Leslie Patten Books: Wild Places, Sacred Spaces

Shhh…Mother’s Day access to the Park from highway 212

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Leslie

Shhh…don’t tell anyone but the Northeast road to the Park is open. This is the usual time, the 2nd week of May, when they plow the nine miles of highway 212 and access is open to Cooke City. But because of the sequester, the opening date was moved to ‘no later than May 24’. I like to go into the Park on mother’s day and see all the new mothers. Those nine unplowed miles are easy access and many times melt off almost or completely on their own. So I was counting on still going up there.

Calf and mom

Meanwhile, in Cody, their opening date, which is usually the 1st of May, was moved up to around May 15th. The East gate, an hour directly east of Cody, is the most difficult entrance to plow. During the winter, access to the gate is plowed, but from there its groomed for snowmobiles and skiers only. The treacherous Sylvan Pass is subject to avalanches, rock slides, and is incredibly steep. In the winter, the Park blasts to create avalanches. It costs the park a lot of money, yet few people actually use the entrance. Once you reach the entrance (as I said, one hour from Cody), you have another hour or so before you arrive to Pelican Valley or Fishing Bridge where you can see more wildlife.

Cody and Park County decided that they would lose too much business if the entrance were closed for two weeks. The Park was saving money imposed by the sequester by delayed plowings. The east entrance alone costs approximately $100,000 to plow. All the roads leading into the east entrance need to be plowed. Yet Cooke City to the North entrance is plowed all year long. So in a strange decision, Cody raised the money and the city donated some matching funds just to open that entrance on time.

Strange? I call it that because in exactly the same amount of time it takes to get into the heart of the Park from the east entrance, Cody could have sent people to the Northeast entrance and the abundant wildlife area of the Lamar valley, and had to probably pay very little money for plowing those easy additional nine miles.

Yellowstone Lake

I’ve written about that orphan road before. My neighbor says that when they paved the road, the idea was that would be the all year round access. But snowmobilers just won’t go for that. Even though the concept of ‘share the road’ would be simple–snowmobilers could have an access drive area along the side to their trails, or park further up–the snowmobile lobby is too organized and vocal. So those few miles are not plowed. But the warm weather, wide fairly flat road, makes for quick plowing in late April and although last week it was still impassable, today the road was dry and the plows had already done their work. The Park was lovely. Baby bisons are being born. I watched an osprey building her nest and saw a coyote hunting and catching mice. I’ll be going in for my traditional mother’s day celebration and hope to see some bears.

Coyote searching sagebrush for mice

Filed under: Yellowstone National Park | 1 Comment »

Bighorn Sheep, Sheep Eaters and Soapstone

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Leslie

I’ve been thinking about sheep and the peoples whose diet centered around them.

For quite some time, I”ve wanted to make an authentic Sheep Eater soup with a steatite bowl . Since I knew I wouldn’t be able to buy one, the only solution was to make one myself. Steatite is another word for soapstone, and the Sheep Eater Indians would quarry the stone and make bowls from them. Few of these bowls have been uncovered , probably because they broke over time. It appears they were passed down through the women, and possibly made by women as well. The men might have quarried and shaped the starting blocks.

The bowls, being heavy, were left at campsites, stashed for use when the peoples came back to the area. Most of the sites seem to be very high up, above 3000 meters. That is because these quarries are located high in the mountains. The bowls were carved right close to the quarries, which makes sense considering how heavy the rock is.

Soapstone, or steatite, bowls were used for cooking Sheep Eater stews consisting of sheep, bulbs and forbs. The bowls could be placed right in the hot coals. Once removed from the fire, the bowls stayed hot for a long time. One of the most difficult items for native peoples in any culture to obtain were containers. Containers were prized possessions, whether they were constructed of fiber, pine needles, gourd or rock. I’m sure that is why these bowls were passed down generation to generation.

YNP Archives Sheep Eater bowl

Last year I set about trying to find a quarry. I knew there was one in Dillion MT. Since I was on my way to California for December, I thought I could find one there. California has several soapstone or Talc quarries but none of them were operating. I found a woman in Northern California who imported various stones for carving. She sold me a block of Brazilian soapstone, warning me that a lot of soapstone has asbestos in it and hers didn’t.

