bison | The Casual Blog

Skiing at Vail

I thought I’d share a few more pictures from my Yellowstone trip in January, and a brief account of my trip last week in Vail, Colorado, where I took no pictures but did a lot of skiing.

Vail is enormous: 5,317 acres and 3,450 feet of vertical. The longest run is four miles. There are some 26 lifts, and navigating the area is demanding. They don’t hand out maps any more, so you need to get their app with the layout and learn to use it.

I met my old friend John A. out there, and we stayed at the Grand Hyatt in West Vail. The hotel was attractive and comfortable, and had its own ski shop and a ski lift just outside the back door. I brought my own boots, but rented skis –Volkyl Mantra XXs, a good, versatile ski, but a bit stiffer than my ideal. It snowed the night I arrived.

It continued to snow all that day, which was exciting, but visibility was very limited. At one point I fell while going down a steep mogul field that I hadn’t realized was a steep mogul field. I was exhausted by the time I got down to the lift, and then I realized I’d lost my goggles somewhere up the mountain. I’d forgotten to bring my contact lenses, and my glasses iced up, making it hard to see anything. My legs got tired. It was a tough day.

But the next two days were sunny and clear, with just the right chilliness for the snow. I got some new goggles. What a joy skiing is when everything clicks! We cruised on the cruiser runs and worked the less difficult black runs in the back bowls. It wasn’t crowded, and it was beautiful. Happiness!

John and I ate well and had some good arguments. It seems like these days many of us are afraid of arguments, and hesitate to express ourselves when there could be conflict. But it really is a good idea to talk with people who don’t agree with you about everything. Sometimes you learn things!

When I wasn’t skiing, eating, or talking, I did some reading, including an interesting new book, The Case for Open Borders, by John Washington. The southern U.S. border has been the subject of much alarm and controversy recently, and I thought it would be good to get a new perspective on the issue.

Washington proposes that we rethink the whole subject of borders, which he argues are artificial constructs that do more harm than good. He presents evidence that immigration is a positive force for the receiving country, both economically and morally.

It’s unfortunate that a lot of people are fearful of people who look different, speak another language, or have different customs. That common fear has been made much worse by some cynical politicians, who characterize them as dangerous criminals and thieves stealing jobs. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth.

In fact, the NY Times had an article last week about the positive economic contributions of immigrants. They helped our economy recover from the pandemic quicker than expected by filling necessary jobs. They continue to help us get work done, and help support their relatives back home.

As climate change makes it harder to grow food in some areas and causes floods, fires, and other disasters, there will continue to be a lot of people who have no choice but to flee. America is still a land of opportunity, and there’s an opportunity here for us: to be more compassionate and to help those who desperately need help.

I’ll mention one other thing that isn’t usually a welcome dinner table topic: the increasing risk of nuclear war. I’ve long thought that our unwillingness to look squarely at what a nuclear conflict would mean increases the chance it will happen. With arms racing again picking up speed and war in Europe raging, it’s high time to think again about how to lower this terrifying risk. The Times started a series this week on this topic, and the first piece was appropriately arresting. I hope a lot of people will read it.

February 12, 2024

Winter wildlife in Yellowstone

Toward the end of January I was in Yellowstone National Park, where I saw quite a few animals and took a lot of photographs. I’m still sorting and weeding them, but here are some I thought were worth sharing. Looking at the images reminds me of what an amazing world we live in, and makes me want to get back out into nature.

Yellowstone is a unique and beautiful place. It’s centered on a dormant super volcano (a caldera) and has over half the world’s geysers. It has high mountains, canyons, lakes, and waterfalls, as well as unusual hydrothermal features. It is famous for its megafauna, including wolves, bison, coyotes, pronghorn, elk, and moose.

Normally Yellowstone is very cold and snowy in January, but this year it wasn’t as cold and not so snowy. This meant it wasn’t as physically tough on the photographer, but also not quite as beautifully otherworldly as most years.

Still, I had a great time and had some excellent wildlife encounters. For three days, I was with a group organized by NANPA venturing out of West Yellowstone, and then I went with my friend Barry W. for three more days based in Mammoth Hot Springs Lodge.

