Bear 399 is the most photographed grizzly bear in Grand Teton National Park. And, finally, today, after three long years, I still did not take her picture. Some people near me did, though. : ) This is a very interesting bear for two reasons: one, she does not mind people too much (not necessarily a good thing, mind you! And she has the ear tags to prove it.), and two, she has successfully brought up three big healthy-looking cubs mostly in sight of the road. The cubs are entering their third year now, though they still are noticeably smaller than their mother. We watched them rest and play and fish (and swim when they fell through the thin ice!), and even, incredibly, saw 399 nurse her nearly full-grown cubs! I was amazed to see that--even after two winters with their mom, the cubs still get some comfort, and probably less nourishment, from their mother's milk. Of course it is wonderful to watch a mother bear nurse cubs (even three enormous ones as these), as they are a bit like humans in the way they behave. The mother sits up or rolls onto her back and pulls the cubs toward her with her forepaws and snoozes and nuzzles their heads. Indeed, it is amazing to see such a massive, powerful animal touch her babies so gently with paws ending in four inch claws! She also paused to play with the cubs a few times, even doing several somersaults in the snow.
All in all, it was a wonderful wildlife day--two pairs of common loons, five red-breasted mergansers (fascinating to see the young males, still mostly in female-like plumage, but with perfectly round green spectacles and goatees, and very messy "hair"), a young male common goldeneye, a Northern goshawk (my first positive ID of an adult!), pelicans, swans, ducks of all kinds, my first Northern rough-winged swallows of the year, and my first barn swallow of hte year, Audubon's and Myrtle warblers (both technically yellow-rumped warblers, but only the former breeds here), dueling sapsuckers (hee hee--by the way, kind of dirty joke: if a female is a hen sapsucker, what do you call a male?), bald eagles on a nest and an osprey dive-bombing them, turkey condors (I'll explain that someday I'm sure..."vultures" for those of you who are familiar with them), including one on an elk carcass (amazingly, the first time I've seen a "vulture" on a carcass! Though, he/she couldn't get anything out of it--I may explain that another day too...), muskrats (I do love muskrats...), ground-squirrels (I have a huge soft spot in my heart for squirrels...), and, the strangest thing I'd ever seen in just about my whole life: eleven beavers sitting in a huddle on the ice, with green leaves and twigs around them, snoozing against and on top of each other in broad daylight, completely exposed. I'm sorry they were too far away to get a picture of, though it was absolutely amazing. In one fell swoop it was more beavers than I'd ever seen in my life, and just sitting there! Apparently the bears had broken into their lodge and some coyotes had killed one or two. I guess they felt safer in the frigid air than in their breached fortress! They looked all right, though, just a little chilly and sleepy. They will rebuild when the ice melts, I'm sure. (Yes, amazingly, it's May, almost the second week of May, and the river is flowing, of course, but the lakes and oxbows are still frozen (though not solid), and there is still a large amount of snow on the ground. It snowed in the mountains today, but rained down here for the first time this year!) A picture of the snow (taken near String Lake) next to a scowling person for scale. (That's my dad, actually. No idea why he looks so annoyed!)
But the really exciting thing that happened was Tom Mangelsen took a picture with my camera!
Um...yeah. Well, on this scale, you see he does have an eye for framing and balancing light and dark. Of course the horizon is not straight and those four blurry brown dots on the snow are the bears. I guess even great photographers sometimes take terrible pictures. OR maybe it's the camera... ; D
Anyway, one of the reasons I love living here is you do run into people like Tom (and have nice long chats with them sometimes too). (Tangent: You should see the picture my dad took of Henry Holdsworth at the Swan Roundup last year...Oh yes...The Swan Roundup, another Wyoming kind of thing. I'll write about that probably after this year's happens in June. Yeah...taking candid pictures of professional photographers with stunningly beautiful young females in their laps is another perk of living here!) ANYWAY...Tom took a bunch of pictures of us (including one with him, although of course that was taken by his "assistant slash girlfriend" (Tom's words), who's also named Susie.). I don't think they'll be available for purchase at Images of Nature. At least I hope not! Today was also laundry day for me and I hadn't taken a shower...Of course Tom himself was pretty dishevelled, as they've been following 399 around for a week now. Tom is a great conservationist as well as artist and I wanted to share a few things he said (though I'm afraid I'm getting pretty tired. It's 10 already!).
I really appreciated his comment about wildlife in general. He said, "you can't hate wolves and love moose and elk. You can't pick some animals and call them 'good' and label the rest 'bad.' You have to take Nature in its entirety," because of course, that's what it is. There is no good and bad. Things, Life, People even, only ARE. (I was thinking about that yesterday too...How even actions you think are good will hurt somebody. How nothing exists in a vacuum; how nothing can thrive without something else declining. But that's for another day.) Tom also shared his version of the story behind "High Noon On the Oxbow Bend" which was even more amazing than the story I'd heard at the gallery. It's his story to share, though he thought I should write a book about a similar story my folks witnessed. It's a thought... : ) Anyway, the point of the story, I guess, is that great photographs, like so many other things, involve staying around when everyone else has given up and an extraordinary amount of luck. And I find that inspiring. I also find it inspiring to know that I'm not alone in the world in caring about animals and Nature and wilderness. And a lot of those people live here.
--Susie
P.S. No, I didn't write today! At least I did a lot yesterday, and I'll get some done tomorrow. But you know...it was Wednesday. : )
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