In geology language, rocks are graded on a scale of 1-10 for their hardness qualities, with soapstone being a 1 and diamond a 10. Since I thought all soapstone was equal, I began work on this block of brazilian stone. After several months, lots of drill bits, dremel bits, chisels, etc., I had made little progress. Apparently soapstone itself can have a variety of hardnesses. This brazilian stone was awfully hard, and didn’t have the ‘soapy’ consistency that is associated with soapstone. Complaining about my trials to a local friend, he immediately made a few calls and found me an original Wyoming piece of soapstone, quarried naturally from a secret spot out of Tensleep in the Big Horns. The block he gave me had a strange shape, difficult to cut a piece out of for a bowl, but I managed.

Odd shaped Wyoming soapstone block

I’d seen a video where Richard Adams said it took about 30 hours to make a finished bowl. With the Brazilian stone, there was no way I was going to make a bowl in that time. I’d already invested more than that and hadn’t come far. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when I began working on the Wyoming block. But the going was easy, and in about twenty hours I had a decent bowl that I could call finished enough to cook in.

My almost finished bowl

Requires lots of elbow grease. I learned a lot working both pieces of stone

Here is a photo from the Park achives outside of Gardiner (worth making an appointment to see the new building) of what Adams calls a pre-form, or an unfinished bowl.

YNP archives pre-form bowl

YNP archives unfinished bowl

Yesterday, after working on my bowl for several hours, I took a hike up nearby Margarite draw. Last year I found a cougar den up there and I wanted to see if there had been any occupation this year. As I hiked higher and higher through the trees, I spotted a low saddle and headed for it. At the ridgeline the view of the Absarokas was breathtaking. I saw a few elk grazing down below, but I had a hunch if I glassed these rocky hills I might see some sheep. Sure enough, a group of ewes was farther along the ridgeline. With the wind in my face, I figured I might be able to sneak up on them and get some good photos. What little I know about bighorn sheep is that when spooked they always go higher. So in approaching a group, if one approaches from higher up, they rarely look up to spot you. I tried the tactic and sure enough, it worked fairly well.

At the end of my several hour hike, I ran into the herd again, now grazing on the other side of the hills.

Pretty soon I’ll try out my new bowl. The green-up is beginning and I saw some Pasque flowers. Soon there will be Spring Beauties to add to my soap along with other greens. A friend who shot a Bighorn sheep a while back will give me a bit of mutton to add so I can make an authentic Sheep Eater stew in my homemade steatite bowl.

Filed under: Bighorn Sheep, Sheepeaters | Tagged: Bighorn Sheep, Sheepeater Indians, Shoshone Sheepeaters, Soapstone bowls, Steatite bowls | 7 Comments »

Another view

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Leslie

Here’s another video of that wolf. Be patient till about 20 seconds when he comes and checks out the camera for a real close up.

Filed under: New ideas | Tagged: Wolf, Wolves | Leave a comment »

Wolf investigates

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Leslie

I had my trail camera focused on a road killed jackrabbit. A marten spent two days trying to get it down. Then a coyote came bye, the marten scrambled up a tree, and the coyote pulled it from where it hung and devoured it.

Four days later, this wolf came along to investigate the scene of the crime.

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Everyone needs a Study Area

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Leslie

Everyone who is interested in nature needs a study area. Jon Young recommends a ‘secret spot’ that you go to everyday and sit for 45 minutes to an hour. While you sit you listen, possibly take notes, then journal upon your return. You will get to know one area intimately–the birds and their alarms, the movements of wildlife through the area, the seasonal changes.

This winter I was with a friend who is an excellent tracker; so much so that he has started doing tracking studies for a living. A property owner might be curious who is visiting his land. Richard goes to the site several times over the course of a month or more and studies the sign left by the wildlife. He showed me a map of one site he’d done. That excited me and I thought I could do that in my little woods during the winter months. Then I realized that I’d been doing something like that, informally, all along. Every time I walked through the woods, I mentally noted who’d been visiting, either through tracks, other sign, or even my trail camera. So I decided that I’d do a more concentrated and documented study.

