Just sharing a bit of the beauty of Midwest autumn in the United States, replayed throughout the Great Lakes region and more. The grandeur of God in the trees and their colors, the joys of Halloween decorating for the little goblin & ghostie in all of us, the backyard brawl fun of the University of Michigan v Michigan State University annual (American) football game for the Paul Bunyan trophy.

Our secon film of this year’s 2022 series, Fractured Fairy Tales, at St Mary’s is MASS, a Fran Kanz film. The AADL has both a regular single disc DVD and Blu-Ray edition. We watched the former.

We had a few more people but were still able to discuss in a circle (no microphone needed!) our thoughts on the film. Generally, the attendees thought it very engaging, particularly as we are watching two sets of parents talking and listening to each other in a single room for the majority of the film. We discussed both the emotional movement and cinematic techniques to make the setting seem larger than it was.

Without jumping in too far in description here … let’s see what people have to say about it and use the comments for discussion.

Our first film of this year’s 2022 series, Fractured Fairy Tales, at St Mary’s is THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, an Orson Welles film released by RKO. The AADL has both a regular single disc release and the Criterion Collection’s restored quality version and double-disc release. We watched the latter.

With the shorter notice and communication challenges, we had fewer people, but it was nice to have discussion face-to-face, without having to run the microphone around so we could hear each other.

Without jumping in too far in description here … let’s see what people have to say about it and use the comments for discussion.

A lovely day and evening greeted us all in Ann Arbor. There are fewer but still hungry skeeters.

I enjoyed a quiet dinner overlooking the quiet ravine. The chippies make so much noise for being so tiny!

One meandering gaze takes in the ferociously large fungi on the wi-fi tree. a foot or more in diameter.

After an hour and a full stomach, I give up on the undercurrent of hope of seeing a fox. It’s too early and too light for them to be visible in observable areas.

I turn the corner and burnish copper with black stockings is in motion, from the northwest corner of Jan’s garden to the southwest corner then on to the ravine, confirmed by silent swift fox trot and the white-tipped tail.

Joy burned all the brighter and fuller for hope having just been set aside to residue embers for the evening, a full three seconds of unfettered joy with the fox in motion.

… it looks like a straight shot on the map from Gardiner to Great Falls via US 89 … and .. you misread those contours and misread the actual vertical experience of the trip! 

Travel from Gardiner to Livingston was as much a delight on the way out, as the way in — elk, osprey, eagles, and horses.

Take a right for seven miles on I-90 with the luxury of a divided highway.

Exit for the northern route on a full lane, full-shouldered, center & side-rumble stripped road to White Sulphur Springs — simply a delight of a road.

And then Lewis & Clark National Forest.  This is where my “plan” met God’s Creation and the humility of budgets, engineering, and elevations. Oofah.  My first miscalculation was thinking the trip would be similar to my childhood ones to Red Lodge Ski Resort and Bridger Bowl. Note to self: jettison the childhood passenger experience and misty-eyed lens memory view. I have to be the driver now!

The road at base level through the National Forest was well-used but peaceful; the slow-down of weaves and curves on a broken road a brilliant idea. Like many, I consider a less smooth road a good thing in a set-aside area keeping everyone a bit slower on the road than they might be otherwise.

Then the road, without any improvements, ascends up and up and up to an eventual pass of 7400 feet, the highest elevation maintained and kept open year round in Montana. Showdown Ski Resort and its 8,000 foot peak to the west and then a 9,000 foot peak to the east of the road. 

The change is gradual at first with more and deeper turns. You barely notice the rise until on turns, Sheep Creek then Belt Creek now seem mighty far below. Looking at the map again, it felt much curvier than it looks on paper!

Glad no one was behind me with my top speed of 45mph. This was not my favorite drive with the curves at these elevations, tilting road at times, okay asphalt, barely-a-shoulder shoulder, and what felt like nothing on the edges (the guardrails seemed sparse and somewhat akin to Wyle E Coyote’s ineffectual umbrellas). To be clear, this isn’t a declaration of engineering shoddiness. It is about the magnificence and untameability of God’s Creation in these parts! The engineers and construction crews that design and build these roads allow goods and people to move in a manner unheard of even 100 years ago. No budget or engineer could build a lowland road of pastoral driving through a Rocky Mountain pass. (Even Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park, a work of art and gorgeous views, is for the passengers, not the drivers!) Grateful to be in Dad & Jo’s Honda Element — not the best for wind, but a really good vehicle.

The spring mountain snow blizzard (rain or nothing at the valley floor) capped the experience for me. The Montana experience of my youth caught me — how this was just one too many obstacles, and I wanted to quit. There was nobody else on the road, this was all too much, etc. but at that moment, God’s Montana lifts you up, too.

Mom was at the other end of this road, waiting in her apartment, and for my sake had encouraged me to take the days off time with her to go to Yellowstone. As the world was overwhelmed with the big fluffy snowflakes, the boy soprano in Handel’s Messiah sings “And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and as the coro bursts forth “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, good will towards men.” In that moment, the beauty of God’s Creation on earth, in weather, and in voice, transformed what might have been spring snow that broke this little camel’s back to the encouragement of a multitude of the heavenly host proclaiming the good news that we, including me!, are loved beyond what we will ever know in the moments or sum of our lifetimes. And God’s beauty carried me out of my fears.

But this segment of the trip in particular reminded me how acclimated I’ve become to my beloved Great Lakes region and how different being a passenger is to driving these roads. My childhood was filled with trips through the mountain passes of Montana, but Dad and his lifetime in these parts were at the wheel or my Mom and her fierce devotion to her children. Clearing King’s Hill pass and realizing I was heading back down to the valley floor was a heady celebratory moment. The road crews had ensured there was plenty of sand on the road to prevent slipping.

