By KAREN MADORIN
While I taught, I periodically assigned students the task of creating bucket lists. I found one I’d made as an example and got a kick out of those wishes. Time has altered what I most want to do.
Among my dreams, I wanted to see a grizzly bear close enough to photograph it with a telescopic lens.
When I retired that spring, we planned to visit Yellowstone in September so I could see aspen leaves turning gold, red, and orange and if I were lucky, Ursus arctos horribilis. My hubs had hunted elk among colorful groves in the mountains several Septembers, so I wanted my chance to spy Mother Nature working her magic on white-trunked trees.
Not only did I see brilliant patches of color emblazoning mountainsides, I spied a silver tip grizz trailing a buffalo herd in search of lunch!
We managed to find a place to stop so I could focus my retirement-gift camera and photograph that bruin posing as if tourists snapped it every day. What a thrill for me, and I’m guessing a pain in the patootie for park rangers who monitor visitors exiting vehicles and walking toward bears. Note, I remained in the car at the park-approved distance for my sake and the grizz’s.
Within three years of that retirement trip, we lived in a little ranching/tourist town in the Greater Yellowstone eco-niche. Imagine my thrill at regularly seeing grizzlies outside a national park. Unfortunately, such sights became worrisome as bear populations and tourists multiplied each year.
During an early June drive over the pass tour that first spring, we spied a sow with two cubs who’d recently emerged from their winter den. The still-snowy-in-the- mountains-world at their paws captivated those babies.
At that time, drivers traveling Togwotee Pass could pull over to bear watch, so we did. We saw little furballs frolicking in grass barely peaking through the previous night’s frosty blanket. As they played, the hungry mom took advantage and gobbled mouthfuls of emerging greens.
Later that summer we saw adult bears hanging out at the highway’s edge a couple of times as we drove toward Grand Teton National Park. By then, we realized some folks don’t understand the danger they put themselves in when they hop out of vehicles and move close enough to take cell phone pictures of an animal with three-inch claws and teeth. Thankfully, we never saw anyone on the receiving end of such power, though we knew mauling survivors and first responders who rescued them.
During our six years in that region, human behavior forced change. By the time we left, LEOs regularly enforced rules making it illegal to pull over to bear watch. These folks spent significant duty time enforcing what common sense dictates.
Back in Kansas near family and friends, I appreciate those opportunities we had to see top-of-food-chain- mammals in action.
These days, my bucket list involves shark tooth hunting with grandkids and imagining ancient seas that once covered Kansas prairies. Thank goodness, fossilized teeth as long as grizzly fangs don’t cause drivers to stop in the middle of the road for pictures.