In some of my past entries this winter, I’ve noted what I found: lots of martens and weasels, cougar sign, meagre rabbit sign, wolves, coyotes, etc. I tried putting some of this into a map. I thought maybe if I could map it, then I might be able to determine how many martens inhabit my study area or how many weasels. By knowing where I saw the sign, then I could use others science on the approximate square area a weasel occupies.

This is my hand drawn map of my study area. Different colors relate to different animal tracks. Dashed lines are trails Hatched lines are fences.

My study area covers approximately two square miles, some meadow with sparse limber pines, lots of hillside with mostly douglas fir, and wetlands that have logged spruce. The mountain I traipsed through regularly is structured like a wedding cake, tilting and falling over on its side. Layer upon layer rises up as a series of platforms, reaching into a scree area. The top layers are decorated with large boulders. The icing is snow that leaves a record of all the guests.

What did I learn? Plenty! By walking regularly through a defined area, I feel I came close to entering the secret world of animals. I became privy to their goings on–where the bobcat hunts and where he rests; the high energy rhythms of the weasel moving from tree to tree, hole to hole, looking for voles; the mysterious interactions of cougars and wolves; and the exuberance of resident coyotes who’ve been hiding and silent when the wolves were here, but when the pack returned to the park, they began their singing once more.

The YNP wolves visited Sunlight this winter for a few months.

There is an entire world, separate from the narcissistic preoccupations of human society, occurring simultaneously. It has its own language. The animals understand that language, yet I have to relearn it. I found that it wasn’t about watching one animal alone, but the relationship between all the wildlife that was fascinating. Wildlife are well aware of each other. Only us modern humans are deaf to this living web. By combining oneself with the ‘natural’ world, possibly a door might unlock to another way of seeing the world and its Mysteries altogether.

Mysteries of the Universe captured in sound

Filed under: Tracking | Tagged: Tracking | 3 Comments »

Weasel video

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Leslie

Here’s another type of weasel. I’m pretty sure this one is a long-tailed weasel because it’s tracks were about the right size. It’s hard to tell an ermine from a long-tail from the video. The quality was compromised because of the snow.I tried to enhance it a bit.

I was trying to catch a mink. I baited with sardines and fish and set the box on an ice bar right along the river. But instead I caught this guy. Notice the white fur with the black tip. Both ermines and long tail weasels change their coat color to white in winter. Watch the other video and you will see that Martens keep their coat color. This box is about similar size to the Marten box because minks are about Marten size. That will give you a size difference.

I’ll keep trying for that Mink!

Filed under: Mustelids | Tagged: long tail weasel, Weasel | 1 Comment »

Bobcats

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Leslie

Trapping season for bobcats and martens is over! Living here, it seems wildlife never get a break. Between hunting, collaring, trapping, logging, snowmobiling, ATV’s, there’s always some disturbance, sometimes quite major like hunting, that is going on. Cougar hunting is still on till the end of this month, although we have almost no snow and black bear spring hunt season begins soon.

Regardless, I have been worried that I haven’t seen any bobcat prints in the usual spots all winter. Bobcat trapping is becoming of major concern because pelts are fetching up to $1000. The Chinese and Russian market in particular are driving the prices, and every Tom, Dick and Harry is trapping the cats. A big story out in the California desert is trappers who are scanning the internet for bobcat pictures unsuspecting amateur photographers post, then placing traps right outside these people’s backyards. Other trappers are putting tons of leg hold traps on the border of Joshua Tree National Monument.

Although the rabbit populations are down in the desert, they are not doing so bad up here. The cottontails are beginning to rebound, and the snowshoe hare population seems to be doing just fine. But where are the bobcats?

So I was happy when right after a fresh snow the other day I came across this bobcat trail.

