Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • S P R I N G 2 0 1 5 22 22 side. Once I settled on a spot for the ceremony, Doug [Smith] pointed out that I'd chosen a place exactly halfway between a bald eagle nest and an osprey nest. Just up the valley was the Buffalo Ranch, so-named for having served as cowboy central in the early 1900s for the effort to bring wild bison back from the edge of extinction. It would later become a cluster of restored cabins, a cookhouse, and a classroom. And for parts of seven years, it had been Jane's home away from home. She and I had been off and on in Yellowstone for 23 years, and for the last 18, Yellowstone had been just beyond our back door. The place soaked into us slowly, revealing some new weave in every season: on top of mountains, in the bottom of canyons, in the swells of these savannah hills. Over the years, we'd left the roads with our packs on and waded knee-deep across rivers, eaten dinner in the shade of lodgepole forests, slept with grizzlies. And as time passed, we'd come to revere this park: the curious look of earth pushing out big pours of boiling water; the spring light on the sage fi elds of Lamar; the fl uty ring of bugling elk in the fall. Even the smells were oddly fi lling—sometimes like black pepper and lemon peels; sometimes like eggs and toast. * * * * It was a brilliant fi nish. In part, I believe, because there's no place on earth like Yellowstone's Lamar Val- ley. It was here that the American bison was nursed back from the brink of extinction. And here too that, a century later, wolves would take their fi rst steps back into the wild, after being absent for some seven decades. Both run free today, loping or howling or snoozing amidst eagles and ravens and grizzlies and otter and fox. It's in the Lamar, too, that every May, pronghorn fawns, as well as bison and elk calves, are born, the latter by the hundreds—babies rising on wobbly legs, soon to walk, then to run. When she was working for the Park Service nature school, this was where Jane could be found most every morning, especially during the month of May—an eager woman surrounded by eager children. There she and her students would stand huddled against the chill, staring across these meadows, whispering and gasping and giggling. And every now and then, just looking at one another wide-eyed, feeling lucky. Know- ing what a good thing it was to be smack in the middle such a wild place. Chosen ones, they were, witnessing for the whole world that unforgettable spill of new beginnings. ART • FURNITURE • LIGHTING • RUGS 81630 GALLATIN ROAD | BOZEMAN, MONTANA 59718 406.585.2927 | www.littlebearinteriors 1/4 mile south of the light at Four Corners (on Highway 191) C elebrating 10 Y ears of F ine Furnishi ngs

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