Miles of Wildflowers and Grizzly Prints

Question: What do wildflowers and grizzly bears have in common? 

Answer: They thrive along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front.

The rolling hills, scarps, creek bottoms, and grasslands comprising the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains are home to an expanding population of grizzly bears.  This time of year, the downslopes and gentler inclines at at the feet of the mountains also flourish with wildflowers.

In places, great seas of yellow arrowleaf balsamroot wash up against the massive blocks of stone where the mountains abruptly rise up from the Great Plains.

Yesterday, my sister, my brother-in-law, and I drove some gravel and mud roads along the Front.  At times, the displays of flowers stretched for miles in all directions around us.

I am posting a few photographs of the balsamroot.  The photographs cannot convey the enormity of this springtime event.  The sweet scents.  The constant overlaying choir of the songbirds.  I have also posted photographs showing a herd of mule deer crossing through the flowers, the Dearborn River, and a photograph of a grizzly bear print we found at the edge of the road near the river.

--Mitchell Hegman