fiasco with the Intern Riots, Fall of 2014 where they nearly burned The Institutes main center down. The only thing that saved us was that the main building’s first four stories are made of pre-stressed concrete and are very hard to ignite. However most of that crew is gone.  But being young and cunning and thinking more about survival, the more resourceful of them, at least the ones that didn’t perish in the cold, dug substantial caves and apparently made them quite homey.

Spring is always a time of renewal and it’s always a welcome sight to see the interns emerging from the cliff side, wan and somewhat emaciated but cheerful never the less, blinking and rubbing their eyes as they see the sun for the first time in months. They seem eager for the spring routine to begin where they’re run through the communal showers, shorn and issued their new spring work clothes. It’s a wonderful start to the year. Spring brings out the best in everyone and we’re looking forward to great things as The Institute gets rolling again. We have big plans. Stay tuned for further adventures.

Note: Due to an unexpectedly high mortality rate amongst our interns we are now accepting applications for employment. If you are considering a change of pace and want an action packed, semi-dangerous occupation with the opportunity to accomplish little or nothing of value at a criminally low pay scale please send your resume to the  Director@BigShotsNow.com We are an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Bear Tales

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As we head into Spring it’s time for the bears to wake up and start the new season. Last fall they were stuffing themselves with anything edible in order to make it through the winter. This Black bear lady has two of last years cubs with her, although they aren’t in this shot, and next season she will cut them loose to go out and be bears on their own. They will den up with her this winter for the last time.

Before all that takes place she has a job to do. She has to bulk up and gain the weight needed to last through the winter. She has been eating everything in sight. Roadkill, carcasses that the wolves pulled down that she has appropriated, grass, bugs, Miller moths, and a delicacy she really likes, seeds from the pine cones from the white pine tree.

Here she has captured one of those pine cones and is holding it delicately in her front paws while she carefully pulls the individual scales off the cone to get at the seeds. It seems like a lot of work for such a small prize but she stays at it until she has eaten her fill. This is her chocolate and she’s a glutton. In the fall there seems to be enough pine cones on the ground and she can eat her fill without having to do too much work. If she finds a windfall where the pines cones have built up, like a place where they’ve rolled down into a gully and bunched up, she may stay there until she and her cubs have pretty much cleaned them out. Often sleeping on or near the pile so they’re at hand, or paw as it were, when she wakes up in the morning.

In the spring when there is still snow on the ground and the cones are more difficult to find she and her cubs will climb up into the white pines, heading to the top of the tree until it nearly bends over from their weight, and harvest the pin cones right off the tree.

She ‘s lucky today, the weather is perfect, she’s just located a huge stash of pine cones and she’s eaten so many so far that she is half-standing, half-laying on them as she still crams them into her mouth. The sound of her crunching the pine cones to make the scales fall off can be heard from some distance.

The cubs are behaving now and as they are sort of like teenagers at this point, they can not eat enough, but they give it their best shot as they too have figured out they better put on the pounds so they can make it through the winter. They can sleep as much as 10 and a half months without eating, drinking, urinating, defecating, while getting all the nutrients they need from the stored up fat of their own bodies as they sleep throughout the winter. This is why the bears pack it on and look like hairy sumo wrestlers when it’s time to den up.

This image was shot in late September in Yellowstone and this bear and her cubs have a couple of weeks yet before it’s time to head into the den. It looks like she has a good start on getting fattened up for the winter. It’s hard to image that she’ll put on even more weight in the next couple of weeks, but she will. So we’ll leave her to it. If we could catch her when she emerges from her den next spring you wouldn’t believe it was the same robust bear we’re looking at now as she will be just a pale shadow of herself. Sleep well.