You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"Pretending to fall asleep with peanut butter toast in my hand...."}]

You still here 10 29 24

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>You Still Here? Tuesday, October 29, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Pretending to fall asleep with peanut butter toast in my hand....

You Still Here? Tuesday, October 29, 2024

 Pretending to fall asleep with peanut butter toast in my hand....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Outdoors

Public Lands

Almost a week after a semitruck carrying 

 flipped over in Yellowstone National Park and destroyed hundreds of hives, bees are still swarming around the area.

Thousands of bees are still homeless and visibly trying to survive in large groups on “bee trees” along U.S. Highway 191. 

Jim Holstein with Yellowstone Tour Guides has been passing through the area where the accident occurred. He took a photograph of one of the bee trees, where thousands of bees had completely covered a small lodgepole in a vast, buzzing swarm.

“They were still there on Monday,” Holstein told Cowboy State Daily. “It’s in the park between Big Sky and West Yellowstone. All the hives have been cleaned up, but there are quite a few bees left.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bee Trees"}]

Cheyenne beekeeper Michael Jordan is familiar with bee trees. They’re an indication that a colony of bees is actively house-hunting.

“It’s what's called a swarming mechanism,” he said. “The queen leaves and takes about half or more of the colony and moves to a new safe location.”

Jordan said this is common behavior for honeybees when a hive gets overpopulated. The existing queen will take nurse bees and guard bees to sustain herself in a temporary location while scouts search for a permanent 

“The scouts will search until they find a permanent location,” he said. “In the meantime, you'll have groups and colonies hanging in the trees as they regroup.”

A new permanent home could be a hole in a tree, a cave, or “anywhere that’s out of the water and elements,” said Jordan. 

Bee trees are meant to be staging locations so the scouts can lead the hive to their new home.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sugar High"}]

When the scout bees find a suitable location for a permanent hive, their next priority is

“Right now, they’re looking for a sugar source,” Jordan said. “Bees need sugar to produce wax from their glands. Once they produce the wax and form it, they'll actively engineer foam in what we call a pendulum manner to make honeycombs.”

Bees instinctively know how to build hives, and their goal is to start propagating as soon as possible after a hive-destroying incident.

Once they find a suitable spot with plenty of sugar in the vicinity, maybe a rock formation or building near a flower-filled meadow, the queen will follow the scouts to the new hive. Instinctively, all the bees on the bee tree will follow her.

Jordan didn't think there would be any bee trees for tourists to see by Wednesday.

“Those clusters will be gone within 24 to 48 hours if they find a good location,” he said. “After that, there’s nothing you can do to recover them, because tracking them is very hard.

The fact that bee trees can still be seen along U.S. Highway 191 six days after the June 16 crash might indicate the bees are having trouble finding an ideal place for a new home. But it definitely means the colonies can be safely recovered.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Get Those Bees, Please"}]

Within 24 hours of the semitruck incident, people were at the scene removing the damaged honey boxes and trying to recover whatever remained of the bee colonies that had been residing in them.

Jordan said the first 48 hours are crucial in a bee recovery situation like that.

“If you can’t get new hives set up in 48 hours, the queens will migrate and leave a pheromone trail that the bees accommodating her in that hive will follow,” he said. “That’s what the bee trees are: thousands of bees accumulating around the queen.”

That means there’s a small window to safely save these bees before they become permanent Yellowstone residents.

Jordan’s strategy would be to place a mobile swarm trap. It’s basically a column of PVC pipes with buckets attached to either end. The height can be adjusted to get as close as possible to the colony clusters.

“If the bees accumulate in the buckets as a temporary hive, you can relocate them to an apiary and manage them there,” he said. “You can even hold a bucket up to the colony and shake them inside. That’s how you can naturally collect and remove a colony.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"No Bears — Yet"}]

Commercial vehicles like semitrucks are banned in Yellowstone, but U.S. Highway 191 is an exception. It hugs the western boundary of the park and is an important 55-mile thoroughfare between West Yellowstone and Big Sky, 

"They've enacted a temporary 35 mph speed limit on the section where the bees are," Holstein said. "People have to keep their windows up, and there's no stopping until crews can get the remaining bees rounded up."

