Tag Archives: Yellowstone river

Grace and Tranquility

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Grace and Tranquility are recent graduates of Swan Training School and are back in Yellowstone National park as new members of swan society. Their job is to swim the quiet rivers of the park, displaying all the qualities of mature young adults, preening, posing gently in the smooth backwaters of the river bends, projecting an air of beauty and refinement you’ve come to expect from swans.

Those of you who are quick studies will notice that Grace is doing what she was trained to do but Tranquility, her classmate, seems to be missing. This is unfortunate because swans, although beautiful when seen alone are of course doubly beautiful when displayed in pairs and the normal procedure would be for the two of them to show up at their appointed places and work the river together.

It seems that Tranquility, always a willful child had a few problems at Swan Training school and nearly missed her graduation due to some disciplinary problems. A quick note here. Sometime, back around the first of last year, we at The Institute made a startling discovery of the existence of the Swan Training School and wrote about it after infiltrating the school to get the inside story of how young swans are made. You can read about it here http://www.bigshotsnow.com/2014/01/17/ . The training we found was harsh and rigorous. It’s a difficult road for young swans and the molding process used at the school is designed to break down individuality and force a form of collective thinking that produces a “Finished Swan”. Many make it through but some don’t. Tranquility was one that had some trouble.

. The training nuns of Our Sisters of the Immaculate Plumage, the nuns who run the school, despaired of Tranquility ever being able to graduate. They were quite firm with her and found her resistant to many of the aspects of swan training despite the measures used to get her “to get her mind right”. Finally they resorted to extreme training procedures, ones similar to those used in a large celebrity religion where there was shunning coupled with intense group crisis intervention methods, until nearly at her breaking point Tranquility agreed to be a “Good” swan. Nervous but convinced they had reached her, the nuns of the Fallen Plumage allowed her to graduate.

One of the events the recently graduated swans look forward to is Spring Break. They’re allowed to spend the two weeks prior to reporting for swan duty to attend the mass gathering of all the young swans at Padre Island and there enjoy the fellowship of their peers, laughing and singing and frolicking in the Texas sun. Being young swans they are expected to comport themselves in a manner that reflects well on swandom in general, which of course most of them do. But then there’s Tranquility.

It was a bad idea to send Tranquility on Spring Break. She fell in with some bad swans. Some really bad swans. Swans that had gone to Spring Break several years ago and never left. Once Tranquility met these kindred souls there was no looking back. Grace did her best to try and convince her to return and take up her life as a Yellowstone swan but her entreaties fell on deaf ears, Tranquility had found her place. Grace left soon after, winging her way back north until she reached the Yellowstone river, assuming her place as a  resident swan in a quiet stretch of river as it flows through the Hayden valley.

Tranquility on the other hand is still down at Padre. She works part-time in an Ink shop called the Quill and Skin pushing tats on unsuspecting young swans who will probably never make it back to their places either. She is very different appearing now and her ex-classmates and the nuns who taught her would never recognize her. She has dyed her wings feathers an emerald-green on one side and fire engine red on the other. Her peers have named her Traffic Stopper. Her long neck is shaven down one side to better display the Kanji tattooed there, the symbols supposedly saying her name, Tranquility, but due to a session with a drunken tattoo artist they say Hotel Bicycle instead. This was pointed out to her, but high on several prescription pain killers she simply shook her beak rings in irritation and went on her way. To her they will always say Tranquility.

Grace on the other hand can still be found at that very wide bend in the river, the one near Mt Mary trail, arriving every spring to take up her place and display the beauty and of course the grace of swans. She thinks of Tranquility often, wondering what her life is like now, but hasn’t had any contact with her since that fateful trip graduation year. Tranquility has been invited to the 3 and 5 year reunions held at the swan school but so far has not responded to any of them. The nuns presume her lost.