Among the highlights were some close encounters with bison, which are numerous there. These big, powerful icons of the West were usually grazing peacefully, but could be skittish. And of course, they could be dangerous if provoked.

At one point in the Lamar Valley, Barry and I were photographing a large herd, and didn’t notice until too late that some of them had gotten between us and our vehicle. For a few minutes we were wondering about how to escape, but when another car came along, we jogged behind it as the bison got out of the way.

We were privileged to see a dozen or so of the resident gray wolves (some of which are black), which are usually not easy to find. Wolves have a bad rap as scary beasts, drummed into us from childhood by stories like little red riding hood, the three little pigs, and the boy who cried wolf. In fact, wolf attacks on humans are very rare.

On the other hand, humans are highly threatening to wolves. We very nearly caused their extinction in the last century, and continue out of ignorance, perversity, or greed to kill them and destroy their habitats. Still, there’s a wider understanding now that as apex predators, wolves are important contributors to their ecosystems. For example, gray wolves keep elk, moose, and deer populations in check, preventing overgrazing by the ungulates and providing nourishment to other species.

The NY Times had a good summary of the current controversies surrounding wolves. The anti-wolf movement involves the interests of ranchers, who don’t like it when wolves kill their cattle. One of the solutions to that problem is a program for the state to pay ranchers for animals killed by wolves, which apparently lessens the conflicts, but not perfectly.

It seems to me self-evident that wolves are not just inconvenient objects to be subjugated, but sentient beings entitled to respect. They have interests, families, and friends. We have started to learn how to live alongside them and work out human-wolf conflicts, and I’m hoping we’ll continue that process, and continue enjoying their mysterious beauty.

Among nature enthusiasts, coyotes don’t inspire as much excitement as wolves, but I was still excited to see several of them in Yellowstone. They are close relatives to wolves and look a lot like them, but smaller, with narrower features and larger ears.

It’s hard to argue they’re less pretty than wolves, so their poor PR probably has to do with their being relatively common. Their prey includes mice, which they can hear tunneling under the snow, and catch by leaping on them. I got one shot of a leap, which yielded no mouse, and also saw a pair of them flirting.

One thing I like about a long trip is having a good block of time to read. I’ve really been enjoying rereading the first few Aubrey-Matarin novels by Patrick O’Brian, and finished the fourth one in Yellowstone. These are historical novels about life in the British Royal Navy around 1800, when Britain was fighting hard to rule the waves. O’Brian was clearly passionate about getting the history right, but also brilliant in his depictions of navy life and the inner lives of his characters.

In the twenty-five or so years since I first read O’Brian’s series, I’ve learned some things about the history of the British empire and its depredations, including violent exploitation of entire civilizations, slavery, piracy, and drug dealing. These, though not discussed by O’Brian, were part of the mission of the Royal Navy. But those sailors also embodied more admirable objectives and virtues, such as scientific research, artistic expression, decency, honor, and courage. Like us, they were complicated.

Speaking of the arts, David Brooks recently had a good column in the NY Times making the case for reading literature and welcoming other cultural experiences. He made a good argument for the liberal arts as vehicles for greater self understanding. Great novels, for example, deepen our understanding of the inner lives of others and ourselves.

“Artistic creation is the elemental human act. When they are making pictures or poems or stories, artists are constructing a complex, coherent representation of the world. That’s what all of us are doing every minute as we’re looking around. We’re all artists of a sort. The universe is a silent, colorless place. It’s just waves and particles out there. But by using our imaginations, we construct colors and sounds, tastes and stories, drama, laughter, joy and sorrow.

“Works of culture make us better perceivers. We artists learn from other artists. Paintings, poems, novels and music help multiply and refine the models we use to perceive and construct reality.”

These thoughts are particularly timely as universities across the U.S. are cutting their liberal arts programs, apparently on the theory that the only point of higher education is to prepare young folks to do a particular kind of job. As a former liberal arts student myself, I have a bias, but I think treating education as purely instrumental is a disservice to students, both materially and spiritually.