When the bee trees disappear, it means the bees have found a suitable spot to rebuild their hive. Finding and removing the colony would be difficult, if not impossible, especially in the dangerous wilderness of Yellowstone.

[{"type":"text","text":"After all, who loves honey more than bears?"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I haven’t seen any bears,” Holstein said. “Yet.”"}]

Jordan was more concerned about the people who lost their honey boxes and bee colonies. He knew how much money they had lost and must have spent trying to salvage whatever they could from the accident.

“From the way it looks. I’d think about 40-50% of what’s there is salvageable, maybe,” he said. “Each honey box can cost around $500 and generate around $2,000 in honey. 

"There could be two or three owners who lost their livelihood in that accident. That’s at least one whole company that has to rebuild.”

Bee tree swarm 6 22 26

<title>Millions Of Bees Swarm On Trees In Yellowstone After Hives Smashed In Semi Crash | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Almost a week after a semitruck carrying millions of bees flipped over in Yellowstone National Park and destroyed hundreds of hives, bees are still swarming on trees in the area. “It’s what's called a swarming mechanism,” said a Wyoming beekeeper.

Millions Of Bees Swarm On Trees In Yellowstone After Hives Smashed In Semi Crash

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Yellowstone National Park’s “first” petroglyph remains one of its most controversial. Even calling it a petroglyph could raise the ire of some archaeologists.

While Yellowstone was a significant site for many indigenous cultures that left behind plenty of artifacts, rock art was — and remains — rare in the park. 

[{"type":"text","text":"That changed with the discovery of the Old Faithful petroglyphs in 1977."}]

To this day, archaeologists are divided over how to interpret these petroglyphs and the stories they tell. It’s a debate that’s only become more interesting in recent years.

“Not everyone agrees that it's a petroglyph,” said retired archaeologist Mavis Greer. “For me, there’s no question that it is, but who made it and when are still very controversial.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Old Faithful Petroglyphs"}]

Greer is one of the few archaeologists who has seen and studied the Old Faithful petroglyphs.

In 2011, she wrote a short paper on the site with fellow archaeologists John Greer and Elaine Skinner Hale, who was on Yellowstone’s Cultural Resource staff at the time, and even that was subject to controversy.

“I was very excited to see the site, but I don’t think (the National Park Service) was all that happy about what we wrote,” she said. “They don’t want any publications anywhere showing that this and other rock art sites have been found in Yellowstone.”

Greer didn’t discover the Old Faithful petroglyphs. A Yellowstone visitor, Nicole Cromwell, wrote a letter to park staff informing them that she’d found two petroglyphs carved into the rock near an extinct geyser in 1977.

Today, the petroglyphs are in an area that isn’t accessible to the public. Greer is one of the few who’s been able to see them.

“The petroglyphs were made when the pool was dry, and the rocks are ideal height for sitting, so this would have been a good camping area in the past,” she said.

Both petroglyphs are circular shapes with spokes and other shapes emanating from the center, resembling wheels. What the design was meant to depict has been debated for the last 49 years. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The prevailing interpretation is that these petroglyphs are wheels. "}]

Specifically, they depict the wheels of wagons or, potentially, stagecoaches carrying white Europeans into northwest Wyoming.

That was the assumption when the petroglyphs were first studied in the 1970s. 

Paul Sanders with the office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist reached the same conclusion during a 2008 survey of the site.

Many archaeologists don’t even believe it’s Aboriginal rock art. They think the “wheels” were carved by white Europeans rather than any of the tribes associated with Yellowstone.

[{"type":"text","text":"Greer doesn’t agree."}]

“There are lots of wagon wheels in rock art across the northern plains, and none of them are similar to what's at Old Faithful,” she said. “I believe they were made by Native Americans before first contact with Europeans.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Shields And Status"}]

Greer believes the petroglyphs depict the shields of indigenous warriors, a common image on rock art panels throughout North America.

Most petroglyphs are believed to have had spiritual or ceremonial significance to the tribes and individuals that created them. According to Greer, shields fall under the umbrella of ceremonial art.

