Tag: Yellowstone River

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S2:E2 Our Fly Fishing Bucket Lists

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Fly fishing bucket lists make us happy. There’s nothing better than to listen to someone yammer on about great days on the water in places they’ve always longed to fly fish. In this episode, we provide our fly fishing bucket lists. Listen to the second episode of our second season now.

Listen to S2:E2 Our Fly Fishing Bucket Lists

At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.

Do you have a fly fishing bucket list? Where would you like to fish next? We’d love to hear from you. Post your ideas below or email us at Steve and Dave

Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone

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View some of our most recent podcast episodes on iTunes or on Stitcher, if you have an Android.

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Have Fly Rod, Will Time Travel

I fly fish for one reason: to catch fish. Of course, I love the opportunity to be outdoors and experience nature. But I could accomplish that without fly fishing. I could simply hike or camp or take up outdoor photography.

I fly fish because I love the thrill of catching trout.

However, this does not mean that I’m unappreciative of the side benefits that come with fly fishing. One of them is the opportunity to do some time travel. Yes, the fly rod in your hand also serves as a time machine, transporting you to some places in the past.

Brookies on the Au Sable

Recently, my son, Luke, and I drove to Grayling, Michigan, to fish for trout on the Au Sable River. We spent a day on the North Branch of the Au Sable and caught our share of brookies.

What stands out to me most, though, was the opportunity to drift the river in an Au Sauble River boat. These beauties look and feel much different than the drift boats from which I’ve fished the Yellowstone and Madison Rivers in Montana. They typically run 23- or 24-feet long and only two-and-a-half feet wide, resembling the shape of a dugout canoe.

The Au Sable River boat has been used on the Au Sable and Manistee Rivers in northern Michigan since the early 1870s. Lumber companies used this flat-bottomed craft to move tools and supplies to their logging camps. Loggers used them to maneuver between the logs as they floated down the rivers and to separate the inevitable log jams.

In the early 1880s, someone got the idea to modify the design a bit to use this craft for fishing.

Drifting the North Branch of the Au Sable with my son, Luke (pictured above to the left), and our guide, Justin, took me back in time to the days when the Grayling thrived in these rivers and the camp cooks used these boats to shuttle staples to their camps to feed hungry lumberjacks.

Fly Rod under the Trestle

I had a similar feeling of nostalgia last summer when I fished 16 Mile Creek in the north reaches of Montana’s Gallatin Valley. I caught a couple of nice browns under a railroad trestle on an old railroad grade used by the Ringling Brothers. Every off-season, they used to ship their circus equipment to their ranch.

More recently, a scene from A River Runs Through It was filmed on the same trestle—the scene where Jessie Burns drives wide-eyed Norman Maclean onto the tracks, over the trestle, and into a tunnel. What struck me was how this remote mountain valley had remained untouched and undeveloped. There were no power lines, roads, or highway sounds to remind me that I was fishing in the twenty-first century.

More than a decade ago, I remember the chill I felt when fishing the East Gallatin River about a mile from my where my house. I had read enough of Lewis and Clark’s journals to know that Captain William Clark and his Indian guide, Sacagawea, walked somewhere nearby the spot where I fished as they traveled east from the Three Forks of the Missouri to meet up with the Yellowstone River.

More recently, local resident Jim Doig was killed when thrown from his saddle horse in a pasture adjacent to the stretch of the East Gallatin I fished. His nephew, Ivan, tells the story in his memoir, This House of Sky.

Something stirs me about the history that swirls around the places I fish. To be sure, it cannot make up for a lack of catching fish. But when the fish are sipping my flies off the surface, the historical dimension of the waters I fly fish enriches my experience.

So what happened a hundred years ago in and around the rivers you are fly fishing?

Knowing the history may not make a bad day on the river good. But it is sure to make a good day even more meaningful.

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Why We Love Fly Fishing Small Creeks

My podcast partner, Dave, and I have had some fantastic days on big rivers. One spring we both had 20-inch rainbows on at the same time in the Madison River.

We’ve both landed big browns in the Lower Madison, and we’ve had a blast catching cutthroats feasting on hoppers in the Yellowstone River.

But it is the small creeks that we find irresistible.

Even on our trips to Montana or Wyoming, we always devote at least one day to fly fishing a small creek. Here are five reasons why we find small creeks so charming—and why you may want to make them part of your fly fishing experience as well.