Table For One Please

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We have been getting cards and letters lately bemoaning the wretched state of table manners in Yellowstone National Park. Many of you, and by many I’m saying, fives of ones of you, have taken it upon yourselves to write critical letters regarding this phenomenon.

We recently received this letter from one Tilda Flapondo of East Pimple, NJ. She writes

Dear Director, While recently visiting that miserable place in Wyoming they call Yellowstone National Park I have to comment on the deplorable state of decorum, especially in the table manners of the citizens of this uncouth, backwoods landfill, and their total disregard for the most rudimentary knowledge of dining amongst well-mannered people such as my family and I.

Not even mentioning that as you travel the narrow twisty roads which are filled with nothing but trite mountain scenery, overfilled rivers and streams and disgusting animals, there is not a decent salon where one can get their hair and nails done. Plus my daughter wants to get her tattoo re-inked and this has simply been impossible. We’ve been subjected to the indignities of watching these barbarians, one might even call them animals, partake of their meals, eating with their mouths open, dropping parts of their food around what should be a dining table and generally behaving as if they were from New York city. We felt like a group of discarded pubic hairs tossed out of the roadway of disregard, yes, we felt so disrespected.

What has happened to our country, when decent people such as we are so mistreated and our insensibilities ignored. I can only say we are disgusted and shan’t return. I will be writing my congresswoman as soon as I get home. You’ll be lucky if they don’t close this place down.

I remain,

Disenchanted in East Pimple, N.J. (exit 9)

Here is our considered response,

Dear Disenchanted, First let me say that I am terribly sorry that you had a less than stellar visit to the grandmother of all national parks and understand that you were disappointed. But I must ask you one question. Is it true that you live in a town named East Pimple, New Jersey? What the hell were you people thinking when you named that garden spot. East Pimple, my god, and you criticize the beauty in the west.

First and by no means last, we must take exception to your statement that our ‘animals’ as you call them, have no table manners. The image above shows that you don’t know whether you walked to work or wound your watch. This is a young grey wolf of the Better Table Manners clan dining alone at one of the tonier establishments along the Yellowstone river. He has selected a table for one and is leisurely dining on a delectable meal of dead buffalo. This is not an overly mannered young wolf. He is in fact typical, and feels quite badly that you have mis-characterized him and his pack mates in this fashion.

Our animal citizens have been put through a rigorous training program by Mother Nature and taught good table manners in spite of your opinion. Our wolf packs tend to dine in areas set back away from the roadside and our grizzlies will often take a young elk or buffalo calf they are dismembering into the brush to consume it out of sight of our more squeamish visitors.

As a lesson in public relations we have circulated your letter amongst the different groups mentioned and to an individual they have decided that they would like to have you and your family for dinner. This is a rare honor and one I would hope you would take them up on at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your comments and please, don’t hesitate to visit us again.

I remain, The Director of The Institute, an organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of the images and reputation of our western cultures, heritage and traditions.

As always we want your cards and letters and your comments are always welcome. Rest assured that we will do our utmost to answer any questions or concerns to the best of our abilities. Remember, we are The Institute and we’re here to help.

We See By Your Outfit…

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We see by your outfit

That you are a wild duck

You see by our outfits

That we’re wild ducks too

We see by our outfits that we are all wild ducks

If you get an outfit you can be a wild duck too…

Many times in the dark unrelenting cold of a gray winters day, when the bone chilling water pulls all of the heat out of your webbed feet, you need a little something to pick you up. To help you maintain some perspective on why you’re a duck and why you’re still here on the Yellowstone river when everyone else has gone south to stick their feet in the warm sands of the winter migration site on the Gulf coast or maybe Maui. It can get pretty depressing to have your rump stuck in freezing cold water all day.

Ducks are not known for their singing voices, in fact if you’ve ever heard a bunch of them trying you know immediately that it is not their thing. It may sound a little like Rap but better, but they will never be mistaken for meadowlarks. What they’ve had to do to compensate is convert old western songs like “The Streets of Laredo” as they have done here, to a sort of talking blues style of singing that relates to duck stuff. Kind of like the gandy dancers did while they worked laying those rails as they built the railroads of America.