“The design of the petroglyph was whatever was on the actual shield,” she said. “There had to have powerful symbols on their shields, and they would often make petroglyphs of their shields where others could see that they had that power.”

Shields would have been unique to each individual, and covered with images, designs, and colors representing their personal power and position. 

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s why shield petroglyphs are so common, but none are the same."}]

“It’s a geometric-type design that was used by a lot of different tribes,” Greer said. “They were very ornate and colorful, and depicted powerful animals, spiritual helpers, and other things that helped them not get shot.”

Greer believes shield petroglyphs need to be interpreted through the lens of intertribal warfare. Shields were important status symbols for men in indigenous tribes.

“They had a lot of conflict between tribes because that was a way that men got status in their tribe,” she said. “In order to gain any status, you had to have engaged in something that showed you were brave and an outstanding warrior.”

In that sense, a shield petroglyph was like a self-portrait. It was a one-to-one depiction of the shield its artist used in battle, down to the same designs and colors.

While most of the color has vanished in the hundreds or thousands of years since they were carved, the intricate and unique designs and symbols remain.

“The design of the petroglyph is whatever design was on the actual shield that they were using when they were out in a battle,” Greer said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Which Wheel Or No Wheel?"}]

There are legitimate petroglyphs depicting the wagons of European settlers. 

, one of Wyoming’s most renowned petroglyph sites.

The confirmed wagon petroglyph at Castle Gardens is one of the reasons Greer cited for why she doesn’t believe the Old Faithful petroglyphs depict wagon wheels.

For one thing, the circular designs at Old Faithful are very intricate and asymmetrical. The wheels on wagon petroglyphs are much simpler, emulating the spoked design of an actual wagon wheel.

Also, Greer isn’t aware of any petroglyphs of wheels without wagons. It’s something she researched for her 2011 paper.

“Wheels, by themselves, are even less common in rock art than complete wagons or vehicles,” she said. “The only possible single wheel we found is at Newspaper Rock in eastern Utah, and its identification is based only on its circular form with rays, not any historical association with a wagon or other items, (so) there is no evidence that it’s a wheel.”

For Greer, it’d be highly unlikely to find a petroglyph depicting a wagon wheel without also depicting a wagon. Meanwhile, it’s quite common to find isolated shield petroglyphs.

“When these wheels are compared with the Old Faithful figures, they both are round with spokes or rays,” she said. “The similarities end there.”

There is another type of wheel that had great spiritual and ceremonial significance to indigenous tribes: medicine wheels. 

Medicine wheels, like the Medicine Wheel National Historic Landmark in the Bighorn Mountains, were usually constructed in sacred areas.

While the Old Faithful geyser basin could easily have been a sacred area deserving of a medicine wheel, Greer doesn’t think that’s a likely explanation for the petroglyphs.

“When viewed from a stylistic perspective of cultures in the northwestern Plains and Rocky Mountains, a shield design is a better explanation.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Who, When, Why"}]

So, if the Old Faithful petroglyphs weren’t depicting wagon wheels, and they weren’t made by a European, who made them? When were they made?

[{"type":"text","text":"Those questions, according to Greer, are much harder to answer.  "}]

“There are just too many tribes that were traveling through Yellowstone in the last thousand years,” she said. “Even with a lot of investigation, I don’t think anyone would be comfortable saying its Shoshone as opposed to the Crow, Blackfeet, or Kiowa. 

"The Cheyenne and Arapahoe were there, too. Any one of them could have made those petroglyphs.”

Determining the age of the petroglyphs would also be difficult, but that’s another reason why Greer believes they aren’t depicting wagon wheels. They look too old.

“The petroglyphs are in a geologic situation where if a European had made it, it would look a lot fresher than it does,” she said. “It looks like it's been there for some time.”

Greer didn’t have enough data to give an approximate age range for the Old Faithful petroglyphs, but she’s confident that they’re too old to be wagon wheels. 

She believes the petroglyphs are older than the first wagon wheels in western North America.