Small creeks get less pressure

I wonder how many times I have seen the Yellowstone River in Montana’s Paradise Valley look like rush hour in Chicagoland, with all the drift boats making their way down the river.

Yet the little creeks — such as Pine Creek, Mill Creek, and Big Creek — are abandoned.

Recently, Dave and I fished the Driftless in southeast Minnesota. We had plenty of company on the South Fork of the Root River, but we spend most of our time on a little creek that emptied into the river. Canfield Creek turned out to be a gem. We had it all to ourselves, and the browns were happy to rise to our elk hair caddis flies.

Small creeks bring out the hunter in us

Small creeks require us to go into stealth mode.

When I fish my favorite runs in the Yellowstone or Madison Rivers, I rarely need to sneak up to the bank on my hands and knees. But that’s what it takes to fly fish a small creek. The run you want to fish in a small creek is only a couple feet away from where you’re kneeling rather than a dozen feet away as is often the case in a bigger river.

These runs in small creek are typically more shallow than the ones in a river, so a fly fisher is simply more visible to the fish. Maybe all this sneaking through the brush reminds me of bow-hunting elk.

Whatever the case, operating in stealth mode is part of the fun.

Small creeks require more precision

To be honest, this is a reason to hate fly fishing small creeks as well as to love it.

It’s not that big rivers allow you to make sloppy casts. But they are more forgiving.

A river may give you a foot-wide window for placing your fly. But in a small creek, that window often closes to a couple of inches. Short, gentle, target-specific casts are the order of the day when fly fishing a small creek. The challenge is usually fun, although some days it will drive you crazy.

Small creeks are easier to wade

This is the middle-aged man in me speaking.

A day of wade-fishing the Yellowstone leaves me weary. It’s a combination of fighting the swift current while trying to keep from slipping as I step from one slick rock to another.

Recently when Dave and I fished a couple small creeks, the pedometer on his cell phone indicated that we walked about seven miles (full disclosure: some of those steps were to and from a great little café in Preston, Minnesota). I was surprised we had walked that far because my legs and feet were hardly tired at all. That’s the benefit of a day of ankle-deep and calf-deep wading.

Small creeks are home to some large trout

For the most part, the trout are smaller in small creeks, and neither Dave nor I mind a bit.

I get as much joy landing a ten-inch rainbow in a small creek as I do a twenty-inch rainbow in a large river.

Last week I caught an eleven-inch brown on a dry fly in a small creek, and it made my day. But occasionally, you’ll catch a monster in a small creek. Recently, I fly fished the Boulder River in Montana in a mountainous stretch where the “river” is really a small creek. For several years, I had caught mainly eight- to twelve-inch fish. But one afternoon, when it began to rain lightly and the trout went into a feeding frenzy, I caught a fifteen-inch rainbow and then a sixteen-inch rainbow on consecutive casts.

Then the rain stopped, and so did the fishing. This experience reminded me that bigger trout lurk in these small streams. They are harder to catch, but everyone once in a while you’ll hook into one of them.

Enjoy your next trip to a big river. But don’t overlook the smaller streams that flow into it. Your best day of the trip might be on a creek that everyone else has neglected.

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Episode 45: The Joy of Fly Fishing with Hoppers

fly fishing guides

There is no joy like the joy of fly fishing with hoppers. Period. It’s a little like learning how to play the guitar. Every newbie guitar player begins by learning how to play Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” And every aspiring fly fisher should begin by fly fishing with hoppers. It’s crazy fun. The flies are big and sit high on the water and are easy to cast. And when the trout are rockin’ grasshoppers, there is no greater thrill. Listen to Episode 45: The Joy of Fly Fishing with Hoppers now.

Listen to Episode 45: The Joy of Fly Fishing with Hoppers

We’ve recently introduced a feature to our podcast – “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” At the end of each episode, we read a few of the comments from the blog or from Facebook. We love the idea of adding your ideas to the creative mix.

Do you like fly fishing with hoppers? Any tips you can add to our podcast? Please post your ideas below.

Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone

Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”

View some of our most recent podcast episodes on iTunes or on Stitcher, if you have an Android.

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The Most Overlooked Fly Fishing Danger

The dangers fly fishers face are well publicized. Drowning. Lightning. Bear attacks. Rattlesnake bites. But little gets said about one of greatest dangers to your well-being when you plan your next fly fishing trip. It’s the most overlooked fly fishing danger.

