Every winter, hundreds of bald eagles travel south down the Mississippi corridor to the open waters along the dams. Many of these dams are along the Iowa/Illinois border.

I’ve tried to put to words the things that make bald eagles majestic. Is it the golden beak? The contrast of head feathers with the chest and wing plumage? Or is it the seemingly effortless flight? In fiction, eagles have always been symbols of reverence, majesty, and spirituality. They are held above common things and places. So what makes them seem that way in real life, too?

Perhaps it is none of those things. Maybe it’s because when I see a bald eagle, it’s usually in clean, wild places.

Silver the grizzly bear waves hello. October 9, 2012:

I’ve seen a lot of incredible things in my travels across the Rocky Mountains. But those travels always turn back to the Northern Rockies, from Grand Teton National Park to Glacier National Park. Why am I drawn there? Biodiversity. Abundance of lakes and rivers (they shame the southern Rockies in this context), valleys that are more prairie than dessert. The Northern Rockies contain almost all of the animals prior to European settlement. Yellowstone still has bison. Glacier still has wolverines. Both places still have the formidable grizzly.

I first saw Silver a few years ago in Glacier National Park. At that point she was a small cub (as small as grizzlies get I suppose). She was playing with her mother in a field of flowers, a royal blue lake as a backdrop. I remember how she put her paw on her mother’s rump as she check me out. Her distinct facial markings and chest pattern were hard to miss.

A year or so later I was sad to learn that her mother had become pregnant again, which is very rare while raising a cub. She chased Silver away. The good news is Silver had been taught well. She knows where and how to find food. She also ceaselessly follows her mother and new cub up and down the mountains. She wants to feed with them. She wants to play with them. Most of the time her mother growls at her and chases her off. But there are moments, there are scenes where her mother accepts Silver, and you can see mother, cub, and estranged, huge cub (Silver) grazing in close proximity on the same slope.

If Silver’s mom gets out of her sight, Silver will huff and panic and run in the direction she thinks she went. I guess you could call it abandonment anxiety or separation anxiety. Or maybe she just missed her mother in those rugged mountains. It broke my heart to watch her mother and the new cub sprint away from Silver as she was dozing off on a boulder. Silver woke, stood on her hind legs, sniffed the air, then huffed into a panic down the slope. Remarkably, her nose was so good she bounded off in the same direction her mother went, even though it was deep into a forest.

Silver also has young friend. His name is Choco, and he’s a pretty great swimmer. There was talk that perhaps Choco and Silver might den up over the winter.

Stay tuned for more photos of Silver, Choco, and her mother. Will Silver find peace? Has she denned with Choco? Inquiring minds want to know, lol.

My first visit to California had a profound effect on me. I was expecting pavement and endless strip malls after I passed through a produce examining station (invasive species prevention) on the California/Oregon border. What I saw instead was amazing. Unfolding ahead of me was endless forest, with trees taller than any I had ever seen. This went on for miles, and was capped by a 14,000 foot mountain that rose above an interstate which sat at a mere 4,000 feet.

Ah yes, forests. I grew up in Illinois. There was often talk of the mythical Northwoods and the endless forests of northern Wisconsin and Michigan. We’d take trips up there, enjoying the summers and the cool, inviting lakes. The locals (and tourists from Chicago) spoke of these magnificent forests. What I learned over time was that most of the Northwood’s old growth forest is gone.

As in 99% gone.

All the big, old trees had been cut. What remained was “nice”, but not robust. And now cabins with tacky fertilized lawns dot the shores of almost every major lake.

What the Northwoods became was a tame go cart track made for motor sports enthusiasts like snowmobilers and off-roaders. There’s nothing wrong with either in moderation, but rather a landscape that is not intact enough to avoid hearing such things if one so chooses.

I was shocked at Northern California, for it is what I imagined the Northwoods would look like after all the hype from Midwesterners. But that Northwoods forest is largely gone, replaced by second and third growth hardwoods. The big white pines are now few and far between, and you are never more than a stone’s throw from some kind of road or the roar of a snowmobile.

My admiration of the California forests—the size of the trees and the expansive national forests themselves—only grew when I visited the southern portion of the state and Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park. Yes, I had to drive past congestion and dead malls and everything I had feared, but California still had this striking balance that I wasn’t quite used to in the Midwest. To be in a national park or national forest after only a short drive is something we Midwesterners simply cannot do.

I still make the occasional run to the Northwoods, usually on the way back from a place like Montana. I notice the names of local establishments up there. Places like “The Wilderness Resort”, where there is no wilderness. Or places like “Moose’s Tavern”, where there are no moose. I feel as if I’m on a path amongst ghosts.

But not in the forests of California. For there, legends still exist.