Sometimes the larger bull ducks, the one with deeper voices, will do old show tunes like “Old Man River” from Show Boat in the style of Paul Robeson, or the smaller ducks with higher voices will do stuff from “Cats” or “The Pajama Game”, but the Teal boys, the green-wing and blue-wing, like the ones in this image, and often the cinnamon are strictly western singers. They like the old classics, the ones they heard while watching old cowboy movies from the 40’s and 50’s. Guys sitting around a campfire singing lamentable songs to ease the strain of moving a herd along. Gene Autry is a big favorite with these fellows. I’ve even heard of some of the Teal boys sporting tattoos with “Gene is My Hero” and “I Winter at the Melody Ranch” under some of those feathers.

That’s what is going on in the picture above. The boys are singing to this stranger who just drifted up and can no longer feel the webbing in his feet, trying to give him some support and reason to hang in there, even though he’s making eyes like he’s going to break and run any minute for that warm southern clime. So the next time you’re driving along and pass a small ice-rimmed pond with a couple of ducks in it, stop and listen for a moment. You might just get serenaded.

Back To Basics

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In my business which is Photography, every once in a while it’s good to get back to basics. Get back to your roots, your foundation if you will, so you can get a better perspective on where you’re at now. Are you any better? Has your technique improved? Are you still seeing the shots you saw when all this was new, or are you starting to lose touch a little. Getting a little stale.

Hopefully you’ve improved. Technical skill should definitely be better. You got new and improved gear that is technically superior to what you were using back in the beginning. Post processing should be way up too. The software has been improved to the point of being magic. But the big thing is, and what is the single most important skill a photographer has, is, has your eye improved. Are you seeing things in a new way after years of experience, or are you still shooting the same way you did when you first started. Retaining a lot of the enthusiasm and developing the style you began in the beginning is ok but has your vision clarified and increased your ability to capture what you’re seeing in a better way. Are your pictures working better. These are the questions I ask myself when I go back to basics.

The difference in your early work, and is it better, is when you showed someone your images then and they said “Oh, cool. Where’d you see that?” and when they see one of your images now and say “Oh man, Unbelievable. That is incredible.” I like to hear the second one best. I don’t always get it but I get it a lot more than I used to. One hopes that indicates progress.

The shot above is one of my earliest images taken in Yellowstone way back when digital cameras were still diesel-powered. I like to think it still works. I refer back to this time period a lot because it was a time of greatest excitement for me, everything was new. I couldn’t turn around without taking a zillion photos. I literally shot thousands and thousands of images then, while terrified I was going to miss something and not get it recorded. The gear was less sophisticated, as was the software, and everything revolved around your eye, what would make a compelling image, what would be a unique view that the observer of my work would see for the first time as I did. The view finder was everything.

The jury is still out on my improvement percentage. I like to think I still see things the casual observer misses. I still get goose bumps when I see an image that really works and I realize that I created it. So I have decided there is nothing more for me to do but keep shooting, keep learning, keep seeing. Maybe one day I’ll know for sure what my status is. Until then I can keep referring to what I’ve done in the past and hope for the best.

Spa Day

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It’s Friday again, I know, how could that happen, it was just Monday a minute ago but it is. And as you know this is the day we give you ideas on what to do over the weekend. This weekend we thought we might offer something a little different. Last weekends suggestion of jetting off to Cape Disappoint on the Washington coast in your private jet was a big hit with some of you. Actually very few of you but the ones who went said it was great.

This weekend we decided to scale it down a bit and offer something for the ladies out there. That’s a big fat Spa day! Guys can go along too, but I’d recommend skipping the pedicure session Saturday morning. Ladies and some who aren’t really, like spa days and find it a big treat to go to them and have stuff done to them that they can’t get done in the privacy of their own homes.