It’s the same one facing hunters and airline passengers.

This danger comes from the vehicles you drive or pass on the way to your favorite river or hunting spot or airport. Statistically, the drive to the airport poses more danger to you than the airline flight you will board.

So it is with fly fishing:

1. Animal Encounters

It’s not enough to keep your eyes peeled for the rattlesnake on the trail to your favorite run. It’s the bison or the deer or cattle on the highway that can mess up you, your truck, and your trip. (Okay, the likelihood of hitting a bison is small unless you’re mindlessly driving in Yellowstone Park.)

One fall morning, my friend, Harry, and I left before dawn from Montana’s Gallatin Valley to drive to Henry’s Lake. What turned out to be a good trip (several nice trout on streamers) was almost sabotaged by a whitetail buck that jumped between Harry’s pick-up and boat trailer as we were driving down the highway.

Harry was alert for deer, and so he saw the buck getting ready to cross the road. He slowed down enough that there was no damage to the deer or trailer wiring.

A more serious situation occurred a couple summers ago involving Bobby Knight, the legendary college basketball coach.

A day before Dave, my podcast partner, and I fly fished the Wyoming Bighorn near Thermopolis, WY, Bobby Knight fished the same water and drove away in a Ford Expedition. It was dark, and he was driving in an open range area. Suddenly, cattle appeared on the road. He hit one of them and totaled his vehicle.

Fortunately, he escaped without injury. If you’ve ever driven remote highways in Montana or Wyoming at night, you know that this can happen to anyone.

2. Errant Drivers

When I was in high school, my brother, Dave, and I were fishing a little stream near Hallowell Park in Rocky Mountain National Park. The stream was below the mountain highway leading up to Bear Lake area. It took us about forty-five minutes to fish upstream to a natural stopping point.

On the way back down, there was a brand new car nose down in the creek—exactly where we had been standing about fifteen minutes earlier!

We learned that an elderly gentleman had fallen asleep because of some medication. He was okay, but we shuddered to think that what would have happened to us if we had been fishing there when the car took a nose dive over the bank.

I rarely fish streams or rivers right off the road. But when I do, I try not to linger too long at spots where errant drivers might land. I know how quickly these kind of accidents can happen—like the time I slid off an icy road and landed upside down in small stream near my home in Montana.

That’s a story for another time.

3. Drifting Vehicles

One day I was fly fishing the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley within sight of my parent’s home. I had walked down to a fishing access that was downriver from the Mill Creek Bridge. Suddenly, I saw a red car floating down the river! I didn’t see anyone in it, so I ran up to my folks house and called the county sheriff. They had already been notified. It turned out that a fly fisher had parked on an incline near the bridge and forgot to set his parking brake.

I now remember to set my parking brake whenever I’m parked on a slope of any kind.

Many are the ways to depart this world while doing what you love. Stay alert. And drive carefully!

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What Makes a River Sacred

Many years ago, Eugene helped his dad build a cabin on the edge of a melted glacier.

Eugene’s family lived in Kalispell, Montana. When his dad’s butcher shop prospered after WWII, his dad purchased two acres on a low rock cliff on the west shore of Flathead Lake. The view of the Mission Range to the east is spectacular as a few of the alpine peaks shoot up to ten thousand feet. The cabin became a family home, and it still sits on this rocky perch.

Eugene eventually moved to New York City and later to Baltimore for graduate work. He ended up serving as a pastor for nearly three decades near Baltimore. Then he worked as a professor in Vancouver, B.C. I got to know Eugene later in his life, but he says he never really left his two acre homestead overlooking Flathead Lake. He explains:

    I have lived sixty years of my adult life in cities and suburbs in other places, but most of those years I returned for at least a month, sometimes more, once for twelve months — an entire sabbatical year—to clarify and deepen my pastoral vocation on this sacred ground. And even when I was not here physically, the internalized space grounded me.

I can relate.

Since moving from Montana to a Chicago suburb a decade ago, I often return to the places that keep me grounded. For me, these are two mighty rivers of the West and their tributaries – the Yellowstone and the Madison. I have been able to return and fly fish them at least once a year since I moved to Illinois. But even when I’m not able to walk along the banks of the Madison or to float down the Yellowstone, I spend a lot of time there in my mind.

