I strap my camera over my shoulder and start up.  The air is cool – mid-30s – and scattered clouds dot the otherwise blue sky.  The trail is short but steep and soon my heavy breathing threatens to drown out the softer sounds around me – a pair of robins rummaging for bugs under a fir tree, the chitter of an agitated squirrel, the muffled rush of a stream hidden in a gully to my left.  Druid Peak appears, glazed in the day’s first light.  Before I know it I’m standing at the edge of Trout Lake.

The lake is small, maybe 800 yards around, fed by a stream descending from the Absaroka mountains and drained by a tributary of Soda Butte Creek.  Half the lake’s surface is rippled by a light breeze, the other half is a mirror.  This early I usually have the place to myself, but across the lake I see a retired couple from Tennessee that I’d run into the past few mornings.  They’re frequent Yellowstone visitors, and years ago they saw otters catching the cutthroat trout that spawn in the lake’s inlet stream in early summer.  I walk over to say hello.

“Still no luck,” the husband tells me, clearly disappointed.  “We were really hoping to see otters again.  I don’t know why the trout aren’t spawning yet.  And this is our last morning.  We’re going home later today.”  I wish them a safe trip, and the couple heads back down the trail.

I continue around the lake to the bridge that spans the outflow creek.  As soon as I place my foot on the wooden planks I’m surprised by a deep SHLOOOOSH rising from a disturbance in the water below.  Wait, is that…?  It is!  Seconds later an otter’s head breaks through the thin layer of pale green vegetation coating the water by the bridge.  Unbelievable – the Tennessee couple missed the otter by five minutes!  Startled to discover me so close, the otter slips silently beneath the surface and vanishes.

 

 

I’d only seen an otter at Trout Lake once before, a month earlier, when I found a lone otter scavenging for fish that died over the winter.  Might this be the same one?  Soon after our encounter at the bridge, the otter appears again.  This time it hops out of the water onto a grass-covered log – the exact same spot where the otter I’d seen before ate a fish.

 

 

 

 

I love otters.  Seeing one like this – even just a single time – would have been a highlight of the summer.  But the show was just beginning.  If you’re not ready to be bombarded with otter photos, best to bail out now…

 

 

I returned to Trout Lake the next morning, of course, and Marie joined me on the off chance that the otter would still be around.  Not only was it still around, it stayed active for over an hour.  Twice it climbed on the grass-covered log to eat a trout, smacking loudly as it methodically chomped its way from tail to head.

 

 

 

 

 

The otter wasn’t out the next morning, so I decided to see if it might have gone to Buck Lake, a short hike to the northeast.  When I arrived there was a young bull moose on the other side of the lake, and – to my surprise – he walked right into the water and started swimming.  I was aware that moose can swim, but this was the first time I’d ever seen it happen in person.

 

 

 

Back at Trout Lake I noticed a small bird repeatedly returning to the same quarter-sized hole in a dead tree.  It turned out to be a nuthatch parent feeding at least three tiny chicks.

 

 

When I finally walked back to my car that same morning I found a cinnamon black bear crossing the road just south of the parking area.

 

 

Otters, moose, nuthatch chicks, bears – I was hooked.  I returned to Trout Lake at sunrise almost every morning for over a month.  The routine felt similar to my daily walks to Tortuga Bay – a chance to really get to know a specific place, to gradually learn the patterns of the wildlife, to see the landscape in a variety of conditions, to watch how things change over time.  The more I visited, the deeper my appreciation.

In late June – after days with no sightings of the lone otter – a pair of otters suddenly appeared.  I couldn’t tell if the lone otter had found a friend or if these two were completely different.  They might have been siblings, but they definitely behaved like a couple.

 

 

 

 

Marie and our neighbor Jill joined me at Trout Lake for a memorable morning towards the end of June.  At one point I was walking over towards Jill, who was photographing the otter couple on a log, when I heard a low roaring huff just above me on the hillside – a black bear, much too close.  Most black bears I’ve encountered in that area bolt away at the sight of a nearby human, but this one paced back and forth, seemingly unsure of its next move.  I called to Jill and Marie while fumbling for my bear spray (first) and my camera (second).  Before I could get a non-blurry photo the bear backed off – thankfully not towards Jill – and disappeared over a hill.

 

 

 

Sometimes on my morning hikes I heard wolves howling.  It must have been the Shrimp Lake pack, named after the small lake just northwest of Trout Lake.  The retired couple from Tennessee said they’d seen the four Shrimp wolves running across the hillside behind the lake, but I only heard their howls and never caught a glimpse.

 

 

By early July the trout had been massing near the inlet stream for over a week, and I assumed that one morning I’d arrive to find them spawning.  Sometimes I saw a brave trout make a dash for the mouth of the stream, but mid-July came and went without a spawn.  Did I somehow miss it?  I was only there in the morning – maybe they spawned in the afternoon and then returned to the lake?  Dan Hartman, a Silver Gate resident with decades of expertise on the local wildlife, suggested that all the early summer rain we had may have delayed the trout’s timeline.  But they were no longer massed by the stream.  I still haven’t figured out what happened.

 

 

 

 

Trout Lake didn’t monopolize all my wildlife time over the past month.  In mid-June I came across a grizzly mom – briefly referred to as the “Warm Creek Sow” because of where she was first seen – nursing her two cubs-of-the-year at lower Barronette.  In early July I saw a black wolf in the water at Confluence, and soon after that a badger made a quick appearance as I was hiking the Lamar River trail.  Moose often showed up in Jill and Greg’s yard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In mid-July my photographer friend Nick suggested that we hike from Silver Gate to Warm Creek to look for owls.  Not far into the hike Nick cut away from the trail to search along the tree line while Marie and I continued on.  We lost track of Nick and eventually returned home, where I got a satellite message – Nick had been frantically trying to find us because he’d come across two pine martens mating.  And they were still at it.  WHAT!?  Pine martens sightings are rare, and I’d never even heard of someone seeing a mating pair.  I rushed back – literally jogging part of the way – and managed to catch the tail end of the show (no pun intended).

 

 

The next day Nick and I saw an otter at Buck Lake, and two days later I found the otter couple back at Trout Lake.  Overall, though, it’s starting to feel like wildlife activity in the area is slowing down.  The trout are no longer massed by the inlet stream, which means the predators interested in potentially vulnerable fish – otters, bears, coyotes, bald eagles, ospreys – are showing up less often.  The past month at Trout Lake has been a true joy and I’m sure I’ll continue hiking there regularly, but it’s probably time to diversify my morning routine.