Morning on the Madison River, by Christine Olsenius

Morning Mist along the Madison River, Yellowstone National Park

The bugling woke me from a sound sleep. It was the last sound I had heard the night before dropping off to sleep and it was the first sound to greet me this morning. The bugle of a bull elk is not a sound you forget. It starts out a long, throaty wail that rises to a high pitch of urgency and longing mixed with the threat of belligerence. It is a primal call that can electrify the hair on the back of your neck.

It was that fuzzy pre-dawn time when it is neither dark nor light outside. But if the bull elk was bugling, there was activity along the river.  So I pulled on the warmest clothes I had and headed out into the freezing morning. My campsite was set in a forest of pine and spruce with mountain peaks jutting above the trees to the south and west. I kept a watch out for bear even though they had not been seen in our area for a few weeks. Still, I never looked at a forest in the same way since buying the pepper spray, tucked in my pocket with my hand wrapped around it, just in case.  

A light layer of frost covered the grass and shrubs. I trudged through the forest to the bluff overlooking a meandering stretch of the Madison River as it flowed past National Park Mountain. While sunlight was just beginning to hit the tops of surrounding hills, a fly-fisherman was already casting his line along this premier trout stream, now caught in the middle of the morning elk roundup. But like the rest of us silent spectators, he was totally ignored. Not only was the bull elk edgy, he was single-minded in his objective.

He was pacing back and forth not certain which group of females to pursue first. His harem was divided between an island in the river and the hillside across the river nearer the campsites where I had come from. 

It was clear he was trying to bring his harem closer to the protection of the tree line on the opposite side of the river. What followed was a dogged, persistent display of male dominance versus female cold-shouldered indifference.  The nearly 700-pound bull ran up to each female, bugling with his head held high. He bullied and cajoled each one of his cows until they moved in the direction he determined. 

It took time and dedication to roust all nine females, but with his regal bearing never lost, the tenacious bull eventually chased all of them to the tree line. It was for this dogged determination that the elk became a symbol of love and passion to early Plains Indians.

By now, the morning mist was draped over the Madison River like a film of gauzy silk and the early morning sky had softened to mauve across the valley beyond. 

I arrived in Yellowstone National Park at the peak of the fall elk rut, not realizing that the Madison River was one of the prime staging locations for this annual event. Elk are elusive and solitary creatures living much of their life in high mountain areas. I had seen elk at the National Elk Refuge near Jackson Hole, Wyoming and in Rocky

Mountain National Park. But mostly I had only seen them on television documentaries. Now here I was in the last week of September watching this timeless ritual unfold, up close and personal.  While I was not alone in my surveillance, at this early hour only a few diehards had left the warmth of their sleeping bags to stand along the hillside and watch the elk. 

There are few opportunities in our lives to feel nature’s rhythms and experience wildlife rituals that are ageless and uncontrolled by man. Writer Terry Tempest Williams explains this feeling when viewing wildlife in her book “Erosion.” “In response to one of the oldest dances on the planet, the kind of mastery only evolution can perfect, we also rise to an awakened state of being for having witnessed the ongoing nature of grace.”

The stately beauty and graceful movements of the elk herd held my attention amid the backdrop of a stunning sunrise over the Madison River Valley. I found their disregard of my attention refreshing. This was their rite of passage. It was about them, not about me. But as I stood on that hillside watching them through the mist on that cold September morning, their rite of passage, born of evolution and instinct, had also become my rite of passage.

I had witnessed the elk in their ancient dance and “ongoing nature of grace” , and in so doing, became part of their ancient ritual. Now for a brief morning, I was part of their life cycle, untamed and timeless. Fall mornings would never be the same. It would only take a misty river and a mauve sky and I would hear that bellowing call and remember the thrill of being part of wildness. 

I had witnessed the elk in their ancient dance and “ongoing nature of grace” , and in so doing, became part of their ancient ritual. Now for a brief morning, I was part of their life cycle, untamed and timeless. Fall mornings would never be the same. It would only take a misty river and a mauve sky and I would hear that bellowing call and remember the thrill of being part of wildness.