What Makes a River Sacred

At the end of his novella, A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean says, “I am haunted by waters.” In my case, I am grounded by waters. These rivers inspire me. They awaken a longing within me. They stir up thoughts and ideas and dreams about the future.

Dave, my podcast partner, and I have made the three or four mile hike (it gets longer every time we talk about it) up the Yellowstone River below Tower Fall a dozen or so times in the last few years. Sometimes, we talk. Often, we’re lost in our thoughts. It’s during these times of silence when my mind solves problems or generates new ideas.

These rivers bring healing, too.

When I’m catching trout, or trying to catch trout, I’m in the moment. But sooner or later, I’ll look around and get caught up in the surroundings. It’s then that I experience what novelist Leif Enger describes as “peace like a river.” After a stressful stretch of days or weeks, there is nothing like standing in the Madison River casting a size #18 parachute Adams to rising rainbows while the snow falls softly and melts into the river’s film.

Stress has a way of evaporating in those conditions.

The beauty of sacred ground is that you do not need to own it or live on it. It’s a unique gift if you do. But all it takes is an annual pilgrimage or (better yet) two for those rivers to ground you as they bring fresh perspective, clarity, and energy to your life.

If you don’t have a place like this, you will, as long as you keep fly fishing.

Your sacred ground — or river — may or may not be the stretch where you’ve landed the most rainbow trout.

But it will be the stretch which seems to breathe new energy into you like no other place. Keep fly fishing, and you’ll find it.

In one sense, it’s every river into which you wade and cast. Yet there will be places that stir your more than others. When you find one, keep returning. Look around at the landscape. Experience it in morning light and dusk. Fly fish it in the spring and the fall.

And during those cold winter days in an office cubicle or warehouse, spend some time there in your mind.

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Resisting the Urge to Fly Fish until Dark Thirty

At the end of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “Big Two-Hearted River,” Nick Adams has a decision to make.

He has had a fine day catching trout, and he has approached the place where the river enters a swamp. It is fast deep water, shaded by the big cedars which tower over it. Nick is inclined to avoid such a place. He fears wading in water up to his armpits. He also fears that it will be impossible to land big trout in such a place.

But therein lies the problem. There are big trout in this stretch of river. Nick is tempted. To keep going or to quit?. That is the question.

Should he go after the big trout or save them for another day?

Hemingway ends his novel like this: “Nick climbed the bank and cut up into the woods, toward the high ground. He was going back to camp. He looked back. The river just showed through the trees. There were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp.”

I wish I had a bit more of Nick’s instincts to leave some trout for another day. But I am greedy. Whether I’ve caught two or ten or 25 trout, I want to exploit a day on the river for all its worth.

Why end it too early? If it’s a great day, I might never get another one like it.

But over the years, I have learned the wisdom of quitting at a point of satisfaction, even though I could squeeze out another hour or two and add to my total of trout landed. There are a few reasons why this is wise, even if it’s hard to do:

Dark Thirty’s Rude Behavior

First, there is no need to make a habit out of arriving home later than I promised.

My wife recently bought a piece of decorative art at a Hobby Lobby store and put it on my desk. It reads: “GONE FISHING. BE BACK AT DARK THIRTY.” Been there, done that. Early in our marriage, we lived in Paradise Valley, south of Livingston, Montana. I had the day off from my job as a ranch hand, and I promised to take my wife to a concert in Bozeman that night. First, though, I planned a quick trip to fish the Yellowstone River. I told her I’d be back in plenty of time.

But I arrived home at Dark Thirty.

The good news is that we made it to the concert about one minute early. The bad news is that we were rushed, and the conversation on the drive over the Bozeman Pass was not as pleasant as the scenery. This resulted from my inability to resist the lure of one more cast, one more stretch of water, one more fish. Yet one led to another and another and another (casts, not necessarily fish).

If you can’t tear yourself away from the river, you’ll end up being rude to those you love.

Leaving with Your Story Intact

Furthermore, if you stay an extra hour, there’s no guarantee that a great day will stay great.

I remember a stellar afternoon on Madison River in the Bear Trap. I caught a lot of big rainbows. So when the afternoon shadows started to fall, I decided to keep fishing even though I’d have to rush home in the dark, wolf down my dinner, and make it to a meeting with no time to spare. I didn’t quit, but the trout did. During that last hour, I caught one.

Better to leave imagining that you left a dozen there than to leave frustrated.

