Some things we've learned... St Mary's Campground, Glacier NP

We camped in two places while visiting Glacier NP, both of which were on the east side of the continental divide. Our first location was the St. Mary's campground where we pitched our tent among the ripening blueberries, snowberries, service berries, and thimbleberries. Yes, we were camped in the middle of prime bear feeding patches! To make matters more exciting this happens to be be the time of year when grizzlies and black bears are gorging on these fruits to pack on weight for the long winter's hibernation. To make matters even more exciting it was a hot summer and the berry crops have been puny making our campground optimal to hungry bears looking for efficient foraging opportunities.

On our second night a mom and cub ended up in our loop of the campground and had to be flushed out by the rangers. For more, see this tweet. The next day this campground closed to all tent campers due to high bear activity and we moved up to Many Glacier. To cap off our stay at St. Mary's we were serenaded by a pack of coyotes yipping and howling in the middle of the night. We all woke up and listened for a few minutes before drifting back to sleep.

Being this close to animals like bears, coyotes, and wolves is exciting (in part) because our human ancestry is firmly rooted in an intimate relationship to such predators. We have become so far removed from this fact in the industrialized world that we mostly view such animals with fear and systematically have driven them to the brink of extinction. The Native Americans living in this region of Northern Montana include the Blackfeet, Kootenai, Salish, and Pend d'Oreille, and each have their own word for the wolf. To the Blackfeet Indians the wolf (or Makoiyi) is not a predator in competition with humans. Instead it is viewed as a helper to the broader natural world by thinning out the sickest animals from prey populations. A century of ecology research has essentially demonstrated the very same fact that prey populations are far healthier when there exists a legitimate predatory pressure. The entire food web benefits from the presence of these organisms. Maybe it's a stretch, but from this observation we're reminded that accepting mortality is consistent with a natural and balanced way in the world.