By Jim Stanford on February 2, 2007
Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night …
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?— William Blake, “The Tiger”
With all this talk of cougars in recent days, I figured I ought to see one in the wild.
I was hesitant at first, knowing where this cat supposedly was hanging out. On Valentine’s Day 1999, while skiing powder on Snow King, I looked down and saw a traffic jam on a dirt road on the outskirts of town. That’s strange, I thought, what the hell is going on?
Well, it was a lioness and her three cubs holed up in a den, not far from the road and a huge crowd of admirers. The cougars stayed for more than a month, but I never ventured to see them. It did not seem right to drive and stand in a crowd to observe such a wild creature.
Eight years later, a lion allegedly was back in the same area. Two friends passed along the tip, and one offered a ride. It was cold and gray outside, the wind was blowing, and it seemed unlikely there would be much fanfare. In fact, it seemed unlikely we would see anything at all.
I grabbed my binoculars, camera and telephoto lens and followed David out the door.
When we arrived at a turnout, several hundred yards from the hillside, there were a few cars and people peering through scopes. We got out, hoods pulled up against the wind, and tried to eavesdrop as the spectators shared their observations.
Good timing on our part. A buzz came over the lion watchers; something about a badger, a hole, the carcass. “Do you see it?” people asked one another. “The first hole.”
Which hole, what hole, where? I thought as I fidgeted with the binoculars I hadn’t used in years, straining to focus and hold steady and look in the right direction as the wind crippled my fingers.
The spectators grew ebullient; the lion had chased a badger away from the sheep carcass and taken over the hole, apparently. A woman handed David her binoculars, and he caught a brief glimpse of the cat standing at the mouth of the cave. I missed the whole thing, looking at the wrong hole.
I told David that I was going for a walk, determined that if I was going to see anything, it would be with my own two eyes, perhaps as an animal moved across the hillside.
I hadn’t gone far when lo and behold the badger crossed the road about 75 yards in front of me, then plodded across the snow and up the facing hillside, in plain view. You might say he had his tail between his legs a little bit. Everyone was watching and seemed to be laughing. In nearly 15 years of living in Jackson Hole, I could count on one hand the number of badger sightings I’ve had. This alone was quite a treat.
As the badger slunk away, I resumed walking. About 30 yards down the road, I came to a car pulled over at the edge of the snow. A few other folks joined me, and again the buzz was perceptible. The lion was visible at the mouth of the cave.
This time I was looking at the right hole, but still I could not make out anything. An excited woman with bigger binoculars urged me to look through hers. “Don’t you see the ears and a black stripe on the nose?” she said, hoping I’d finally get it. “Ma’am,” I said, “I see the outline of what could be ears, but it also could be rocks or sage.”
The view was like this:
Doesn’t look like much, does it?
But soon a man pulled up in a big truck with a powerful scope mounted on his window. By this point everyone else had spotted the lion and was positively beaming. He beckoned me to have a look.
The wind was really biting, and I wished I had donned long underwear and grabbed my down mittens before leaving the house. The thought of jumping into this guy’s warm truck was inviting.
Peering through the scope was like looking at one of those point drawings, where if you stare at it long enough, a 3-D image appears behind the dots.
Only I didn’t need to stare very long. Once I peered into the stable, high-powered scope, the realization dawned on me. I was looking straight into the eyes of … Simba. The big cat was staring right back at me, lying down on its paws, facing forward. Its head was enormous. Those had been ears I was looking at all along, only the proportions were so big that I couldn’t picture the head.
Now I could see the cat’s every slight movement, practically the blinking of its eyes.
It was like magic.
Watching such an animate creature for the first time leaves a profound impression, and you can’t help but come away from the experience filled with a deep reverence.
(Later, overflowing with excitement, I would think of Chef in Apocalypse Now: “It’s a TIGER!! A FUCKING TIGER!!!”)
Before the spell could wear off, wildlife photographer Tom Mangelsen and companion Sue Cedarholm cruised up in their truck. The ear-to-ear grin on my face told the story. It was no surprise to see them there; Tom had photographed the cougars on the butte back in ‘99 and made a book of the experience. He was so moved that he formed the nonprofit Cougar Fund to fight for protection of mountain lions, an endeavor that has consumed a great deal of his time in the eight years since.
Tom politely informed me that it was best to move back and stay inside the car. At that point we decided to leave. We had gotten what we came for and more.
The wind was scouring the snow in the high Tetons, and clouds peeled off the peaks to reveal a peachy alpenglow. The temperature, with wind chill, had to be 30 below zero, one of the coldest extremes I had ever subjected myself to, it seemed.
David warmed up the car, but just before we pulled away, I had to get out and shoot a photo or two of that hole on the hillside. I knew it would be a black dot, but through the marvel of digital technology I figured I might blow it up into something recognizable. My fingers nearly froze into icicles as I made sure I snapped a few sharp frames in the fading light.
When I got home, I had other work to do, but I could not resist popping the flash card into the computer to see if anything turned up. Sure enough, as I zoomed in, it was like looking through the scope all over again. I kept reopening the photo, thinking, Did I really see that?
Immediately I sent an e-mail to some of my biggest wildlife-watching friends, several of whom do not live here anymore. I knew they’d be blown away, too.
And just as I hit send on that e-mail, of the 2,027 songs stored on my hard drive, the computer randomly selected … “Bagheera,” a seldom-played oldie by Blues Traveler, an ode to the panther, mighty king of the jungle.
I felt like those eyes were still watching me.
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Tom Mangelsen’s book about the cougar visit in 1999 is titled Spirit of the Rockies and is available on his Web site and his Images of Nature Galleries.
Tom informed me that this cat is a young female, about 20 months old. He speculates that it might be a descendant of the mother from 1999. Various species of lions return to the dens where they were reared as kittens. “Wouldn’t it be cool if she were the granddaughter?” he says.
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I wrestled over whether to write this column and post it on the Internet, leery of promoting another circus. But I talked with a few knowledgable friends, and we concluded there would be no harm because: a) the cat was out of the bag, so to speak; and b) because anyone who sees a mountain lion comes away changed.
These magnificent creatures deserve our respect and protection. As the Wyoming Legislature debates draconian management guidelines for grizzly bears and wolves, I can’t help but think of Jack Turner’s plea, in The Abstract Wild, for a “peaceful covenant” between people and predators.
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For extensive information about cougars, their significance in Indian lore and the challenges they face from hunters and state wildlife agencies, visit the Cougar Fund.
To learn more about mountain lion research in the Teton area, see Beringia South.
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Tom Stanton of the JH Daily has a photo of the same cougar in the weekend paper.
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(An example of the 3-D pointilist artwork is the cover of the Dave Matthews Band debut album, Remember Two Things. This type of art actually is called an autostereogram, according to the always-handy Wikipedia.)
Posted under environment, hunting, mountain lions, wildlife