21″ stride direct register made me think he was trotting or just a big bobcat walking

I tracked the fellow for over two hours and let me tell you it was strenuous. He seemed to be on a mission, heading directly, and mostly at a trot, up the steep slopes until finally, once high up, he stopped to stand on a boulder and look down over the valley.

Bobcat takes me up high

Then he made a sharp left and zigged and zagged even higher up. As the snow got patchier with the daytime temperatures warming, I was having a harder time finding his tracks. Finally, he led me way high, into the snow-covered scree base of the mountain. I figured he was going back to his daytime den, as the tracks were made early morning. Everything in me wanted to follow him, but the difficult terrain and my own exhaustion said ‘Another Day’.

Cats like to walk on downed logs to help hide their scent

Nice direct register print with my 3′ tape measure for size

This cat was almost completely direct registering but here he did a curious things

This cat was almost completely direct registering but here he did a curious thing. Not sure of what happened with his gait here. Any ideas?

Here’s another question to answer: Bobcats are very habitual animals, using the same territory over and over again. This bobcat was occupying cougar territory. He was denning and hunting in an area where I’ve seen cougar sign over and over again. I understand cougars sometimes kill bobcats. Last year I found bobcat and cougar tracks together in another area with almost the same freshness. I wonder about this tenuous relationship, and how these bobcats are avoiding cougars.

Photo I took of a bobcat in Palm Springs wildlife zoo. He looks like he wants to get out there.

Filed under: Bobcats | Tagged: Bobcats | 1 Comment »

Marten

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Leslie

There are plenty of weasels this year after a plentiful squirrel population. Here is a marten exploring a box with fat I made for him.

Filed under: Mustelids | Tagged: Martens | Leave a comment »

Cougars and Wolves-A puzzle

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Leslie

Finally time to post a cougar entry. Days have been warm, so when we’ve had snow, it melts off quickly. But I’ve had two interesting cougar tracking experiences.

Several days after a very nice snow I ventured out to an area where I’ve seen cat tracks many times. Its a landscape full of boulders with low cliffs easily passable for humans–perfect cougar tracking. I headed straight for some high cliffs where I found cougar tracks last year, and lo and behold, there were fresh puma tracks. Because the terrain is fairly easy, I was able to follow these tracks for over an hour, mostly up, down and over boulders. A coyote occasionally mirrored this cougars’ trail.

Left Hind

Nice front print

Right front (Rt.) Left hind over front foot (lt) cougar

Moving with an easy gait, occasionally jumping high up on a boulder or down into a gully (where I had to go around. Following a cougar isn’t easy), the cougar stopped on a rock at an overlook to size up the terrain. All this indicated that this cougar was relaxed.

I’d seen wolf tracks when I began early on, but not coinciding with my cougars tracks. Yet suddenly the wolf pack’s tracks appeared atop a ridge, fresh as the cougars’. The wolves and the cougar headed down a narrow path to a ravine below, where I lost the cougar tracks in an array of wolf tracks. I searched everywhere but the plethora of canine tracks obscured all other sign. What were those wolves doing? There was no sign of a kill in the area. Usually Koda is pretty good at finding carcasses when I can’t. I even went back on another day, combing the area for a kill, but nothing.

Cougar paw

Anesthesized cougar teeth

A few days ago I hiked up the mountain behind my home. A series of terraces stair steps up the mountain side. It’s a north facing wooded area and some of the shelfs are quite steep. I climbed fairly high when I came across a fresh cougar track. The cat scrambled to the next level, the final mesa before the mountainside turns to scree. It’s an area full of large boulders. The cougar easily and deftly walked up the slope toward a giant granite boulder which she jumped on top of. Yet what caught my attention were the wolf tracks that ran right in front of the boulder and over the cougar tracks–same freshness. Here again were cat and canine tracks together.

Again losing the cat tracks, I followed the wolf tracks back to the woods by my house. There I found not only cougar and wolf tracks, but a deer kill already picked over by birds, probably from the night before. Did the cougar kill the deer, only to be driven off by the wolves?

