The Last Week

I’m writing this blog back at the yurt, on the deck in the sun. Our year of filming is officially over. Of course, it’s a bitter-sweet feeling. I am ready to be done. It was a difficult year for reasons we had not anticipated. But it was also filled with surprises of the kind that will make magical memories; it already has. And now, faced with the daunting task of editing over 150 hours of footage down to a one hour segment (hopefully with professional help!), I find myself sometimes thinking of the simple wandering life of filming. What?! Did I actually say the ‘simple’ life???? It’s amazing how memory works, truly amazing.
We managed to sneak away from watch-dogging the Blue Bunch pack for a solid week, where we headed for our starting point, full circle from when we began last June, near Stanley, Idaho. Near Stanley is a loose term. The destination is fifty miles on a very rough dirt road, deep into the wilderness (the road was grandfathered in when wilderness was created), over two mountain passes and far from the bustling metropolis of Stanley (population 106).
As always, the trip was filled with adventure, which I will try to briefly describe in highlights. We had not even made it to Stanley, when Isaac says:
“I think we have a flat…” and we both listen to the familiar floppy whirr of flaccid tire on pavement.
We pull over at a nearby pull-off, literally 10 miles from Stanley. The day was already moving into evening, and mosquitoes were out in force, as we were parked near a swampy field. We swatted, sweated, and grunted the spare onto the hub, and drove the last miles into town, to find the one gas station in town, in the process of closing. The very nice attendant said the mechanic had gone home for the night, but had just left and if we called him he just might turn around.
He did. And after a long time of soaking the tire in Windex (no dunk tank in this small town!) found no leak. Scratching his head, he, in one last attempt, hit the valve stem, which hissed loudly. Leak found, valve stem replaced, we were very nearly back on the road, except for one minor little detail. He couldn’t get the tire back on the rim. Not really his fault either. Our truck has unusual sized tires (unusual in that they don’t make them that size anymore for this very reason, they are very difficult to get back on the rim. To do it, you need a major blast of air, like from a large compressor and heavy duty air-tool. Not happening here in small town Stanley. The compressor was already over taxed, the mechanic explained, from a day of bad luck where a lady was stuck in her car, up on the lift, for over two hours…long story. He was smiling when he told us this, and I was almost wetting my pants, but you could see the strain in his eyes. It had been a rough day already. Funny enough now. Not so funny then.
Basically, we (all three of us) spent 3 hours trying to wrestle and manhandle the tire back onto the rim, with no luck. We tried every trick in the book, from rim sealer, to a rope, and then a ratchet strap, around the tire. The evening ended around 11:30 with the tire laying airless on the floor, and three greasy and tired people. The mechanic said he’d call some people and try to find a solution for the morning. Isaac and I went off in search of digs for the night (another story, too long for here).
The next morning we returned to the gas station to find our tire filled (filled, that is, with air, and also with a tube, which became another issue we had to deal with when we got home…lets just say we’re lucky neither of us cracked any teeth on the 3 hour drive home… and we’ll leave it at that). But for the time being the tire was on and we were on our way.
The next surprise was a good one. We found the 50 miles of rough dirt road, which we expected to be impassable after the torrential rains we had all spring long, passable. As it turned out, it was in the best shape we’d ever found it. Snow-free (mostly), boulder-free, nothing was blown out, and we only had to cut out 3 down trees the whole way. And to top it all off, as we rounded the last corner before the road ends and we set out on foot, we stared out the windshield gape-mouthed at a huge mountain lion sprawled in the road. I know minds can make things like predators, and fish, and distances, much bigger than they are in reality. And I’m sure that’s what was going on here, but I tell ya this sucker was huge! It slowly sat up, like a typical cat, looking at us with a look that said “what are you lookin’ at”. I swear if I had been standing there in the road, our two heads would have been at the same height. We stopped the truck, threw it in reverse, and crept backwards around the corner as quiet as we could in a large pick-up, got out the camera, and snuck back around the corner, camera rolling. The cat was gone, of course. But we spent the next hour creeping around on foot looking for it. There was a lot of sign on the road, like it had been hanging around for a while in that one spot. Isaac searched below the road on the steep mountain slope, while I searched ahead on the dirt road. I came to the last down tree, a well branched and bushy lodge pole, and just as I was clambering through the dense branches, I looked up to see not one, but two mountain lions bounding gracefully across the road not 30 feet away.
Of course, we never got them on film except for a brief, over-excited (ie: bouncy) blip on our little camcorder, but we spent many hours searching, and at least got to see them with our eyes.
The next day when we hiked down to our destination, we found that not only was the wolf pack there that we had come to see, but they had 5 pups, 4 of which were the most beautiful silver-backed black. This pack had never had black pups all the years that we’ve followed them in the springtime, so this was a truly exciting discovery. As far as we know there are no black adults in the pack, but it is very likely that we didn’t see all the adults. The black coloring in wolves seems to be a recessive trait.
The day we hiked in was pouring rain, cold, and peppered with occasional hail. I distinctly remember wondering what the heck we were doing out there. It seemed kind of like a token trip. But then we found the black pups and it made it all worthwhile. And from there on out, the weather was perfect, sun for warmth, with some overcast for filming. We have a hidden camp spot there that we return to every year, and it has become a familiar place. There is literally no flat ground in those parts, every thing is either steep up or steep down, so one year Isaac burrowed out a flatish, pine-needle, tent-shaped bed on the uphill side of a huge Doug fir tree. A tiny, clear mountain stream runs right by, which we drink straight from, and you can sit in the last light of evening and listen to warblers and the occasional night hawk.
We found morels on the trail, and picked them for dinner. We watched wolf pups play and romp and explore, and interact with adults as they came and went from their feeding duties. We saw several black bears, one of which was the most unusual brassy blonde color (all over, not just along the back) and seemed to be being chased by a larger, black bear. And the wildflowers were, surprisingly for how late in the season it was, just coming into full bloom. It was a perfect end to the year, full of good treats and surprises. And after all the hoopla around the Blue Bunch wolves, it was a nice reminder that, at least in some places in the wilderness, wolves are free to be wolves.