“My only thought is that they were created pre-contact,” she said. “That's not saying much, because the contact period for this area starts in 1800, but it’s something.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not So Open Secrets"}]

The Old Faithful petroglyphs remain the best-known petroglyphs in Yellowstone National Park, but even they aren’t common knowledge to the typical tourist. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Anyone who wants to see them can’t."}]

“It's in an area of the park where you cannot go without a ranger,” Greer said. That makes it easier to keep the location secluded.”

While there’s plenty of accessible information on Yellowstone’s archaeology, petroglyphs, and other indigenous rock art are rarely mentioned. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Greer believes that’s simultaneously deliberate and accidental."}]

Greer is aware of other Yellowstone petroglyphs and rock art panels discovered within the last two decades, but information about them is scarce. 

That’s partly because they’re inaccessible to most tourists and scientists.

“I think most archeologists thought there was rock art in Yellowstone, but nobody had gone out there and really searched for it before,” she said. “Doing a rock art survey in the park is not a simple thing. You’d need money, horses, and a camping crew to find those places.”

Greer also believes the National Park Service has a vested interest in restricting what gets published about these sites, at least until they’re better understood. 

From what she’s heard, the newly discovered sites are more fragile than the Old Faithful petroglyphs.

“The new sites have been paintings rather than petroglyphs,” she said. “That’s just the nature of the rock that they're dealing with. 

"On limestone and even types of granite, they're more likely to have paintings than petroglyphs.”

Greer’s 2011 paper on the Old Faithful petroglyphs is still the most recent scholarly work on any rock art in Yellowstone, and it’s “still controversial,” according to Greer.

“That one’s been known for a long time, and I wouldn't say there are a lot of people who think it's a confirmed petroglyph yet,” she said.

The ultimate takeaway is that there’s much more to learn about the history of indigenous tribes in Yellowstone, and the known and yet-to-be-discovered rock art will deepen our understanding of the park’s place in human history.

“There's been a lot of work on indigenous use of Yellowstone prior to and even after the coming of Europeans,” she said. “The history of the park goes back thousands of years, and these rock art panels show us there’s still so much to discover and learn.”

Yellowstone Petroglyph 2 6 21 26

<title>50 Years Of Controversy Over Yellowstone's Only Known 'Petroglyph' | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Yellowstone's “first” petroglyph remains controversial. Some archaeologists don't buy it. While Yellowstone was a significant site for indigenous cultures rock art was rare. That changed with the discovery of the Old Faithful "petroglyphs" in 1977.

50 Years Of Controversy Over Yellowstone's Only Known 'Petroglyph'

Dubois, Wyoming, is a name that, to this day, is 

. It's pronounced “dew-boys” instead of the French “deh-bwah" as a deliberate slight to U.S. senator Fred Dubois, after whom the town was named — by Dubois himself.

The locals wanted their town’s name to be Tibo, the Shoshone word for "stranger" or "white man.” It was an affectionate moniker for Episcopal priest Father John Roberts, one of the first white homesteaders in the area.

There’s another strange name that factors into Dubois' strange naming history: Neversweat.

It’s a relic of Fremont County’s early history of bustling wilderness outposts in the mountains of western Wyoming. But was Dubois almost named something as unsavory as Neversweat?

“It's one of those stories where there's some truth in it and some that's not true,” said historian Steve Banks. “I read a little quip one time that said, ‘If you're going to tell a historical story, you have the truth and the myth, and you want to print the one that gets the most attention.’”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"You’ve Got Mail"}]

While Dubois’ history of human habitation stretches back thousands of years, it didn’t become officially incorporated as a town until 1914. Before then, Dubois was one of several small settlements that stretched from Riverton and Fort Washakie into the mountainous wilderness beyond.

“It started out with the first post office called JK,” Banks said. “That was named for J.K. Moore, a prominent settler in this part of the world at the time. That means he was a guy who owned a nonmilitary store that sold dry goods and things like that.”

The Dubois Post Office was officially established on Aug. 6, 1889. It's first postmaster was Charles C. Smith.

Having a post office was an important mark of distinction for any Western settlement. It gave residents an address where their mail would be delivered.