So what can you do at a spa and more importantly what can be done to you in a spa, you might ask. Well lucky for you, you’ve come to the right place for answers. Listed below, in no particular order, are spa treatments you can order at your local spa, or if they’re unavailable there, where you can go this weekend to get them.

First is a Snake massage.

Hop over to Israel where you can get a massage from several non-venomous snakes as they slither up and presumably down your spine. Cost $70 US.

Or try your choice of the Tea, Coffee,red wine, sake, or Ramen noodle bath in Japan.

This is one is a little closer to home and I’ll bet to ladies hearts. That’s the chocolate wrap you can get at the spa in Hershey, Pa. They will wrap you or more concisely smear chocolate all over you and they mean all over and then leave you alone for a while. As a guy I have to wonder why they would leave you alone for a while but women do some strange stuff so we’ll just leave it at that.

Gold. In Japan, they give you a gold facial. That’s gold painted on your face for as long as you want it there. The cost, a measly 250 bucks, and I gotta say that if you can afford the plane ticket to Japan and back that’s pretty darn reasonable.

How about a cactus massage? In Mexico you can get rubbed, whacked, stroked or whatever with a spineless cactus paddle and pay for it. The cost $245. It doesn’t say whether that is in peso’s or dollars

And for those of  you with more agrarian roots there is a Wet Hay Wrap in Italy where you get wrapped in wet hay harvested from the meadows of Alpe di Siusi between mid-July and early August then lie on a special 100° waterbed until they harvest you I guess. As a special bonus for those of you who make it you receive a foot treatment where a fish named the Garra Rufa eat away whatever may be lurking on your feet.

I saved the most special treatment for last. That’s the Fanny Facial.  I know it seems like a contradiction in terms but that’s how it’s listed. In New York City, like where else except maybe most of California, can you get a fanny facial? I mean it’s strange even asking the question. What happens is you go in and ask for this deliberately, obviously they don’t just give you one without asking, then they perform a exfoliation of the fanny areas with a papaya-mint scrub, followed by a micro-current therapy where they apparently zap your hiney with low-voltage current to remove in their words, “any lumps or bumps from your butt”, then the whole business is finished with an organic spray tan so your fanny glows like the noon day sun. This has got to be special people. The cost was not revealed but I got to say it has to be worth it.

So those are just some of the treatments available to the Spa goer. Yes they may seem a little irregular to those who don’t frequent spas regularly or that only go to low rent ones where these special treatments aren’t available but our job is to bring you the newest and trendiest things out there, and these were certainly out there.

The ladies pictured above have just completed Yellowstone’s interpretation of a spa which is, as you can see, a snow spa, where you can spend a leisurely hour or two in the sub-zero waters of the Yellowstone river, then be rubbed down by brawny park rangers with snow before finishing the day next to a warm geyser. Upon asking we found that the Fanny Facial is not offered in Yellowstone.

There you have it. That’s the special weekend activities for you ladies. I’m sure you can’t wait to “hit the spa” as they say somewhere I’m sure. For you guys I might remind you that there’s a game on almost every minute of the weekend and beer in the fridge. Just give her the credit card and don’t ask.

Spires Of The Fisher Kings

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 Spires6691Osprey Along the Yellowstone river   click to enlarge

There is a magical place in Yellowstone where the Yellowstone river slowly cuts its way through a magnificent canyon on its way through the park until it joins the mighty Missouri river way off to the East. Eon after eon it reveals the details hidden in the granite walls. As the water wears away the outer coating of the cliff sides these walls begin to take on a life of their own. It will shed one formation, letting it cascade into the canyon below to be swept downstream as small boulders and pebbles smashing and rubbing together until there is nothing left but sand, then presenting another formation as a prominent detail until it tires of it and begins the process all over again.

