Both Marie and I have had “See the Northern Lights” high on our bucket lists for years, but we’d never managed to be in the right place at the right time.  Occasionally the news will report there’s a chance of seeing them where we live in southern Montana, but whenever we’ve stayed up past our bedtime to look it’s turned out to be a false alarm.

So you can’t blame me for being skeptical when I heard the Northern Lights might be particularly strong the night of May 10th.  “Is it worth driving somewhere to try to see them?” I asked Marie.  She wisely pointed out that if we kept missing the aurora borealis in Montana we’d eventually have to make a winter trip all the way to someplace like Alaska, so even if the chance of seeing them that night was small we had to roll the dice.

The mountains surrounding our home block our views of the horizon, so we decided to drive over to the upper terrace of Mammoth Springs in Yellowstone, where I hoped any color in the sky might reflect on the water covering the thermal pools.  The upper pools were mostly dry, unfortunately, but the terrace still provided great views in all directions, and there were already quite a few other people waiting on the boardwalk when we arrived around 9pm.

As darkness fell we strained our eyes for any hint of color in the north.  At first, nothing.  And then, very slowly, thin vertical streaks of greenish yellow seemed to float up from the horizon, so faint we thought we might just be imagining it.  But by tiny increments the colors brightened enough that we knew they were real.  We were seeing the Northern Lights!  Had that been the extent of the show I would have been delighted.  Once the moon set, however, the lights intensified, gradually shifting their shapes and colors, sometimes stronger to the north, other times to the east.

 

 

Around midnight the colors began to fade.  We assumed the show was winding down and decided to start driving back home.  As we neared the Blacktail Plateau, however, it became clear that what we’d seen at Mammoth was just a warm-up.  Shimmering curtains of green, yellow, and purple-pink filled the sky.  We stopped at a pullout and gaped with wonder.  Looking straight up, it seemed as if Yellowstone had been covered in some kind of translucent dome that was projecting wave after wave of pulsing, swirling, multicolored radiance.

 

 

 

We read later that it was the strongest geomagnetic storm in over two decades.  Photos and videos do a poor job of conveying the experience.  Marie’s handheld cell phone captured it about as well as my big camera on a tripod.

 

 

Less than a week after seeing the Northern Lights we began welcoming a string of guests who heeded my advice that – if your priority is seeing wildlife – mid-May to mid-June is the best time to visit Yellowstone.  First up were my sister Ann and her husband Dan, who flew in for a long weekend.  Ann’s primary goal was to see bears, and we saw so many that I lost count.

 

 

Ann and Dan and I had a rough start on our first morning in the park when one of the brand new tires I’d just bought went flat at Round Prairie, but our wildlife luck remained strong throughout their visit.  In addition to all the usual suspects, they spotted a badger, a pine marten, coyote parents nipping at a black bear that came too close to their den, and – on their final drive through the park – a grizzly mom swimming in Phantom Lake with her two yearling cubs.

 

 

 

 

Our guests the next weekend were my longtime friend Rob E., his brother Todd, and their dad Jeff.  It’s always great to see Rob, and I really enjoyed getting to know Todd and Jeff.  Before their visit they’d read American Wolf, so setting up our spotting scope by Rick McIntyre (who features prominently in that book) and seeing the Junction Butte pack next to a wolf-watching legend was a highlight.

 

 

Our luck with wolves extended to a close encounter with a lone black wolf that crossed the road right in front of us.  The bears were still out in force, including a black bear we watched emerge from a swim in Rainy Lake, something I’d never seen before.  And one afternoon we came across a moose mom with a calf that people said wasn’t even a day old yet.

 

 

 

 

 

After Rob, Todd, and Jeff’s visit we had two weeks until my mom – our final spring guest – arrived, and for whatever reason Mother Nature decided to fill that time with an unusually harsh cluster of small tragedies.  One of the Junction Butte wolf pack’s three puppies died.  A badger mom with three kits was hit by a car and appeared to have been too injured to continue hunting for herself and her family.  A black bear mom I’d been watching by Tower Fall lost one of her two cubs-of-the-year to a male black bear, and for a while I worried that she’d lost both cubs.  A white bison calf was born – considered to be a powerful omen by many Native American cultures – but apparently the calf didn’t survive its first night.  A grizzly mom became separated from one of her three cubs-of-the-year and apparently failed to reunite.  A great gray owl was killed by a car.  One of four fox kits I’d been watching died around the same time their den flooded, which forced the kits to cross a busy road to find a new home.  I understand that no wildlife in Yellowstone is ever safe, but this was a particularly brutal stretch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a brighter note, just before my mom’s visit we were alerted by our neighbors Jill and Greg that a moose mom had appeared across the creek from them with a newborn calf.  Wendy – another neighbor – had a perfect view from her deck, and she was kind enough to let us spend hours there watching the mom and calf interact.  The mom kept trying to get her calf to cross the creek, which was running alarmingly high and fast, and were were grateful that the calf balked at taking such a big risk.

 

 

 

When my mom is here she mostly focuses on wildlife, and for this visit she said her top priority was to see owls.  Normally finding owls is challenging, but – thanks entirely to help from my friend Nick – my mom was able to watch a Great Gray Owl hunt one afternoon and then see a pygmy owl the next morning.  She also saw grizzlies, black bears, wolves, foxes, coyotes, moose, elk, pronghorn, bison, marmots, a snowshoe hare, a golden eagle nest, a bald eagle, ospreys, swans, sandhill crane colts, and goslings, but the owls were definitely the wildlife highlight.  The non-wildlife highlight was a quick daytrip north to see my niece Kate, her boyfriend Ian, their dogs, and the great house Kate just bought in Belgrade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s always fun to share this amazing part of the country with friends and family – especially when the wildlife cooperates – and it meant a lot to us that Ann, Dan, Rob, Todd, Jeff, and my mom took the time to visit.