Native
Americans have all kinds of stories about Coyote, because the Trickster can take
Coyote's form and bedevil foolish humans. If
you spend enough time, alone, outdoors, you will meet Coyote, they say. The first
meeting is always unexpected, and unimaginable events follow that span millennia
and make the pursuit of a fish, a bird, little more than conduits to an introduction. The
thing about Coyote is that you never know what's going to happen when you meet
him. The outcome of an encounter can be good or bad, or both. The thing is, when
Coyote appears, something unusual is happening. There
is no better place to meet Coyote than at the foot of Baronette Mountain where
Soda Butte Creek flows through Yellowstone National Park. That's where I first
met Coyote, in September, 1994. Late
September is late fall in Yellowstone country. Morning temperatures had been dipping
steadily lower. It was 18 degrees (F) on the morning of the day Coyote appeared,
but by 3 p.m., bright sun beating into the creek valley produced a perfect 65
degree afternoon. Huge clouds had
formed, and the sky was brilliant white against the blue-blue. It was windy, but
not impossibly so, because it was easy enough to fly cast that day. The breeze
was just stiff enough to cover downwind sound. At
the spot I now call Coyote Hole, the creek makes a 90 degree left turn. A mass
of limbs and logs has piled up there, and a deep hole has washed out beneath the
log pile. This bend forces a lot of fast-flowing water to change its course, creating
a complex, churning hydraulic formation. The noise is constant. It
was impossible to get much of a fly drift, but Hars Haugen, businessman, postman
and fly fisherman at Summitt Provisions in Silver Gate, ties a wet fly I call
Hars' Special, and he had sold me one. "The
first time I tried one of these, I kept looking around for a Ranger, figuring,
hey, this fly is too good. Someone's going to come and take it away from me,"
Haugen told me later. The first time
I dropped the Special into the log pile, I hooked a fat, 16-inch cutthroat and
released it. On the next cast, an even larger fish rolled at my fly, but missed.
I hooked it on the third cast. After a dicey battle where the fish actually ran
under the logs, a 17-inch cutthroat, all blazing gold and bright orange, came
flopping and gasping to my feet. I
didn't release this one. I could see two big fillets in that fish, and it was
legal to keep two trout a day from the Soda Butte in 1994. Still, guilt's sharp
point stuck me as I ran a stringer through its gills. I was killing this beautiful
fish, and I felt the entire valley watch me do it. I
wrapped the stringer around a rock and laid it in the water at creek's edge where
there was little or no current to wash my catch downstream. The
sun was dropping quickly now, and the lower angle produced that golden, atmosphere-filtered
late afternoon light that photographers love. Dark shadows of trout were still
darting into the hydraulics, rising, rolling, flashing their sides. Three, four
fish were rolling at same time, just in front of the log pile. Casting,
watching the fly drift, seeing the trout rise and strike, feeling them pull, landing
and releasing--one after another they came. I was lost in the sport, hypnotized.
All my attention focused on the
water and fish, but there was something, some movement on the edge, behind me. Turning
my head slightly, I caught a quick flash of gray. My heart raced. I had seen two
grizzlies in this area on previous trips. I turned toward the movement, very slowly,
hoping there was no bear. There wasn't.
It was Coyote. It was Coyote with my prize cutthroat in his mouth, my stringer
dangling from one side, the fish's tail from the other. He trotted the Coyote
trot--not running, not walking--and at about 20 feet, he turned and looked at
me. Coyote then disappeared into the forest. I
told this story to Sue Glidden (her and her husband Ralph own the Cooke City General
Store) at breakfast in Joan & Bills' restaurant the next morning in Cooke
City. I included the fact that, perhaps, I shouldn't have killed that beautiful
fish, that I felt pretty guilty and was surprised at the whole event. "Oh
no, you participated in the food chain. The coyote got the fish," said Sue,
perhaps sensing my unstated appeal for absolution. So?
Maybe that one trout would make the difference for that coyote. Maybe, that bit
of extra protein would mean survival over the winter. It
was a tough winter in Yellowstone in 1994-95. There was more snow than there had
been in recent years, and snow cover lingered through summer in the high country.
By late July when I returned to fish the Soda Butte, near the place where the
grizzly bears hang out, there was still snow on top. A
gale force wind blew up the creek from the Lamar Valley, carrying the scent of
elk and bison and wolves and wild mountain lupine into the mountains. I
approached Coyote Hole from the woods. It was a relief to get out of the wind,
the roar of it. The pine woods was silent in comparison, and the wind covered
any noise I made, swept away my human scent and carried it with the bison's. That
is why Coyote didn't hear me or smell me. I
saw him right away when I stepped out of the tree line--standing, looking downstream,
away from me, ears up and alert. I figured that was about the same spot Coyote
stood when he sized me up before nabbing the cutthroat last September. I
took slow, easy steps, barely moving, and still Coyote gazed downstream. I crept
to within 15 feet when his head turned, slowly, just as mine had turned last fall
at this spot. Coyote did a double-take.
He seemed surprised, but he didn't run. We were frozen there, together, for a
moment before Coyote made the first move. Without taking his eyes off me, he trotted
into the woods and vanished. It
was over in a few seconds, but in those moments we had locked eyes and said "I
know you" to each other. Were I native American, I would have sat at a fire
in the night with an elder and asked him or her what it meant--my two meetings
with Coyote. Since I am not, I am left to wonder and conclude that Coyote is not
finished with me yet.
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Trickster
Reveals Self in Cutthroat Copping Coyote Caper