Yellowstone National Park - Marshes and Grassland

Northward from the lake flows the Yellowstone River, quietly meandering at first through a flatulent, sulfurous landscape of mud volcanoes, where the seething thermal features have such apt names as Mud Caldron, Sizzling Basin, Black Dragon's Caldron, Sour Lake, and Sulphur Caldron, and then into the broad, beautiful Hayden Valley. This flat, sandy saucer of land, the bottom of a lake during the last ice age, is now among the largest and loveliest of the park's many peaceful pockets of green.

When spring comes to the valley in late May or June, and patches of snow, thick, dirty, and strewn with pine needles, slowly melt into the soggy soil, vibrant green grasses surge from the warming earth and delicate white spring beauties seem to leap out of the ground by the thousands. Soon tall spikes of crimson paintbrush and stalks of deep blue lupine wave in the gentle air. Flowers in all colors and sizes swell to garland the surrounding ridges and caress the meadows. Great herds of elk, drifting as quietly as wisps of steam, move from the forests to join mule deer, pronghorns, and often grazing beasts on the open meadows.

Summer, once it begins, comes quickly. During the warm, lazy days, a circling red-tailed hawk rides a column of warm air above the valley on motionless wings, its sharp eyes scanning the riverside marshes, the meadows, the sage-studded rolling rangeland, and the distant forest fringes. Directly below, almost hidden by reeds, a Canada goose and her six downy goslings feed on aquatic growth, floating downstream on the broad, clear Yellowstone River as they nibble. A little farther downriver a group of white pelicans circle and settle onto the water with military precision. Forming a line, the birds begin to fish cooperatively, slapping the water with their wings as they herd their prey toward the shallows.

Along the marshy banks two moose methodically browse, dipping their long snouts deeply to pull up water plants. Some distance from the river a few bison move along a hillside, grazing as they go; their great chocolate-brown bodies look almost like boulders or tree stumps. Near the edge of a pine forest about a half mile beyond, another large, brown thing moves, a bear, exploring the hillside, pawing up the roots and sampling its finds. The large brown beasts are of no interest to the circling hawk. But not far from the bear, it sees the quick movement of a Uinta chipmunk, the white stripes on its back flashing in the sun. With a scream, the hawk stoops, talons first, upon its lunch.