August 10, 2010

Blog Stew on the Yellowstone

• Yellowstone visitors reach an all-time high in July. You may connect that to the economy however you like. M. and I visited in September 2008 as the stock market plunged, but we saw no newspapers and had no internet access except for one morning in a Cody, Wyo., coffee shop. We called it "camping like it's 1929."

• At Querencia, Steve Bodio heralds the publication of John Vaillant's The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival.

Its protagonists are a single huge tiger, a ragged bunch of drunken poachers, and a patrol of anti-poaching rangers dedicated to protecting tigers over a huge area, with no money and inadequate tools. The beginning, as an unnamed hunter and his dog approach a dark cabin on a freezing evening, is a masterpiece of tension and quiet terror; the ending is utterly cinematic but real (the book is based on over 200 interviews).
• More Southern Rockies bloggers are reporting a great mushroom year--Peculiar even channels Chaucer.

• The Atomic Nerds buy dead critters from their dog. I had to do something similar yesterday with Fisher. 

• After a black bear sow smacked one of my scout cameras in June, I sent the damaged camera to camera-trapping biologist  Chris Wemmer in northern California, whose students conducted a proper postmortem on it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We were camping in a remote part of northern Michigan on 9-11. The most memorable part of the day was running into a wolf on the trail and watching the Leonbergers stare it down. It was bizarre to return to "reality" days later and find out what we had missed.

And... being an alpha bitch dog trainer I do not barter for any dead critters my dogs collect. I demand them as tribute. And then, being a fan of raw diets, often allow the dogs to eat them.

Mushrooms (other than morels) I do not understand. So I leave their collecting to others braver (or more adventurous) than I.

Chas S. Clifton said...

No more barter! Grovel, you beta dogs!