On reflection after a couple months, I realized the stress of the situation actuated all my trauma specific points — without any of the usual triggers. It was somehow wildly liberating to meet these experiences and pass through with the acknowledgement that this is where and how my body expresses stress … and I do not have to respond to it.

One friend consoled me that the view must have been magnificent. Even at a too slow for normal traffic 45 mph, I daren’t take my eyes off the double yellow in the center or lift a single finger from the double-clenched grasp of the steering wheel. Snow, yellow double stripe, and shrimpy guardrail filled my vision for an hour. 🙂

My descent was downshifted and glad the Forest Service had laid down a hearty layer of sand on the road.  Sooooo happy to be on the base of the valley by the creek with little to no precipitation!  Then one more elevated pass until finally level ground and easy-peasy into Great Falls.  One river has jumped its bed in its meander.  There is a huge riverbed bone dry near Belt Creek.

I am craning my neck to catch every angle as the time in Wonderland is coming to a close. Time feels precious, even though I’ll be in Montana again and Bob has extended a generous invitation.

Then a white wolf (not the same but an example) crests near the top of the ridge near/past Blacktail, maybe before the Gardiner River?  Beautiful!!  She sits.  I bark out “White Wolf!  White Wolf!  Stop the car!”  We back up the car and she trots roughly 50’ east at the base of a rock formation at the top of the ridge, then she rounds up and away.

THAT WAS SO STINKING COOL!!!

So!  About all these wonderfully colored wolves.  The Eastern Gray Wolf is only gray – that would be Minnesota and further east.  But about 10,000 years ago, the Western gray wolf had a back-breeding with wild dogs strayed from the Tribes, and black and white fur was reintroduced.  So Yellowstone has had three introductions — two Canadian in the mid-90s (with one white one, 39F, from British Columbia) and the third of some Northwestern Montana one year after.  Now about 5% of the YNP wolf population is white.  A few of the females are really big white wolves; they are born a light grey and then fade to near white as they age. (You can also see how famous Wolf 21, jet-black, aged to gray as he entered his senior years.)  There are about 100 wolves in YNP so about 5 have the possibility of aging to mostly white.

(Another white alpha-female suffered severe wounds in a poaching crime committed inside the park in 2017.  She and her in utero five pups had to be euthanized.  She was 12 years old and had had 20 offspring.)

So a white wolf is a rare occurrence, and rarer to see one.  One site indicates there is only one white wolf in Yellowstone at the moment, the alpha-female of the Wapiti Lake pack – now venturing further north, as Bob mentioned. 

A poem is coming out of this white wolf experience because narrative will never capture what it felt like to see her!

Back to Slough Creek from the moose and osprey

… nada from the restroom/dumpster area either out to the carcass or out to the den.  But then we walk up to pre-Bob’s Nob, a gravelly uneven but roaded hike for “only” one-quarter mile or so.  Bob carries his 50 lbs of camera equipment & tripod, I carry the scope and tripod.  Pretty amazing because Bob is 80-ish with two hip surgeries, one knee surgery, and one ankle surgery.  … Viewing and conversation with others pretty much confirms wolf activity at the kill / carcass on the south side of road is done. (Even the crows and ravens are not picking at it, and so wolves are even more unlikely to be there.) 

Then we focus on the den … bison & elk are milling around it! … we wait ½ hour so in the cold, and the female comes out.  We can only see her with the scope … when she’s in movement.  A grey-ish black female with reddish accents.  Beautiful.  She looks as tired as you would expect a mom to be who is basically spending 24/7 with her 5 to 8 kids!!

She walks about a bit, and then she flops all the way down to rest and becomes barely visible.  Nobody is quite sure, but the elk and bison probably feel safe around an active den site since the wolves would not want a large carcass near the den, which might attract another predator that could kill their pups. 

Someone hiking up Slough Creek Trail the day before came across a Grizzly on a carcass at the first meadow lake.  It was running away from him at 25 yards.  He would not have been ready for it, if it had charged him.  NPS closed off the trail. But the news of a carcass inland from the road and den, made folks think the best theory for the absence of wolves visible from the road (save the den wolf) was that the wolves would have gone further up and in to feast on the fresher carcass.

While we’re driving back, bison … mule deer and white tail.  This is when Bob rattles off the names of a lot of the birds at the Blacktail ponds/lakes.  I can’t keep up with the names!  🙂  We drive on out … finishing up for the morning and my time in Yellowstone …

So we drive on down the Northeast Entrance Road further into the Lamar Valley, as someone (John) says they’ve seen Moose past Conjunction Flow, I think along Soda Butte Creek.  We see four, though the others say there are 8 moose out there.  Get them in the field glasses … and immediately think of Ruk & Tuk  from BROTHER BEAR.  Ach.  I’ve reduced Wonderland to Disneyland.

On the way back redeyed grebe in a tiny roadside pool and goldeneyed and/or mergansers in the river below.  The redeyed grebes dive for food, but when we pull up in the car they almost simultaneously submerge.  They are so tiny, it seems – but they’re not.  Love their post-submerge head shake of the very cute crest of feathers on their heads.

Then an osprey nest – I think still on the Soda Butte Creek portion because the creek’s canyon is very steep on both sides … road goes to the steep north bank of the creek and then south bank of the creek back up a steep incline.  On the south incline is a dying tree, trunk still with some growth but a blown out crown on which the osprey are nesting.  We see both male and female osprey leave the nest for sticks to keep building.  Bob thinks they kinda look like they’re presenting to each other for mating.