So, this leaves me with more questions than answers. Do wolves keep a pretty good bead on cougars? Cougar kills are easy food for other predators and that’s why they take time to cover their kills. But what were those wolves doing around that cougar on my first tracking excursion? What kind of competition are those wolves presenting to that cougar? And it also lead me to think about people who hunt cougars with dogs. Eight dogs have been killed by wolves in Montana this year while hunting cougars. Are those dogs more susceptible to being caught and killed by wolves because they are following cougars? There have been a series of dogs lost in Sunlight over the years, some for a few weeks, yet all the lost dogs have turned up, not killed by wolves. Yet a few years ago a hound hunting cougars was killed by the wolf pack.

I am curious about the relationship between cougars and wolves, two top predators competing for similar prey.

Filed under: Cougars | Tagged: Cougars, Wolves | 3 Comments »

Tracking small mammals

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Leslie

With warm temperatures and little snow in my mountain lion tracking areas, I’ve turned to tracking small mammals above my house. I’m not sure if I am just becoming aware of what these tracks look like, or if I am actually noticing an explosion of long-tailed weasels this year.

During last summer, we had a lot of reports in the neighborhood of weasels. One neighbor told me her indoor cat killed a baby weasel and left it in the living room. Obviously, some weasel had gotten into her house and had a litter. Because weasels kill a tremendous amount of mice, she wasn’t too happy with her cat. I personally watched a weasel take three baby bluebirds from their nest that were about to fledge. I attribute all these sighting to an explosion of Unita ground squirrels this summer.

The weasel family has a distinct gait, especially in snow, called a 2×2.

you can see the 2x2 gait where the back feet land in the front feet tracks.

you can see the 2×2 gait where the back feet land in the front feet tracks.

These are really clear weasel tracks on the porch. My shoe for size.

The only way I could figure out what kind of weasel I was seeing was to take measurements of the track width. After taking lots of measurements, I found I’m seeing long-tailed weasels, not ermines. From my observations, it appears that weasels hardly ever backtrack, unlike squirrels who make a deep trails back and forth between their caches and trees. They wander from one rock or juniper to the next looking for mice and voles. The reason you rarely see backtracking is because, unlike squirrels, they don’t have permanent dens. Instead they go out looking for prey, make a kill, then take over their prey’s nests. They might use these nests for a few days only.

Vole tracks on snow close up

Vole bound. You can see it’s tail drag. My shoe is for size.

Mouse tracks in snow

I’ve found these weasel tracks in fairly predictable areas–forested areas encircling small to medium sized meadows. This would make sense considering their prey consists mainly of voles and mice.

I followed a weasel track into the trees and came across Marten tracks. Martens, like weasels, are mustelids and have that characteristic 2×2 in snow except much bigger. Where weasels have a trail width of 1″-3″ depending upon which weasel, martens have a trail width of 2 3/4″ to 4 1/2″ and a much bigger foot. Once you start to recognize these tracks, they will be easy to distinguish from rodents and from each other.

Scale shows width of track

Ruler shows trail width

The Martens, unlike the weasels, like to travel in heavy timber for protection. They also eat voles, but take squirrels, carrion, berries,fruit, chipmunks and birds. Martens climb trees whereas weasels rarely do. They prefer old growth forests. James Lowery says that ‘logging that removes old growth trees and forest management practices that result in islands of forest separated by open space do not provide good habitat for marten and, some would say, destroy the health of the forest as well.” Lowery’s comments makes me wonder about the logging that is going on this winter in the Sunlight area.

I walked up Little Sunlight Campground the other day which has been extensively logged. Loggers have created huge slash piles. They took all the largest trees and left islands of narrow girthed conifers in groups with large meadows in between. When I walked the logging road, I saw almost no tracks except deer and a few elk, but no squirrels or smaller critters. Are these the best forest practices in a wild place like the GYE? Many people I talk to say we need this for fire protection, or we need the lumber. But control burns are better for the habitat as they suppress invasives that come up after logging, and encourage fire adapted plant materials that fix nitrogen to sprout. This kind of logging will be good for large browsers, but not for martens and other animals that depend on old growth forests and dense cover.