Westward 2001 - Galburt & Heimann

We awoke to a beautiful, sunny, clear day. The temperature would reach into the low 60's in the afternoon. We had our usual MacBreakfast, but were disappointed to learn that the West Yellowstone store doesn't participate in the Specials. The very same breakfast that cost $2.75 yesterday was now about three times that expensive. I wasn't pretty sore about this seemingly arbitrary decision on their part until Carol informed me that on most of the advertisements for specials, they say the rates apply at "all participating stores". OK, Bill, let it go. Don't let it ruin your day - gosh, I'm getting grownup!

On to Yellowstone. We walked up to the overlook of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Perhaps the clear blue skies and the sunshine contributed to it, but I thought this was a magnificent sight. It's smaller than the Grand Canyon in Arizona, but somehow it impressed me more. Paul and I concluded that maybe Arizona's Grand Canyon is so large, whatever your vantage point, it still appears like a picture, whereas the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is something you can more relate to. You feel part of this one, something that's probably impossible in Arizona unless maybe you took a trip down into it. In any event, I thought this was a spectacular sight, and I'd never heard of it until we were there. Actually, as we left the car and started walking towards it, I still had no idea what we were going to see. I was amazed when all of sudden it was there before me.

As we stood on the overlook, Paul made a very interesting observation.

There's a scene in the Imax movie, Yellowstone, where an Indian chief tells a white explorer that he will take him to see "the water that makes thunder". While watching the movie, I didn't get the real significance of this scene because I didn't know about this Grand Canyon and the waterfall that caused it. Of course, the Indian was referring to the waterfall and the noise it creates.

Paul asked, "Did the Indians ever wonder how this canyon was created?" He thought that the Western European mind displayed an intellectual curiosity about the world around them that may have been absent in other cultures. Indeed, curiosity was the engine of human progress.

I thought about this for days, and Paul is probably right, with one exception. The Chinese also displayed this curiosity, but lost it about a thousand years ago when their government got so xenophobic, a condition that still hampers them today.

We lunched at Lake Lodge alongside beautiful Yellowstone Lake. The place was deserted of tourists, a fact that didn't displease us. (They're such a nuisance. If it weren't for them, more people could enjoy our National Parks!) We engaged the cashier in conversation. She informed us that she's from Rhode Island, and there's a place about a mile from her home that's the "drug capital of the world". Say what? Rhode Island? The "drug capital of the world"??? Honey, you need to get out more.

At lunch we discussed this statement and shortly we concluded that we didn't know what she meant. More drugs sold there? More drugs consumed there? I mentioned that in Gordon's book, Hamilton's Blessing, he states that Rhode Island was the smuggling capital of colonial America when Britain had imposed taxes on any non-British imports. Perhaps she meant that the area near her home was the "drug smuggling capital of the world", but we doubted that too.

We wondered what percentage of the drugs in this country are sold in the ghetto. We hear stories about movie stars, athletes, and upper class kids having drug problems, but in reality are these instances just the tip of the iceberg and the bulk of the problem is in the ghetto, or are they representative that this drug problem is more pervasive in our society?

The cafeteria was pretty empty. There was a young employee cleaning tables while we ate. It's the first time any of us had seen someone down on the floor cleaning the underside of a table. Now that's thorough! On our way out, we talked to a girl who was cleaning the front door. This is her fourth year working summers at the Lodge, and in her opinion, this is the best place to work in the park. There are lull times here and fewer employees, both of which afford her more time to get to know the other kids working there. She said that it wasn't that hard to get a summer job in Yellowstone. She had applied over the Internet.

As we left the Lake Lodge, Paul commented that we've seen kids working in both parks from several parts of the country and from a few foreign countries, but not anyone from an inner city - they all wear name badges which include their place of residence. If the way to apply is thru the Internet, then their absence didn't seem surprising. We wondered how much access there is to the Internet in the inner city.

We could imagine many people willing to donate older computers, but to use a computer, you still have to be able to read. Would using a computer be a symbol of the "white man's world" to the rank and file of the inner city, and hence it would brand any kid caught using one as a traitor?

It seemed to us that any segment of society that voluntarily distances itself from computers in general, and from the Internet in particular, is ostracizing itself from the future.

Just before you exit the park at the North entrance, there's a very small town called Mammoth Hot Springs, the location of the original Fort Yellowstone, which is home to many of the park service employees. Actually, they live in the original officers' quarters, large houses that have been converted into duplexes, side by side. The reason we drove around the town was the presence of three elk herds just wandering and grazing as they please. It was fascinating to see the integration of these large, wild animals in this setting. And believe me, elk are big. They're much bigger than deer. We saw some males who were the size of large horses.