Back then, post offices were handed out like candy. Banks could recall the line of short-lived post offices that settlers and visitors would find as they moved westward.

“There was Morton, Pavilion, Crowheart, Burris, Lenore, Tipperary, Black Mountain, Leesdale, Duncan, Dunoir, Dubois, Dennison, Neversweat, a second Dunoir, Diamond G, Hamburg, and Bar G,” he said. “That's how many post offices there were.”

Many of these places are long-gone, but can still be found on Google Maps in the 21st Century.

Why so many post offices? Banks said it was because of the primary industry, railroading people to the region.

“It was primarily due to tie hackers,” he said. “Many people who lived up here simply to be a tie hack, cutting down pine trees to use for railroad ties for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. Each of these places was a tie hack village.”

As the tie hackers moved throughout the mountains, new post offices were established every 15 miles or so. That way, mail could be distributed more effectively to the growing population spread along the route.

“There was getting to be quite a population up here,” Banks said. “These were little places where they could collect the mail. Otherwise, they would have to go clear to Lander, which had the connection with the railroad.”

Banks said this scattered system of post offices worked well in the early 1900s. Mail would be picked up by stagecoach in Lander and delivered to each spot along the way to Dubois and beyond once a month.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Never Sweat'"}]

Of all the names of these short-lived post offices, Neversweat stands out.

“Each of these places had their own little stories, but the one that gets the most attention are Neversweat and Dubois,” Banks said.

Neversweat was roughly 15 miles northwest of Dubois, following the post office pattern. It got its post office in 1895, and while the U.S. Postal Service didn’t balk at the name, they did decide to condense it to a single word rather than “Never Sweat” as it appeared on the application.

[{"type":"text","text":"The origin of the name is disputed."}]

Some say it’s because people working in the area never sweat because of the warm, dry winds rushing through the terrain. Others say the small settlement had a lackadaisical atmosphere, thus you “never sweat” while stopping in.

[{"type":"text","text":"Banks heard another story about how Neversweat got its distinct name."}]

“It was a joke on the heating stove,” he said. “Neversweat originally had a little bar where a lot of the tree hackers would hole up, and they had a thing that the only time they put any wood in the fireplace or in the stove was when it got cold enough. 

"When one person got cold enough, he was the one delegated to go get another chunk of wood. That’s where that name got it started.”

The Neversweat Post Office was established on Oct. 31, 1895. It's first postmaster was Laura Pease.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Yellowstone Highway"}]

Even when Neversweat was a happening spot, at least by standards of Wyoming at the time, Dubois was already becoming the true metropolis of the Upper Wind River Valley.

“It eventually became the main post office because it was in a better spot for distributing mail,” Banks said.

Dubois ultimately gained national notoriety as a desirable alternative along “the Yellowstone Highway.”

As stagecoaches and railroads gave way to automobiles, people could choose their own adventure when traveling to Yellowstone National Park. The roads that would become U.S. Highways 26/287/20, stretching from Lander to the Jackson Valley, were what Robert Frost would describe as “the road less traveled.”

“That route was advertised on roadmaps and other media as the Yellowstone Highway,” Banks said. “The people who did all of the tourism of that time period decided that it would be easier and better to find a different way for people coming from the east to go through Wyoming and into Yellowstone.”

The original Yellowstone Highway started with a train ride to Rawlins, followed by a stagecoach to Lander, where people got a dose of civilization before continuing onward to Yellowstone.

By the time cars became the primary mode of tourist transportation, Dubois was already on the map as a key stop along the Yellowstone Highway. The community was already the most developed and populated spot between Lander and Yellowstone when it was incorporated in 1914.

“That was what put Dubois on the map as being a traveling route to get to Yellowstone,” Banks said.

Neversweat never stood a chance. Granted, it never stood a chance, anyway.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Never An Option"}]

There was controversy when Dubois got the name it didn’t want in 1914, but the alternative was never Neversweat. Locals wanted their town to be called Tibo, but their new namesake wouldn’t allow it.

