I grew up in Montana, in an area usually called either Four Corners or Bozeman Hot Springs. It’s a wide spot in the road about 10 miles outside of Bozeman and about 80 miles north of West Yellowstone, the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park, and about the same distance from Gardiner, the north entrance. We didn’t have a lot of money for entertainment, so one of our favorite things for a Sunday was to pack a lunch in the car and head to the park for the day.
Back then the Gallatin Valley was mostly ranch and grazing land and there was a thriving dairy industry. We’d stop at Heap’s Cheese in Gallatin Gateway on the way south to get fresh cheese curds to go with our spam and crackers, then drive down Gallatin Canyon looking for deer and sometimes mountain sheep. Back then there wasn’t any Big Sky, just Soldier’s Chapel framed against the distant Lone Mountain (photo by Jeff Clow).
Usually we’d go down to Old Faithful to catch an eruption, then drive north via Norris or Canyon to Mammoth to visit the Terraces (an essential part of the trip was listening to my mother lament how the terraces had become much dryer since the 1959 earthquake). If we were lucky, we’d see a moose, or a few elk. When I was very young we’d often see a black bear begging for garbage, but after they took steps to separate the bears and the people, sightings were rare. Mostly we went for the thermal features and the scenery; animal sightings couldn’t be counted on except in winter in the Lamar Valley, where the buffalo and elk herds retreated.
All that changed after the massive fires the late 80’s. Dense lodgepole pine forests turned into piles of charred smoking timber, black as far as the eye could see.
And the eye could see pretty far with the lodgepole desert no longer blocking the view. Spring came, and with it new grass, new trees, new vistas — and most of all, vastly expanded habitat for the animals. Grizzlies, black bears, wolves, mountain sheep and goats, coyotes, sandhill cranes, eagles, ospreys, and of course buffalo, elk, and deer.
Last weekend while I was back visiting family, my brother and I went through the park again, accompanied by his wife. We saw a wolf gorging on a freshly killed elk (probably roadkill) just across the river from the road outside of Mammoth. We saw a grizzly only just out of hibernation, and a herd of male mountain sheep who were apparently killing time while waiting for the females to give birth. We were hoping to see newborn buffalo, but they were just starting to appear. The ranger said they’d seen three in the park. We saw one female clearly in labor, but she was going to be a while and we didn’t wait. We even saw a gorgeous black-and-white raptor we couldn’t identify sitting above the river waiting for a fish. The pictures aren’t great because I took them on my cell phone. The animals were that close.
And as I sat there watching the bluebirds flash above the sagebrush and the snow sparkling in the sun, I thought, “No matter where I live, this place is where my heart is home.”
). 
