Wanderings and the Passing of George

June is by far the best time to be in Yellowstone, except for May. The crowds have not yet peaked, the landscape is still green, the animals still in the lush valleys. Wolves and grizzlies are killing and eating elk and bison babies, and bringing out their own young for viewing.

There’s a regular pack of people who watch wolves, kind of a paparazzi. It is led by an alpha-male, non-ranger-who-dresses-like-ranger Rick MacIntyre. Rick drives a yellow Nissan Exterra that has antennae on top, so he’s easily spotted. And 365 days a year he drives up and down LaMar Valley, chronicling every wolf kill, every pack interaction, every sighting. The wolves are spread now throughout Greater Yellowstone, mostly in the back country. Rick’s job is to foster public support, so he patrols the valley where they are most visible. He’s an excellent PR man, patiently answering every question asked and allowing we the rabble to view the wolves through his spotting scope. (Without one, wolves are nothing more than gnats.)

Anyway, my wife loves following the wolves, knows their names and numbers, and three or four times a year we go to Yellowstone to watch them and the other (lesser) animals. We’re thinking of using our stimulus money, if it ever comes, to buy a spotting scope. That’s how bad it has gotten.

This year is special. Gasoline prices are high, so the Yellowstone experience is not unlike one we had in Canada last year – free of monster motor homes clogging the highways and campgrounds. We stayed at Tower Falls campground this year, and it was filled with – get this – tents. Bear jams were manageable, as cars and pickups can sneak past one another. I counted motor homes in the Tower store parking lot – only one or two at any given time, and of the smaller Cruise America variety – none of the Greyhound class.

Yellowstone is a pleasurable experience again. Keep them gas prices high.

We got off the beaten path, hiking high above LaMar on Specimen Ridge. There were four of us and it was a beautiful day. Our hiking partners were a couple whom we met through mutual interest in wolves, and I knew I was going to like the male half of the couple when I learned that he did not fish. I’ve spent many a dinner party and barbecue talking about three things – the big three: hunting, fishing, and tools. With Martin there was a general interest in intuitive things like politics and history – he said he understood the mechanics of fishing, and also accepted that people catch and kill and eat fish. But fishing for pleasure? Catch and release? He, like me, draws a blank. Gratuitous indulgence for the human, life-threatening trauma for the fish. Nothing there for us.

Martin and his wife Ilona are both writers, he retired from McGraw Hill, where he edited a trade newsletter. That’s all I know at this time, but I look forward to learning more about them. I’m suspicious that Martin doesn’t hunt, and doubt he has a shop full of work toys behind his house in Jardine. If we by chance barbecue with them, we’ll won’t have the big three to talk about. What a pleasure that would be.

We have XM Satellite Radio, and driving through Paradise Valley on the way home, Channel 154, National Lampoon Comedy, was doing nothing but George Carlin. I was delighted (I can listen on ear phones as my wife enjoys her music or even silence). Only later did I learn that they were doing a tribute, that George had died.

That was a blow. George Carlin was the opposite of Tim Russert, the man whose death brought the scorn of proper folks upon me when I didn’t pay homage to his sycophancy. George was a candid observer, and he frankly admitted he didn’t care about us, our species. He thought we were jerks and fools – he delighted in describing the ways we kill and torture one another. He did the comedian’s most important function as well – he could Seinfeld. He reminded us of the little things that annoy us, like the driver whose turn signal has been blinking “since 1955”, etc. But George was more about the big stuff.

Everyone has a favorite George Carlin routine – I prefer to remember him for pointing out the obvious in all of his work – that we butcher and kill one another with ease and take pleasure in it; that necrophilia or torture are unique to our species, and that some among us are so pompous and self-important that they us have taken it upon themselves to “save the planet”.

The planet will do just fine, he reminded us. We are like a virus – we will pass through the system and do some damage, but the earth will adapt and continue on, easily recovering. Right now it is heating up, much as our bodies do when infected by bacteria. That may rid our planet of us, the pest.

In the end, said George, it may be that the earth was using us as an elaborate means to manufacture plastic.

I watched his last comedy special on HBO, and thought he looked more like an old man than ever before and wondered who would take his place when he died. With Russert, there’s any number of fools who will easily slide into the slot of “Dean of Journalism”. With Carlin, there’s perhaps Lewis Black, but it isn’t quite the same. He has the words but hasn’t quite embraced the music.

There was only one John Lennon, one Fred Rogers, and only one Carl Sagan. These are people who brought serious messages to us in an entertaining way. People of that caliber are indeed rare. There will never be another George Carlin.