With advancing technology, including AI, many technical skills that are valuable today will be useless down the road, and students with only those skills will be in trouble. They’ll need a broader base, including the meta skill of quickly learning new skills. Meanwhile, without exposure to the world of the arts and ideas, they may miss so much that makes life meaningful and rewarding.

February 14, 2022

More Yellowstone animals, the Webb telescope, Jeremy Lent, and comprehending the Big Lie

For Valentine’s Day, I’m sharing a few more of the pictures I took last month at Yellowstone National Park. As I worked my way through the mass of images, I found that a lot of the ones I liked showed animals in pairs, families, and herds, finding food and friendship and otherwise getting through the harsh winter.

With a new covid variant still at large, many species endangered, democracy in peril, and so many other huge problems, it’s a big challenge to stay optimistic and hopeful. So I’m giving special emphasis in my daily reading to good news, when I can find it.

Ordinary journalism privileges disasters and conflict over successes and collaboration. This has come to seem natural in our works of history and literature. Drama is fundamentally conceived of as conflict.

We’re deeply habituated to assuming the worst, and viewing the world through a dark lens. To some extent, we’re addicted to alarming stories that get us agitated. This may well be bad for our health, and it also limits our imaginations. But we don’t have ready terminology for an alternative approach.

Anyhow, I’ve been enjoying the unfolding non-drama of NASA’s James Webb telescope, which launched on December 25, 2021, and now is fully deployed and in orbit around the sun about a million miles from us. The 18 mirrors are currently being calibrated, but so far, amazingly, everything seems to be working as designed.

The Webb project took 25 years to design and build. Its basic mission is at first glance obscure – improving our understanding of the state of the universe billions of years before the earth came into existence. But it shows one of the truly charming, quirky aspects of human nature – irrepressible curiosity. Despite the old neo-liberal assumption that big endeavors can only be justified in dollars and cents, the Webb can’t be explained in terms of a profit motive. Cutting edge science like astrophysics is at base about this kind of curiosity: the inherent satisfaction of just understanding things better. The Webb website, which has a lot of good news so far, is here.

Speaking of webs and understanding more about the universe, I finished reading Jeremy Lent’s recent book, the Web of Meaning. It’s an ambitious work that proposes to integrate recent science with earlier thought systems. I was drawn to it for its helpful introduction of Taoist, Buddhist, and neo-Confucian ideas, as well as systems drawn from pre-colonial indigenous cultures.

Lent makes a useful distinction between reductionist science, which purports to be comprehensive but isn’t, and more open scientific processes. He calls out the long history of dualist thinking in science, but points up affinities between ancient non-Western systems of thinking and modern scientific discoveries.

In Lent’s view, one of the keys to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the universe is the interconnectedness of everything. He recognizes the extreme peril facing our planet and everything in and on it, but posits that we can develop a new mindset and new sustainable systems. He could be wrong. But I found his summary of big ideas in science and philosophy readable and stimulating, and his optimism was encouraging.

Still looking on the bright side, I came across an interesting essay by Matthew Rosza in Salon with some psychological explanations for why a substantial number of people believe the Big Lie that Trump won the last presidential election. It is, of course, depressing that lots of people unite behind notions that are plainly absurd and potentially dangerous, but this real life social experiment can give us new insights into human cognition and its glitches. It might make us a little more humble, and a little more open.

Anyhow, the Rosza essay points up how even nutty ideas can start to sound normal if repeated constantly and in different contexts by someone with apparent authority. Their salience depends partly on how they feed the biases and needs of the fans, and the fans’ various desires to fit into their groups and find emotional satisfaction. For example, people who are fearful of opponents and angry at losing an election are more willing to accept a crazy narrative that makes them feel better.

In the Salon piece, Dr. Matt Blanchard had this interesting perspective:

Everything we know about the human brain suggests it is composed of numerous systems that interact, overlap, excite, inhibit, and often contradict each other, and may even hide information from consciousness. . . . So it comes as no surprise that the act of ‘believing’ is not just one thing that humans do. Instead, this one word represents a wide range of relationships that humans have with information. We don’t truly ‘believe’ things, so much as provisionally accept information we find useful.