The houses, or old officer quarters, are in a row with a street running in the front and in the back. We parked our car, and started to walk on the street behind the houses. I noticed a plethora of manure, but the thing that most interested me was the fact that there were two kinds, one like a cow pie and the other more like sheep droppings. One was most certainly elk, but which one, and what was the other?

I spotted a woman hanging laundry on a line, with a herd of elk not 30 feet away. The females were contentedly grazing on the lush lawn. The male was staring at her, and she seemed completely unconcerned. Now folks, I can tell from the look in your eyes that you don't get the significance of this. Let me put it this way: Here's a defenseless woman, a herd of about twenty female elk with its male protector, we're in the mating season, the male's very protective of his harem at this time, and he's eyeing this woman as if she were about to impregnate them all. With the possible exceptions of holding a bear cub as the mother returns, or being in the vicinity of any male between the ages of 16 and 30, this is one of the most dangerous situations you could be in.

But, hell, I thought, unless she's Helen Keller, she probably knows something I don't, so I approached her and inquired whether I could ask a few questions. Agreeing to this might have been her first mistake, because the four of us stood with her for the next half hour asking questions.

Her name was Mrs. Varley, if you can trust the nameplate on the house. She and her husband have worked for the Park Service for 20 years. They have three grown sons who work for Intel, the Peace Corps in El Salvador, and as a teacher. The teacher wanted to work for the Park Service, but they have very strict rules against nepotism, so he was rejected. She manages people who monitor the outlying regions of the park, where only backpackers go. There's virtually no crime in this city, her kids loved living here.

There's been a drought for two years in this area, which causes the elk to spend more time in town where there are lush lawns to eat rather than dry, brown grass - nobody ever said elk were stupid. The townspeople consider them inhabitants, not guests. Oh yes, the manure. Both kinds are from elk. It's just a matter of how much water has recently been in their diet.

About this time the bull elk watching us turned 180 degrees and faced off with the male of another herd munching on the grass of the next lawn. Oh boy, I thought, we're living the Discovery channel! Well, they stared for a few minutes, then the one nearest us turned and started chasing his girls off the other way. Mrs. Varley explained that the reason there wasn't a confrontation was that the other male was significantly larger. The only time they actually fight is if they're relatively the same size.

During the mating season, the male hardly eats but monitors his herd and constantly checks the females to see if they're receptive. The females are each in heat about 24 hours a year. The males get weak and lose weight during this period from all the sex, and from not eating. Thus, their dominant position in a particular herd is more vulnerable at this time. His harem usually consists of a total of about 20, including cows and young ones. Due to all this stress, the male life span is considerably shorter than the female's.

We considered ourselves very fortunate to witness this confrontation between bulls, and to have it narrated by an expert.

Mrs. Varley explained that since the Park Service got tough with tourists regarding them approaching wild animals, and the Service began using bear-proof waste containers, they've reduced the bear/people attacks by about 95%. Poaching is also reduced. There was a famous case a couple of years ago where the poacher killed one of the large "town" Elk bulls. He then took his Elk kill to a local taxidermist who subsequently reported him.

In Mammoth Hot Springs, it's also very common to have bears in town, so common in fact the inhabitants have all grown accustom to looking both ways before exiting a building.

Yellowstone is the second largest national park. The biggest is in Alaska and has the initials A. R., I believe. I didn't quite get the name.

At Mrs. Varley's suggestion we ate at a little hamburger stand, The Corral, in the town of Gardiner, the town just outside the North entrance/exit to the park, and the town in which our hotel was located. We ate outside in at a picnic table, me with my buffalo burger and the others having hamburgers. They were all quite good, and the buffalo burger tasted just like a hamburger.

As we ate, a teenager walked by dressed in cowboy boots, jeans, a T-shirt, and a cowboy hat. I observed that there doesn't seem to be an adolescent rebellion with styles in the cowboy culture like there is with teenagers in the urban/suburban society we're used to. For example, there were no holes in the jeans, and the cowboy hat wasn't on backwards.

We discussed this styling rebellion phenomenon vis-à-vis our generation in the 50's. I believe ours was the first major shift in young people having their own separate styles in fashion and entertainment. Paul thought we were the first group to have the leading entertainers be kids themselves, ages 15 to 25.

Of course, our diversion from our parent's culture wasn't as extreme as the apparent total rejection of anything that existed more than a week and a half ago by the current crop of young people. We still had our Patti Page's, our Perry Como's, and our Rosemary Clooney's, but these people weren't driving the movement.

After returning to our motel, we sat out on the patio alongside the Yellowstone River and watched the stairs.

Back to Galburt's room to view the pictures Paul & Jean took today, then to bed. We had a room with two double beds arranged in an odd way, and the TV was mounted on the wall over the bed. It had a small bathroom with the tiniest basin we've ever seen.

Sunday, September 9, 2001