When I was in eighth grade, my family took the Big Cross Country Road Trip to all the major sights across the USA, with one of the crowning stops being at Yellowstone National Park. When I got back to school a couple weeks later, one of the first grade classes was doing some kind of project where they were learning about different places around the country, and their teacher was inviting kids from the higher grades to talk about places they had been. Somehow or other, I volunteered to talk to this class about Yellowstone National Park. I was so stoked – I felt like such a cool older kid who had like, experienced stuff, and I got to talk to these little kids about the very cool stuff I had done and seen. I felt so important and cool. I told these kids about seeing the geysers, and watching Old Faithful erupt. I talked about the cool animals I had seen, like bison and elk. I told them how beautiful it was and how much fun I had. Then this kid raises his hand to ask me a question.
“Did you see any bears?” he asked.
I explained to him that because we went during school vacation week, it was too early in the year and the bears were still hibernating. If we had gone in the summer we probably would have, but in April we didn’t get to see any bears.
Then this kid gave me a look of such bald judgement, such undisguised contempt, that it seared a hole directly into my memory. His mouth said nothing, but his face said he thought I was an absolute joke, a total piece of shit, because I had gone to Yellowstone National Park and didn’t see a single bear. In one look, he deflated my whole presentation and made me look like a tool. He practically destroyed the memory of the trip itself. I was humiliated.
So you can imagine how eager I was to go back to Yellowstone, nearly two decades later, and show that little shit who can see a fucking bear.
I ended up backpacking in the park on two different weekends. One weekend I gave myself altitude sickness and had to cut my trip short (more on that on my photos page). On the second weekend though, I picked my campsite carefully so that I would be nearest the part of the park with the most animal sightings (an area called the Lamar Valley), and could get there very early in the morning. And then I spent the whole morning cruising up and down the road looking for wildlife.
I did see a lot of wildlife that morning. I saw the ever-present bison, and got caught in a famous buffalo traffic jam. I saw elk and antelope and deer and coyotes. I got to check multiple very cool birds off of my lifetime bird watching list like the sandhill crane. I even exceeded my wildest dreams and got to see a wolf – even better, I watched the wolf chase a pack of antelope across a field like fucking David Attenborough was about to start narrating. It was incredible. But of course, my biggest wish, my nemesis, my bete noire, was the bear.
Yellowstone has two types of bears: the black bear and the grizzly. To be sure, I have actually seen both types of bears before. Black bears are super common in New Hampshire where I have seen many, including in my parents’ own yard; even grizzlies I saw several of when I was in Alaska last summer. But I wanted, nay, needed to see one or both in Yellowstone.
That morning as I drove through the Lamar Valley I came across a small group of cars that was pulled over to the side of the road. In Yellowstone you can usually tell that there is some cool wildlife by where clumps of cars are bunched up. In this case the little crowd of cars was on a curve on a steep hill and it wasn’t safe for me to pull over or even really slow down slower than a driving speed, lest someone come around the corner and slam into me. So I slowed slightly and tried to crane my neck to see what the attraction was, without taking my eyes off the road. And that, dear reader, is when I saw him.
Up on the side of the hill was a little brown grizzly bear, cruising along and chowing down on the plants in the morning sunshine. A crowd of people was standing near the side of the road with binoculars and telephoto camera lenses, but he was just doing his thing and minding his own business, enjoying his breakfast and just living his best bear life.
When I saw him, I literally yelled out loud in my car. I was so mad that I couldn’t stop the car, and in trying to watch him without stopping I nearly drove off a cliff (as always I cannot recommend driving off a cliff). I managed to get a little further down the road to a place where I could safely turn around, but by the time I got back he was gone.
I don’t have a picture of him, so you just have to believe me when I say that I saw a grizzly bear in Yellowstone.
A little bit later in the morning I did end up also seeing black bears on two separate occasions – including one that was walking just a couple hundred yards away from the hiking trail I had taken back from my campsite to my car that morning. I even got a sort-of clear photo of him (the little sign you can see on the right side of the photo is actually the map at the trailhead):
To be honest, I actually spent most of the weekend living with a healthy fear that I would run into a bear as I hiked – encountering a bear alone in the woods is a different kind of “thrill” than seeing one from the safety of your car. I even had to watch a bear safety video, listen to a lecture on bear food safety, and promise to carry bear spray before I could get my backcountry permit. Luckily, I did not come face to face with a bear in an unsafe situation.
But I did get to see bears in Yellowstone, both black bear and grizzly bear. And for that, I say to that six year old kid (who is like 26 or 27 now), YES I DID GET TO SEE A BEAR IN YELLOWSTONE AFTER ALL, YOU LITTLE FUCK.
Alyson Gagne 