Dr. Blanchard also noted that the strength and tenacity of beliefs varies. Some beliefs, like trust in a loved one, are high stakes, with big consequences for believing wrongly, and those are likely to be more thoroughly tested against reality. Others have little day-to- day effect on our lives, like presidential races or religious observances. Those low stakes beliefs may be more readily tried out without much reflection, just for fun.

It makes sense that the Big Lie and other bizarre beliefs have little to do with reasoning, but serve emotional needs, like providing solace and building group ties. This suggests that such beliefs can change when adherents find other solutions to their fear, anger, and other emotional problems. Maybe that’s what we should try – less fighting, and more compassion.

February 5, 2022

Yellowstone, surviving animals, and The Last Curlew

Week before last I got to visit snowy Yellowstone National Park, most of which is in Wyoming. My hope was to find and photograph some of the big animals that live there, like bison, wolves, elk, coyote, fox, deer, bighorn sheep, eagles, pronghorns, swans, and bobcats. I got pictures of all of these, except the bobcat, and also saw a river otter and a pine martin that had just killed a snowshoe hare.

The trip was led by master photographer Charles Glatzer, and the four other photographers had lots of wildlife experience. We traveled in vehicles especially equipped for the snow and ice, with tires that came up to my chest. Our two driver-guides were cheerful and accommodating, and one, Christi, was impressively knowledgeable about wildlife and the park.

It was very cold at times – down to 5 below zero. Even with gloves and warmers, a few times my fingers were too numb to feel the camera shutter button. I was conscious of the risk of frostbite, and stayed just clear of it.

Bison in thermal area near Old Faithful geyser

Yellowstone is big and varied, and it resists easy summaries. There are mountains, canyons, rivers, and valleys. It is unique in its volcanic activity, with geysers, hot springs, and thermal vents spewing smoke. It has the largest concentration of non-human mammals in the lower 48. Sometimes the animals are plentiful and easy to see, and sometimes not.

Bison, almost extinct at the beginning of the 20th century, are a signature species that in recent years has been successful in the park. I got to see many of them. The most exciting moment was when a pack of wolves (I saw 5) attacked a herd of about 20 or so bison.

As the wolves tried to take down a smaller, slower bison, all were running for their lives. I thought they were going to cross the road 50 yards ahead, but then they turned and charged straight toward us, and passed right beside our vehicle. The wolves were unsuccessful, but they stayed around for a few minutes to catch their breath.

I was sorry to hear that hunters are legally permitted to “harvest” bison who wander into public lands outside the park boundaries. The wolves of Yellowstone, with an estimated population of fewer than 100, are also being killed by hunters when they venture outside the park.

It really is a strange, sad thing that some humans find it fun to inflict suffering and death on these creatures, and are allowed to do it. Children generally start life with curiosity about and affection for animals, and view them as living beings like us, with their own feelings. Our culture then socializes us in the opposite direction. Regarding non-human animals as of no moral consequence, and fit objects for murderous sport, is presently considered normal.

Like almost everyone, I was taught that humans are superior to animals, and that animals exist merely for the pleasure of humans. Eventually I arrived at a different view, which is this: humans are animals with certain unique attributes, but no special right to exploit and mistreat other animals. Every animal has its own talents and its own inherent worth. Each is entitled to respect.

With that understanding, it becomes a lot easier to think about non-humans’ lives, customs, and cultures. They survive in harsh environments, and know how to live simply in the present. They could teach us a few things.

On my trip, I reread The Last of the Curlews, by Fred Bodsworth. It’s a short, beautiful novel about an Eskimo curlew, a shorebird species that was once abundant and is now extinct. The book describes the last of these birds as it migrates between the Arctic to South America, struggling with the elements and searching for a mate. Bodsworth helps us better understand our planet through the lens of a single bird.

I haven’t had a chance to go through all my Yellowstone pictures yet, but I got a start, and found several I liked. I’m hoping to make it through the rest in the next week or two, and to share a few more.

The Casual Blog

Tag: bison

March 4, 2024