Smug Coyote - Antelope Island State Park, UT
I’m a real man. Not to be confused with a manly man. My wife once suggested I watch ESPN so I could talk to manly men. What I mean when I say “real” man is that I like real things. I want my animals in nature, not in a zoo. I want to climb a mountain, not the stairs attached to fake mountain in middle of an amusement park. While we’re talking about amusement parks, I should let you know that I fear the happiest place on Earth. My neck tightens up and I get agitated at the mention of Disneyland. I want to stay as far away as possible from the asphalt desolation and the Mad Max style battle for parking supremacy, where urban assault vehicles reign and the Mini Cooper is a myth. Let me ask you this, once you are actually in the park do you really go from ride to ride, or do you go from line to line. Which activity do you actually spend more time doing? Oh, the horror.
There is something innate in many of us that finds pleasure in these synthetic experiences. From a young age we would rather eat strawberry flavored gummy bears, rather than actual strawberries, or watch a movie about surfing rather than going to the ocean. In many cases it just gets worse as we get older.
Growing up in rural Colorado, I spent a lot of time running, camping, exploring, and, if I was lucky, canoodling in the high desert canyons and sandstone peaks surrounding my hometown. Now I just hope that a moose will wander next to the road so I can take its picture and call myself Ansel Adams.
I recently took a trip to Antelope Island State Park. The largest of the Great Salt Lake’s Islands, at 42 square miles, Antelope Island is surrounded by salt water and covered in mountain peaks. In 1845, John Fremont and Kit Carson were the first anglo explorers to step foot on the island, and provided the island’s name after hunting pronghorns (a.k.a., antelope) during their time there. Fielding Garr first settled the island in 1848. The state of Utah acquired the islands in several different acquisitions, culminating in the final acquisition in 1981. The island came with its own heard of bison, an import to the island in 1893, as well as birds, deer, coyotes, bighorn sheep, all manors of small furry critters, and of course antelope. The island offers miles of trails for the weekend warrior, but it also provides easily accessible wildlife for the drive and point crowd.
During our trip to the island, my son and I drove the islands perimeter road and got up close and personal with variety of animals, including a massive heard of bison. But the encounter was not earned. Rather, I waited in a line of cars with other people that want nature to be like a TV show or an amusement park.
The bison made their way through the field, faces nose deep in the snow, looking for something to much on. There slow trudge through the frozen tundra seemingly indifferent to their surroundings. Meanwhile, people were taking selfies outside their idling cars and kids screamed about being bored. All I needed was a turkey leg or a funnel cake to complete the experience of a wildlife amusement park.
After we finished waiting for our turn to photograph the bison, we drove a little further down the road and once again found ourselves in a line of cars waiting for some mystery animal to appear. I was surprised to see that the 12-car lineup was for a coyote that walked nonchalantly along the shoulder of the road. The coyote was tailed by several people with expensive cameras with lenses longer than their arm. This was no Wiley Coyote; this coyote didn’t give a shit about the rural paparazzi. This point was driven home when he literally stopped 10 feet from my car to drop a deuce, while the clicking of shutters filled the chilly winter air. The camo wearing class in my hometown would laugh their asses off if they had seen these people chasing the coyote like some elusive creature never before caught on film. Hunting coyotes was the closest thing to a universal pass time in northwestern Colorado. They bought specific guns and calls just for going into the dessert to hunt these clever creatures. This coyote new that no one was going to take a shot at him, and might as well have been a trained animal at a petting zoo.
If you want to see animals up close without bars between you and them, you should take a ride around Antelope Island. The island is truly beautiful and when drive on the causeway across the salty waters and stand at the shoreline you can feel like you have traveled to another land, or at least left Utah. But as I drove through the park, and thought about a lot of my recent trips, I’ve come to the conclusion that nature really doesn’t start where the asphalt ends. Nature starts where civilization ends. And civilization ends when you can’t see your car or hear other people. It ends when your cellphone has no bars and animals treat you like a predator or like prey. We all have to start somewhere, and going for a ride in a state park, national forest, or national park is better than watching the Revenant on your couch. You all know from reading my previous posts that I have been a clean boot road warrior, a habit that has formed for a variety of reasons, including having a young child and carrying around an extra 50 pounds. This year I have a goal that 2016 will be a year of change. This year I will stop flirting with nature on the edge of the road. This is the year that I look for animals in their own lands. This is the year I search for silence. This the year I climb the mountain, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Here is to a year of adventure, getting out of the car, howling at the moon, and running naked through the woods and I hope to see you out there (though hopefully fully clothed).