Before Kanye slap an iPhone slam of the Tetonson his unexampled record album , but after we ruined Niagara Falls , in part remind the creationof an intact system of protected federal land , I spent a winter in Jackson , Wyoming working under what I can safely say is the good caper claim I ’ll ever have : sleigh ride natural scientist .
My caper was to hop-skip aboard a sleigh drive by a burly cowboy and guide tourists huddle under thick woolen mantle out to see a herd of elk , assure them the story of the National Elk Refuge , teach them about the wildlife , and make certain they did n’t get frostbite . Truthfully , I took the caper so I could be close to Jackson Hole Ski Area ’s 4,139 upright feet and remain living the ski bum dreams of my dirtbag 20 . And while I did indeed do that , it was the elk and their life on an increasingly fragmented landscape that finally shaped me most .
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem used to be home to hundreds of thousands of elk . Today , 40,000 of the proud ungulates still call it home , and signs of them are everywhere if you know what you ’re look at .
Their marks can be seen in the forest , on well haggard trees they use to itch the velvet off their antler each give . Their bugles can be take heed during the mating season known as the rut , a rude clarion call that would n’t be out of place in Carnegie Hall . And when the first snows declination , they start their move from the upland and forests down to the vale where they overwinter . Each elk ruck follows the same migration paths the multitudinous generations before have . Up to 7,000 find their mode to the National Elk Refuge that abuts Jackson , Wyoming .
And each wintertime , thousands of tourists good deal to the domain to see the elk , purchase a ticket at the local visitant center , then hop-skip aboard a schooltime bus that whip them off to where they hop on a sleigh a couple nautical mile northward on the two - lane highway that read you to Grand Teton and Yellowstone .
The road mirror the western flank of the refuge ’s nearly 25,000 Akko , delimitate by a tall fence interrupt by the casual break where a shoulder allows elk to thrust onto refuge land . The steep wall of dirt on the other side also mean they ca n’t rise back out and onto the road . Dubbed Alces alces leap , they ’re a microcosm of all the style we ’ve tried to let eon of elk inherent aptitude to continue survive amidst a few centuries of human development .
The resort was set aside in 1912 to protect elk from this increasing encroachment . As man actuate into Jackson Hole — the valley between the Tetons and the Gros Ventre Mountains that acts a funnel for water from both ranges — with their livestock , they came into ever increasing contention with elk for solid food and land . By 1910 , the elk ruck was near starvation and the townsfolk in burgeon Jackson bound to action . They got the Wyoming legislature to appropriate $ 6,000 to buy hay to feed the herd .
The next twelvemonth , the Union government ponied up $ 20,000 to fertilize to the herd again and figure out what was going on . In 1912 , the refuge was set away by the Union politics . The winter provender crinkle has continued since then most uninterrupted . Sleigh rides were first officially propose to the public in 1965 as a fashion to visit the moose , a thread of its unnatural history I picked up in 2006 .
That wintertime , the snow barely decrease meaning most sleigh rides ended up being on wheels as opposed to runners , each excrescence in the rough prairie magnified by our pause - less chariot tug by two conscription horses . We knew where the wapiti were each morning because we knew where safety staff had dropped pelletized alfalfa . But along the way , each stumble was unequaled . Sometimes we ’d find a pair of bald-pated eagle in a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , other times there were coyotes mulling about . On one function , wolves had a made killing in the pre - dawn and were feasting on a carcass , seeable through field glasses on the first ride of the daytime .
But the highlight was always the American elk . Their form would emerge on the horizon , antlers lodge up like angulate tangles of shrubbery . In an wink , it feels like you ’re in the middle of a herd , surrounded by thou of wild animals that in any other situation would flee for the mound . But winter is a fourth dimension of repose for them , all their energy dedicate eating enough food to survive and stay quick . I ’d always stop talking when we were in the middle of the elk , save to point out a really large fuzz or the one elk that had an antler genetic deformation that stimulate two lobes to spring on the bottom of its antlers like tear drops .
Sitting there , it ’s comfortable to get lose in the collective breathing of the ruck . The altered landscape painting , one that we ’d inserted ourselves into , still holds a born rhythm even if just for a few minutes .
Nothing can get up you for the experience of seeing these animals . Even though it ’s been 12 year since I set foot on the refuge , my time there still guide me . It crystalized how we ’ve already pull off the rude world in unusual ways and how it continues to switch . I ’d urge you notice your own bit of contemplation while visiting the elk , or the many other wildlife that live on the640 million acresof public land in the U.S.
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