“Fred Dubois was a politician who was given charge of all of the businesses that took place in Fremont County,” Banks said. “When he came here to form the post office, he said, ‘You can't have an Indian name. It's just not right, and it's not the way it ought to be.’ So when he got ready to draw up the papers for the name of the post office in Dubois, he gave it his own name.”

Dubois, allegedly, hated it when people mispronounced his French surname. Wyoming residents have been mispronouncing it, out of spite, ever since.

It wasn’t the first time Dubois named something after himself. He has a namesake town in his home state of Idaho, which Banks noted is exactly 200 miles away from Dubois, Wyoming.

“You have to be careful if you order anything out of Idaho,” he said. “Make sure that they get it to Dubois, Wyoming, and not Dubois, Idaho. I’ve made that mistake before.”

Neversweat was lost to time after another obscure settlement near Dubois, Dunior, asked for a new post office to be placed at the base of Union Pass. That request was granted, wiping Neversweat off the map and Dubois’ brow forever.

The Neversweat Post Office didn't even last that long. It ceased operations on Nov. 30, 1897, just over two years after it was established.

That’s why Banks and many other historians classify this story as pure fiction. Neversweat existed, but it was never almost Dubois.

“It was never a decision between Neversweat and Dubois,” Banks said. “It wasn’t even a choice between Dubois and Tibo. That was the decision of one politician whom we’ve been slamming ever since."

Dubois sign 9 7 23

<title>Wyoming Communities: How Dubois, Wyoming, Got Its Name And Its Pronunciation | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Dubois is a name that, to this day, is spoken out of spite. It's pronounced “dew-boys” instead of the French “deh-bwah" as a slight to U.S. senator Fred Dubois — who named the town after himself — and hated it when people mispronounced his French surname.

Wyoming Communities: How Dubois, Wyoming, Got Its Name And Its Pronunciation

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Waterfalls shoot straight out of volcanic cliffsides, flinging themselves into canyons almost no one ever visits. 

Far from the boardwalks and pullouts, meanwhile, something that looks very much like a starfish seems to nap where no starfish should even be, sunning itself in a crystal-clear thermal pool in Yellowstone National Park. 

It’s all part of a hidden Yellowstone that most people never get to see — the Yellowstone that Bozeman filmmaker Stephen Quayle has spent five decades chasing with a camera and has finally stitched into a new film, 

“Only 5% of Yellowstone is visible by the roads or by the boardwalks around the geysers,” Quayle told Cowboy State Daily. 

Another thin, 10% slice belongs to the hardy few willing to trek for miles into grizzly bear and wolf territory. 

But from a helicopter, “the most gorgeous” waterfalls and the most intriguing geothermal pools can be seen in stunning aerial views. 

Photographing from the air takes a million-dollar camera lens, Quayle said, one that can take high-resolution images from at least 2,000 feet away. 

That’s the minimum height recommended by the FAA for flying over places like national parks. Any lower could violate federal laws if an aircraft disturbs wildlife or park visitors.

“That way we can present to people the Yellowstone that really is,” he said. “And it’s breathtakingly wonderful. It is not just a wonder of the world, it is 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Fateful Party Weekend"}]

Quayle’s relationship with Yellowstone began when he was a college student with time on his hands and weekends to burn in glorious summer road trips. 

Yellowstone was perfect for that when you’re a young man from Bozeman, Quayle said. 

“I went there because that’s where everybody used to go and party,” he admitted. “And from Bozeman, they drive down to the inner West Yellowstone, but I would take a diversion. That doesn’t mean I didn’t partake of some of the wild stuff in those days. 

"But the bottom line is that it was so close, and in those days you could go from one feature to the next and never see another car,” Quayle added.

The more he photographed Yellowstone, the more he wanted to go back. It felt like becoming lost in another world, one that seemed to rearrange itself every time he visited.

At first, Quayle stuck to closeups. Think bacterial mats, colorful mineral formations, tiny, iridescent insects — all reflecting his interest at the time in abstract art.

Most tourists see just 5% of Yellowstone from roads and boardwalks. Bozeman filmmaker Stephen Quayle has spent 50 years filming the places most never reach. “It’s like a whole different world,” he said. “You literally wouldn’t know you’re on planet Earth.”

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