The Urge to Fly Fish and Real Satisfaction


There’s an even deeper reason, though, to quit while you’re ahead.

Suppose that the extra hour on the river turns out to be an action-packed sequence of landing one trout after another. Will you leave more satisfied? The truth is, no. That’s right. You can never catch enough fish to be satisfied. You will always want to catch one more.

Last year, my podcast partner Dave Goetz and I fished a banner stretch of Sixteen Mile at the northern reach of Montana’s Gallatin Valley.

By 4 p.m., we had each landed a ridiculous amount of trout. The friend with whom we were fishing asked us if we wanted to keep fishing. In that moment, I finally mustered up the courage to say no. Part of it was because I was wrecked. Dave and I had hiked and fly fished in the back country of Yellowstone National park for two straight days. I was exhausted. That helped.

Part of it, though, was the sense that we should end a glorious day while we all felt good about it. I knew in that moment that my greedy desire to catch another dozen wouldn’t make me feel any better about the day. Besides, the fishing might slow down. And we were looking forward to a good meal at Sir Scott’s Oasis, the legendary steakhouse in Manhattan, Montana.

Like Nick Adams, Dave and pulled ourselves away from the creek. We decided to save some fishing success for another day. We didn’t fish until Dark-Thirty.

And I’ve never regretted it to this day.

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3 Disciplines to Master the Spring Creeks of the Driftless

Recently a friend who lives in the American West said he had heard of the great fly fishing in the Driftless (southeastern Minnesota, southwestern Wisconsin, and northeastern Iowa).

He wondered if he should put together a trip.

I paused.

He lives within an hour of the Madison, the Yellowstone, and the Gallatin, the big freestone rivers. He fishes three or four times a month. He has hit the Mother’s Day Caddis Hatch on the Yellowstone, he has hooked into the big spring rainbows on the Missouri, he has caught the running fall browns on the Madison, and he has had those late summer days when almost every other cast with a hopper pattern surfaces a gorgeous cutthroat.

Why should someone who lives near such waters fly fish the Driftless? In short, it will put every facet of his fly fishing game to the test.

Here are just three disciplines that forced me to up my game and begin to master the spring creeks of the Driftless:

Casting in and around Trees

It’s one thing to cast with a modicum of precision and distance when your backcast has no competition. You load your rod and let ‘er rip.

It’s quite another to drop a size-18 nymph with a one-foot dropper at the top of a run in a nine-foot wide stream with branches draped over you. When I started fly fishing the Driftless after twenty years of fishing in the West, I was shocked at how poorly I cast. No doubt, I wasn’t great in the West either, but in the Driftless, I was a genuine hack.

The Driftless forced me to learn how to cast with greater precision. There is still not much art or science to my casts, but at least I am more aware of my shortcomings. Fishing the Driftless forced me to pay attention to my cast and focus on placement in the run. I’ve learned the art of casting sideways in the presence of brush and low-hanging trees.

Crawling Up to a Run

Frankly, I had read Gary Borger’s book years ago, but the whole “stalking trout” concept was lost on me. It wasn’t until I started fishing the Driftless that I realized that much of my fishless afternoons and evenings was due in part to how I approached the runs.

Just recently, I watched a fly fisher trudge upright like a drunk Sasquatch into a beautiful Driftless run and begin to cast. He stood in the middle and toward the back of the run and cast upstream, in full view of the run, the sun casting his huge shadow across over the run. He cast for what seemed like 20 minutes, and then moved on. With his giant profile, my guess is that the trout spooked ten yards before he stepped into the water. I never saw a fish rise to anything he cast.

In the spring creeks of the Driftless, you cannot ape the Brad Pitt character in the movie “A River Runs Through It.” You just can’t. Fish are wary. The streams seem to be heavily fished. And to catch them requires stealth and strategy.

If you’re catching trout in a spring creek, most likely your knees (and maybe even your elbows) are muddy. You simple cannot stumble mindlessly from run to run.

Rather, you size up the run, see the next run above or below the one you are fishing, and figure out how to maintain a low profile throughout your casts. And as you move stealthily to the next bend in the stream.

Eliminating False Casts

I like to false cast, to be perfectly honest. It’s a third-rate fly-fisher’s go-to move to gain distance and accuracy. I’m no athletic god, and my fly fishing skills are simply one more confirmation of that patently obvious truth.

