If you are a teacher or homeschooler looking for ways to extend What I Saw in Grand Teton: A Kid’s Guide to the National Park, here are a few activity ideas for you. My thanks to third-grade teacher Suzy Miller for “Safe Space”–a fun way to teach important lessons for kids living in or visiting areas with potentially dangerous wildlife.
In 1978, there were only 12 known nesting pairs of bald eagles in Montana. By 2014, that number had increased to more than 700 pairs. This amazing recovery, thanks to the ban on DDT and actions taken under the Endangered Species Act, is the subject of “The Eagles Have Landed,” my article in the November-December 2017 issue of Montana Outdoors Magazine. Kate Davis of Raptors of the Rockies took the stunning photographs that accompany the story.
While researching bald eagles, I watched for them in their usual haunts, and I spotted a fair number of nests in river valleys before the cottonwoods leafed out. But I also saw bald eagles in a few more unexpected places:
Sometimes I even saw eagles while driving somewhere to look for eagles. The message in all this for me? The eagles are back.
Yet even though overall bald eagle numbers are encouraging, we should be careful not to take the species for granted. As zoologist Willard Van Name said, “The time to save a species is while it is still common.” Bald eagles remain vulnerable to everything that got us in trouble in the first place, including habitat loss, nest disturbance, and poisoning by environmental contaminants.
One more note about Montana’s bald eagles . . . Not all the birds you see are nesters. Some are “floaters,” immature birds or others that haven’t yet established a nesting territory (my track meet birds probably fit this category). Others are migrating birds passing through Montana on their way to somewhere else. And still others are Canadian birds here to spend the winter in milder conditions. I look forward to seeing these winter migrants soon.
When you hear coyotes howl, do you ever wish you had a translator? I became especially curious a couple of summers ago when a pack of coyotes moved into the gully below my house, and as far as I could tell, started raising a family. The coyotes kicked up a chorus for almost any loud sound, including the roar of commercial jets flying over the neighborhood. That noisy summer is the subject of “Awake at night and listening to coyotes,” my latest essay in High Country News (titled “Overheard in Montana” in the print edition, which was published September 4, 2017). My thanks to researcher Brian R. Mitchell for answering my questions about coyote vocalizations.
I’m excited to announce the release of What I Saw in Grand Teton: A Kid’s Guide to the National Park on April 1 (available through Amazon and Riverbend Publishing). I wrote the text and Christopher Cauble provided the many beautiful photographs.
Our book offers a sampler of many of the animals, plants, and places families are likely to see on a trip to the park, as well as space for children to record their own sightings. It also includes fun facts on everything from ranger hats to earthquakes. The wildlife “Guess what?” sections are some of my favorites. Did you know that bluebird feathers aren’t really blue? Or that the pronghorn’s closest living relatives are not antelope? (Hint: They are found in Africa and can grow up to 19 feet tall.) I liked digging into the research to find surprising details even about common species.
After spending a fair amount of time in the Tetons as a kid, I enjoyed reconnecting with the park and learning more about its history and incredible diversity of wildlife and plants. The book provides a fun guide for kids visiting Grand Teton National Park, and I hope it will spark an interest in wildlife and natural areas for at least a few of them.
I spent most of my twenties working for the National Park Service, and I lived in a wide variety of government housing, including several shabby but appealing old houses where the wild creatures outnumbered human inhabitants. Sometimes I wondered, lying awake at night, how many hearts beat inside those walls. With all that lovely national park habitat protected for their use, why did the animals need to live in my house? Or my office?
My latest essay in the Christian Science Monitor, “The indoor wilds at outdoor parks,” revisits my experiences with wild (non-human!) roommates and officemates in Rocky Mountain National Park. At the time, they were considered annoying but not dangerous. Attitudes changed dramatically when hantavirus came on the scene, and suddenly those cute, non-housebroken deer mice became a threat. When I moved on to Canyonlands National Park, I found that every effort had been made to seal off my double-wide from four-footed intruders. These efforts mostly worked (and later employees moved into rodent-free new housing). But somehow a packrat still managed to chew its way through the floor and drown itself in my toilet. I’m not even going to get started about my coworkers’ experiences with skunks and scorpions.
About the visitor center in the story . . . the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center was designed by Taliesin Associated Architects, Frank Lloyd Wright’s firm, after Wright’s death. Working there, I always thought the building was a bit of an oddball. But in my defense, I had previously worked out of a fort and a log cabin. I recently revisited the building while researching a children’s book I am writing about the park. I think I get it now, at least a little.
I’m still the family barber, but you never know what might happen when I pick up the scissors. My new essay in the Christian Science Monitor, about the risk of doing it yourself, is titled “Free haircuts—but at a cost.”
It can be tough to decide what risks are acceptable for your children, especially if you’ve had a chance to see what can go wrong in the mountains. For my take, see my essay published April 4, 2016 in High Country News, “Take a page from the mountain goats.” (In the print edition, see “Risk, goats, and kids in the mountains.”)
Sometimes it’s fun to be wrong, even if your husband is right. My story, “Fresh, Never Frozen,” is about fly fishing in an unexpected place–behind a small-town grocery store in Colorado–with unexpected results. It appears in the latest fly fishing issue (March-April 2016) of Gray’s Sporting Journal, which just showed up on the newsstands here in Western Montana. The magazine is beautifully illustrated and full of stories I want to read, just what I need as I wait impatiently for spring. Here’s to good surprises on the water.
My kids used to ask, “What’s that big, black bird, Mom?”
I always answered, “It’s a crow, or maybe, um, a raven.”
But now I know the difference. If you want to know what to look for, check out my short piece about crows in the March-April 2015 issue of Montana Outdoors magazine (currently unavailable online).
Unfortunately, I had space for just a small percentage of all the fun stuff I learned about crows. Even though I usually find them eating garbage in the Target parking lot, they’re some of the smartest animals on Earth.
I got interested in crows after watching the PBS Nature special, “A Murder of Crows.” It’s well worth an hour if you have the time.
I’ve always loved dog stories, but not the ones like “Old Yeller” where the dog dies in the end. I promise that no dogs are harmed in my latest story, “Poetry Appreciation for Dogs,” which was just published in the Christian Science Monitor. The photo that accompanies the story is by Keri Petrilli, a friend of mine (and Scout’s).
Julie Lue 