Winter was away from the office for almost all of January, but came back refreshed and ready to dump snow on Sisters Country in February. On Wednesday, Rullman and I headed out to the range for our bi-weekly training in pistolcraft. Snow showers turned into a fine dump of the white stuff, and finally chased us out when we couldn’t see the targets.
I enjoy getting out into the woods in winter quite a lot, and don’t mind the extra effort it requires. But I can’t say I enjoy shoveling snow at the newspaper or worrying about my wife and daughter commuting 20+ miles on a highway populated by people armed with exaggerated belief in their driving abilities, oversized SUVs, and obliviousness to the speed and severity with which small errors can turn dangerous in winter’s grip.
So… these days, I can kinda do without snow, and wish it would just stay up in the mountains where I can visit it when I want to and don’t have to live with it. With that in mind, I found this old photo a most amusing piece of commentary:
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Now, I don’t want to give the wrong impression. We’re not dealing with conditions like the timbers of Fennario, where “winter was so hard and cold, froze 10 feet ’neath the ground.” Nevertheless, the wolves are runnin’ ’round, as they do…
Lady Marilyn got us watching a doco on the Yellowstone wolves that reminds us that these apex predators are killers. A pack called the Mollies (which sounds like an Irish gang, but was actually named for a biologist) took out the alpha pair from another pack, which wreaked havoc. Pack dynamics, it turns out, are fragile, and social structure breaks down if the wrong wolf gets killed. Fascinating stuff.
National Geographic’s Yellowstone Wolves: Succession offers a glimpse of that country — roamed by John Colter and Jim Bridger and described by Warren Angus Ferris — as must have looked to them back in the day.
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Speaking of the timbers of Fennario… Lady Marilyn and I are headed down the road to Redmond Saturday night for A Grateful Dead Night at the High Desert Music Hall. Maybe we’ll get a little Dire Wolf.
Paul McNamee says
We’ve got winter catching up here, too. Snowy-sleety crap the other night. Tomorrow night, a predicted hit-&-run with 6-8″, over by late morning.
JimC says
The sleet is the worst. Time to break out the snowshoes.
Patrulje says
As a kid my dad worked for the YP company, most beautiful country I have ever lived in. Back then the park basically shut down in the winter, my dad was in charge of supply runs to the 2 caretakers that wintered over at the old faithful lodge.
JimC says
That must have been glorious. That winter footage is breathtaking.
Matthew says
I live in Colorado and we had some real cold weather a few weeks ago. Which is how Colorado weather is. I’ve seen it really snow in the morning and almost summer by afternoon.
One of things I was obsessed with as a dorky 13 year old was wolves. I don’t think that is bad but I was considered the odd kid for most of my childhood and adolescence. The thing about wolves actually probably came from Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London. My dad read them while I was young and they had a real impact on me.
Quixotic Mainer says
We got extraordinarily lucky and saw one wolf, and heard others calling while we were out Yellowstone way last spring. Their song is unmistakable for someone used to ‘yotes.
Good on you for shooting in the weather! While winter is absolutely challenging it only takes what people surrender to it. I think that is a lot of seasonal depression.
JimC says
That is good fortune indeed.
Travis Slusser says
Regrettably I cannot relate, we’ve been flirting with 80 degrees in my neck of the woods… or brush & cactus, as it were. Those SMLE’s look great in the snow; and everywhere else they’ve been. One of the handsomest military arms ever, IMHO.
JimC says
Agree.
Ugly Hombre says
Funny how a lot of people from the northern tier states joined the service to the the hell out of the snowbank. shoveling snow like you are unloading a boxcar of coal with a spatula. Plug your car in at night so it will start in the morning and its not a Tesler. Every Friday night there is a soab blizzard and you don’t get to see Leena.. Your car go’s into a ditch- down into the ravine they find you in the spring still looking fabulous. Chopping wood with a hang over. Chop a hole in the ice to go fishing you never catch anything but you don’t care cause you can warm up the fish house and put the Grain Belts in the Ice hole… The dreaded golden snow..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IobtCDkJKDc
No one ever goes back..
California is like hell but the weather is better..
deuce says
“Nevertheless, the wolves are runnin’ ’round, as they do.”
Here in SEK, we have about six inches of snow, it’s 11 degrees and the coyotes are HOWLIN’. Close enough to Fennario for me. Early winter was fairly mild. Lost time has been made up these past couple months.
JimC says
February seems to be the month for real winter here now, which is a shift from the way it was. When we first came here, we were getting more big storms in December or even November.
Jean Nave says
This line is priceless!
” But I can’t say I enjoy shoveling snow at the newspaper or worrying about my wife and daughter commuting 20+ miles on a highway populated by people armed with exaggerated belief in their driving abilities, oversized SUVs, and obliviousness to the speed and severity with which small errors can turn dangerous in winter’s grip.”
You are a word master and t is fun to read your work. Stay warm.
JimC says
Aww.. thanks Jean. You’re pretty good with a pen yourself.
lane batot says
Oh man–I sure hope I’ll be able to get that Nat Geo wolf documentary on DVD one day! I have the SPLENDID Rick McIntyre series of books on the Yellowstone wolves–just INCREDIBLE how much we’ve learned since that introduction, where there are now packs of wolves habituated enough for people to observe them so closely and continuously(and film them, too!). We know more about wolves’ intimate lives now than we ever have, and Rick McIntyre has probably logged more hours observing them closely than any other human in history! A good present for Lady Marion, those books would be!(just sayin’)…..I think wolves are so fascinating because they are so much LIKE US! Especially in how their societies are structured–absolutely TRIBAL! I get irked when I read various scientists squibbling about the domestication of dogs, thinking it was too difficult for early humans to tame and domesticate wolves. To me, it would have been odder had early hunter-gatherer human societies NOT eventually kept tame wolves as allies and partners–the relationship fit like a proper sized glove on a hand! And after several thousand years of association, our modern dogs even more so! And anyone who cannot see the wolf in their dog, or vice versa, is BLIND!
JimC says
Recommendation noted.
lane batot says
…..And the photo of the snow man facing a firing squad reminds me of a funny(well, to me it was!) story of my massacring a snow man belonging to one of my neighbors when I was a kid(elementary school aged). I had a rival enemy my age in that neighborhood that never missed an opportunity to vex me, and I gave as good as I got from him, and then some! This particular snowman was this enemy’s snowman he built in his front yard(back in the days when we always got snow enough in the Winter to construct them), that he was inordinately proud of–it WAS a very good, large snowman, indeed! While he and his family was at church that Sunday, my heathen arse went and cut a number of long, hardwood spears, and coated the pointy ends in some red clay located on the side of the road near the innocent but vulnerable snowman(you see where this is going) where the snow had melted a bit, and left an appalling scene of slaughter for my enemy to find when he returned from church! Decapitated and the torso disfigured and mutilated, streaming bloody looking red clay blood in copious amounts, spears protruding from every body part, it was a sadistic scene, if I do say so myself! I forget why I felt the need for this act of revenge at the time, but from the parental lectures I got from the atrocity, the result to upsetting my enemy was apparently quite effective! Yes, I was a little savage from the get-go!
JimC says
Probably get detained for a mental health examination for that now. You and Tom Sawyer.
lane batot says
One of my ambitions as a youngster, was to lead a life and have enough adventures to put Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to shame. I think I gave them a good run for their money on that……