With false casting, the problem is, of course, that what may work (or at least have fewer consequences) in the West (when you’re standing in the Madison River and casting 40 to 50 feet) is a sure fire means in smaller spring creeks to chase away fish. They react to the movement, dart back under the rocks, and refuse to take anything you drift by them.

The trick is to fight the urge to revert to false casting when you need it most. To cast with a minimum of false casts requires endless amounts of practice before you can shoot the line out accurately (or lob it out awkwardly) while hunched over the edge of stream on your knees.

In the end, I recommended the Driftless to the person asking about it. But he may not be as great as he thinks he is. After a few days in the Driftless, though, he’ll be a better fly fisher than he is today.

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Episode 27: Your Next Guided Fly Fishing Trip

A River Runs Through It

Your next guided fly fishing trip – how should you prepare for it? Hiring a fly fishing guide seems easy enough: just pay and fish, right? Yes, it’s an extra expense, of course, but we believe in regularly fishing with a guide because doing so ups our fly fishing game. In this podcast about your next guided fly fishing trip, we discuss why a guided trip makes sense and offer some keys to making your next guided fishing trip worth the expense. Fishing with a guide can improve your skills and identify new waters to fish.

Listen now to Your Next Guided Fly Fishing TripFishing with a Guide?

At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.

How do you prepare for a guided fly fishing trip? Please post your ideas below.

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Subscribe to 2 Guys and A River2 Guys and A River

View some of our most recent podcast episodes on iTunes or on Stitcher, if you have an Android.

Rate the 2 Guys Podcast

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Fly Fishing’s Unbidden Grace

Tower Fall in Yellowstone Park is one of my happy places. It’s a beautiful waterfall of Tower Creek that cascades into the Yellowstone River. Upstream from the confluence is a stretch of the Yellowstone River where Steve and I have caught so many cutthroat trout that we’ve dubbed it “Hopper Run.” During the peak of the terrestrial (grasshoppers, for example) season in August, we’ve had a handful of days through the years where for a few hours the frenzy of catching and releasing fish causes time to stand still.

Several years ago, though later in the season, we made our way upriver towards Hopper Run, alternating the best runs. It was about noon early fall, not long before the Park closed for the season. This year, we fished on a slightly overcast but warm September day, perhaps in the sixties. Days later, the landscape of Tower Fall would be dusted in snow.

Steve was thigh-deep in the river, dropping a fly around a boulder, and I was eating lunch, watching him cast. I saw movement across the river and said, “Hey Steve, look at that coyote over there.” The animal was making its way down from the higher elevation to the bank of the river, almost directly across from us.

“That’s no coyote,” Steve said. “It’s a wolf.”

Sure enough. It was almost twice the size of a coyote, lanky, and unafraid. Only forty yards wide, the river was impossible to cross, but the wolf’s curiosity was unnerving. It lay near the bank for about 20 minutes, ostensibly watching us, and then got up and ambled back to the ridge. No anxiety. No hurry.

Most likely, this wolf was a descendant of one of the Lamar Valley packs, introduced into Yellowstone Park in 1995, amid a cacophony of controversy. The Lamar Valley was the next drainage system directly to the east of us.

Harbinger of Grace
In the West, the wolf is either hated or worshiped.

Many western ranchers rue the day the wolves were introduced back into Yellowstone and elsewhere in Montana. Wiped out as fast as the bison in the nineteenth century, wolves often prey on exposed livestock. There is also likely an inverse correlation between the number of wolves and the number of deer and elk in an ecosystem. Other than environmentalists, few celebrated the return of the wolf to its native habitat. And in movies and literature, the wolf is often a symbol of evil, a harbinger of darkness.

But on this day, the wolf was a symbol of grace, a pause in the way the world operates. In all my years of fishing in the West and hunting in the Dakotas, I’ve had less than a handful of moments like this, where the fear between what is wild and what is domestic dissipates. Fear is replaced with curiosity, if only for a few seconds. It’s a “wolf lies down with the lamb” moment, which anticipates the New Heaven and New Earth. Perhaps, more specifically, it’s a “New Earth moment,” where the curtain is pulled back and I see the mystery of something that is perfectly wild.

Rick Bass, one of my favorite authors of the wild places, writes, “How we fall into grace. You can’t work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you, unbidden.”

On this day, an unbidden grace lay across the Yellowstone.