Grizzlies On My Mind: Essays of Adventure, Love, and Heartache from Yellowstone Country

by Michael W. Leach

Overview

What is it about Yellowstone National Park that draws millions of visitors from all over the world? If you've visited Yellowstone, you should already know the answer. If you've never visited—or you have, but still don't know the answer—Michael Leach explains it to you in his book of essays, "Grizzlies on My Mind." Leach is a Yellowstone insider with unmatched passion for this nation's first national park. At the age of twenty-two, Leach's dream of becoming a Yellowstone ranger came true. It wasn't long before he'd earned the nickname "Rev" for his powerful Yellowstone "sermons." In "Grizzlies on My Mind," Leach shares his love for Yellowstone—its landscapes and wildlife, especially its iconic bison and grizzlies—as he tells tales that will delight anyone interested in the national park system, wildlife and wild landscapes, rivers and adventure. Heartwarming and heartbreaking stories of human lives lost, efforts to save a black bear cub, a famous wolf who helped Leach through some dark personal days, the unique and oftentimes humorous Yellowstone "culture," backpacking trips that nearly ended in disaster, and Leach's spiritual journey with his Assiniboine-Gros Ventre "brother" fill the pages—and the reader's heart. If you've never been charged by an elk, traveled solo at dawn across Yellowstone's frigid interior (working your way slowly through a herd of peaceful bison in the process), or lain awake in a backcountry tent, listening for the spine-tingling breaths of a curious grizzly—but you crave such experiences, "Grizzlies on My Mind" is the book for you.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780871083166
Publisher:	Graphic Arts Books
Publication date:	05/01/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	282
Sales rank:	314,390
File size:	768 KB

About the Author

Michael Leach has written numerous pieces for regional publications, including Yellowstone Discovery, Outside Bozeman, Distinctly Montana, New West, and Wyoming Wildlife. Michael is known for his bold, unique voice, his humor, and his lyrical writing style. Drawing comparisons to the great Norman McLean, Michael's writing conjures up deep and powerful emotions in readers of all ages. Known for his innovative and passionate approach, Michael brings a contemporary style to the nature genre through his rich and heartfelt prose while connecting readers with the raw power of wild places like Yellowstone.

Read an Excerpt

Visceral excitement pulsed through my scrawny eight-year-old body as I gazed into the eyes of a beast more massive than any I had ever witnessed. Welcome to God’s theme park, Yellowstone. My earliest memories of Yellowstone stem from the perspective of a young boy enamored by our first national park’s glory and by the spirit of adventure. Growing up along the shores of a small mountain lake in North Idaho, I cherished our annual pilgrimage to my grandparents’ birthplace—Wyoming—and to my family’s beloved Yellowstone. I can still vividly remember that nervous, Christmas-morning-like anticipation when we awoke at dawn to the song of the Madison River in Ennis, Montana—our launching point for each Yellowstone adventure. Even in August, the air would be crisp, with wispy waves of fog rising from the waters of the fifty-mile riffle, as the sun literally burst forth, illuminating the Madison Range to the west. To a young boy, it seemed they must have been the birthplace and spine of the continent.

Romping the mountains and forests near my home, it was easy for one childhood season to blend into the next without my recognizing the significance of their passing. Perhaps this explains how our family sojourns to Yellowstone ultimately came to mark the life-affirming milestones in my own personal journey—from curious boy to earnest young man, striving to uncover meaning in pursuit of living a life that matters.

Such is the raw power of Yellowstone. While its natural wonders, wildlife, rivers, and biodiversity are most celebrated, I have come to believe Yellowstone’s greatest gift is its ability to inspire two-leggeds to uncover purpose, meaning, and goodness in our lives. As much as we are awed by the scenery and inhabitants that make the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem one of the most important places on our planet ecologically, Yellowstone has always been first and foremost a people’s park. Since its beginning, the wild spirit of Yellowstone has inspired countless visitors to strive for a more meaningful existence—one often intertwined with and based upon their love for nature and their desire for adventure.

Table of Contents

Contents Foreword, by Nathan Varley Introduction 1 Grizzlies on My Mind 2 Medicine Warrior 3 The Journeyman, 253M 4 Winter Adventures 5 Life Returns to Yellowstone 6 Mammoth Madness 7 Ranger Field Journal: A Sampling 8 Wild Entrapment 9 Christmas in Yellowstone 10 Ode to #6 11 The Story of the Kestrel 12 Bitterroot Paint 13 Only in Yellowstone 14 Hello Again, Old Faithful 15 The Hills Are Alive 16 American White Pelican 17 Summer Love Letter 18 Fall Is in the Air 19 Yellowstone’s Gym Culture 20 Winter’s Loosening Grip 21 The Fading Light of Summer 22 Closing Out the Season 23 Bison and Bigotry 24 Teasing Seasons 25 Chaos, Wind, and Harlequins 26 Respect for Señor Blanco 27 Song of the Yellow Bellied 28 Bliss Pass 29 Hoodoo Equinox Storm Acknowledgments

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Michael embodies the rare combination of passion, eloquence, and unbridled enthusiasm that helps give activists like us the optimism and energy to continue our work." —Mathew Elsner, Chair, Sierra Club - Denver Metro Network.

Editorial Reviews

"The flora and fauna of Yellowstone becomes the setting of a spiritual journey in this luscious memoir.

For seven years, the scenery of Michael W. Leach’s daily commute was beyond enviable: bands of roaming bison, marauding grizzlies, charging elk, and sulking wolves that peppered stunning vistas. In Grizzlies on My Mind: Essays of Adventure, Love, and Heartache from Yellowstone Country, Leach delivers a beautiful tribute to the Yellowstone National Park or, as he calls it, the “spine of the continent,” where he spent over a decade as a ranger, naturalist, guide, park nonprofit director, and wildlife advocate.

Written like a journal, the chapters convey Leach’s rapture for Yellowstone as an iconic American landscape and one of its last truly wild frontiers. Such scenery can be as cruel as it is invigorating: it is a place “where ignorance or carelessness can help you become part of the food chain.” For instance, he tells of an overly zealous amateur bear enthusiast who after being mauled by a grizzly bear is forced to walk miles back to camp holding the skin on his face in place.

Leach also regales readers with several stories of his own brushes with danger: a hormone-crazed elk who chased him through the deck of a cabin, the search for the body of a park visitor after a fatal fall, keeping park visitors at a safe distance from a grizzly and wolf having a stand-off over an elk carcass, and tumultuous snowmobile excursions.

Diagnosed with a debilitating autoimmune disorder, Leach was forced to stop his basketball career at an early age and undergo a cycle of pain intervention and other medical treatment. He credits his career as a ranger as saving his sense of self, and Grizzlies on My Mind is Leach’s spiritual journey. An early essay describes a Native American healing ritual, and there are short essays throughout the collection in which Leach conjures animistic reverence for the park’s impressive flora and fauna.

Grizzlies on My Mind has wide appeal as an intimate account of life within one of America’s national treasures beyond the rocketing waters of Old Faithful. Leach’s inspired prose evokes how the land and its creatures hold special powers over those lucky enough to witness them firsthand. As Leach describes, “each day spent in Yellowstone has the potential to remedy a broken heart and calm a racing mind.” As evidence, he points out that any day he spends with park visitors ends in hugs rather than handshakes."

—Amanda McCorquodale, Foreword Reviews

From the Publisher