Throughout these eons there have always been fierce inhabitants making their homes in the rocky ledges and spire-tops up and down the canyon, each striving to claim  a small portion of the cliffs as their own fiefdom. They are known as the Fisher people and the strongest, fiercest of them all become the Fisher Kings. They have proven their right to their kingdom through trial by battle and prevailed, holding on to the area they claim from repeated assaults of those that would dethrone them and take their land and their queens.

The area they carve out as their own each have special nesting sites which may be the top of mighty spires, or tucked into the fissures in the cliff face, or on ledges high up on the canyon walls. Some of these nests have been occupied for years upon years, each new generation adding to the nest until the nests can weigh over a ton. Sometimes the nest gets so large that a fierce winter storm can send it cascading over the edge to hang precariously until it finally collapses into the river  below. Undeterred the owners soon begin the rebuilding process and a new nest emerges.

They sit on guard using the tip of a spire to watch for intruders and to scan the river below with their incredible eyesight for the movement of fish in the shallows. When prey is spotted they tuck their wings and dive into the canyon in a stoop that can take them down over a thousand feet to the river’s surface. The climb back up to their nests carrying a 20″ cutthroat tests their strength but they always make it.

Each year they mate and rear their young until they are ready to leave the nest and fight for a place along the canyon walls to raise their own families. They will be the next Fisher Kings and the cycle continues.

Lifting Of The Night Fog

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MistOnTheYellowstone7874-editYellowstone River Hayden Valley       click to enlarge

By nature I was never a morning person. Getting up at the crack of dawn, looking forward to the coming day, being cheerful and enthusiastic about whatever the day might bring, that never was my strong point. I was more of the “Is my coffee ready yet? What catastrophe is waiting for me today. Who do I have to kill this morning.” kind of guy. Then I got older.

One of the unexplainable things about aging is that every habit you’ve had in your life changes. If you were Type A, now you’re mellow or at least mellower. If you were someone who regularly pounded out 8-10 hours of sleep and couldn’t wait for the weekend so you could sleep til noon, now you’re getting up at 4:30 in the morning and you can’t get back to sleep. I mean you can’t get back to sleep. The sleeping thing in your brain says “no, dude, you’re up, deal with it.” This is one of the most difficult changes to come to grips with.

My dad, who was one for saying sayings, used to say “If you find yourself in hot water, take a bath.” He also said “A bird in the hand makes it really difficult to blow your nose.” So I learned pretty early on which sayings were useful and which weren’t. The ‘take a bath’ one comes in handy for getting through adverse situations, but because it is often a hard thing to do, not many people do it. The ‘bird in the hand’ one, well, that was just dad.

Going to Yellowstone to photograph the park in all its glory was the thing that turned waking up really early into a 14 carat advantage. I was up, the park was too. It was beautiful, what was I doing sitting here drinking coffee when I could be out there doing what I came for. I began to understand what the poor misguided but enthusiastic, idiots had been talking about when they blathered on in their bubbly manner about the beauty of the sunrise and how good it felt to be out and about in the crisp morning air. I almost forgave myself for the black murderous thoughts I had about slowly strangling them in the crisp morning air of their beautiful sunrise, but not quite. Some of them actually would have deserved it.

The biggest shock though was that I had suddenly become one of them. Not the enthusiastic bubbly airhead kind but just the realization that it was beautiful and there was a whole new world to be seen before 10:00 am. and it was ok to be up for it. I was careful to not spread the cheer to those still stuck in the “If god meant for you to wake up early, it would happen automatically” stage of their life, they have enough going on without some jerk adding to their misery. Things would work out for them or they wouldn’t. I recognized the point they were at but I knew I had changed. The gods are nothing if not capricious. It must have amused them no end to have me standing out there in the pre-dawn cold freezing my hiney off waiting for the light to turn so I could get the shot. The worst part of it though was making me enjoy it.

The image above is the sun rising over the Yellowstone river in the Hayden valley on a very cold morning. I was there waiting for it. In fact I had been there early because I was up anyway. And it was worth every freezing second.