Ululating in the North Fork

Hope Larry Wilson forgives me, but I've got to horn in on his territory. Just found a scary article I once did about the North Fork.

"At night every snapping twig demands attention, while ululating wolf howls, the yip of coyotes, and the scream of cougars punctuate the silence."

WOW! That kind of stuff would surely cause a body to quiver and tremble. I know people who'd jump clean out of their skivvies if they heard "ululating" in the dark.

Let me read you more, "The realization that people are not alone at the top of the food chain lends this region a distinct feel, and demands caution for everyday events like a hike in the woods.

"Grizzlies, wolves, wolverines, coyotes, lynx and 11 (eleven) other predators roam and prey to their hearts' content here. Biologists say it is America's wildest valley" … "Bears are so abundant here there are 65 to 80 of them per 385 square miles, an extremely dense number."

Yes! Good readers — The North Fork of the Flathead River is the place named in this terrifying story from the New York Times. While reading the piece I finally understood why Larry Wilson put a toilet inside his cabin at Trail Creek. I'd thought it was most likely laziness coupled to advancing age, but not true. He was surely motivated by pure and honest fear.

Can't blame Larry. A few years back while Bonnie and Len Ogle were visiting him, they personally experienced the lurking terrors of "the wildest valley." Bonnie was in the original outhouse, relaxed and enjoying the remote sylvan scenery when a silently prowling cougar suddenly put one big hairy paw inside the open door. Maybe that is where the New York writer got stories about 'screaming" up in the North Fork. On that day screaming was probably heard clear down to Polebridge store.

The North Fork is one of the places dearest to my heart. My Dad took me fishing in the thirties. Worked there for the Forest Service during high school. Took my bride on our first camping trip in '59, and conned my friends into helping me buy Moose City in 1967. Have walked the entire road from Columbia Falls and floated the river many times, along with hiking and climbing hundreds of miles on the Glacier Park side; BUT … was not aware of the cougars screaming or the wolves ululating.

The New York Times story appeared in a section titled "Science Times' July 16, 2003, full page with color photos. While seeming overly dramatic and exaggerated, it does have interesting views, including reasons the Canadians should expand Waterton Park over to the river.

The North Fork of the Flathead is not a place where at night "every snapping twig demands attention"; however, after thinking over some past incidents I admit it does have potential for excitement — Recall the lion attack on Mrs. Ladenburg when her husband shot the record-size cat with a rifle, a grizzly climbing into the box of my son's pickup to drag away a big buck during the night, a griz moving a chopping block to reach up and steal a deer off the meat pole at Larry Wilson's, a lion coming to Moose City cabins to kill and eat Diane Boyd's dog, the Giefer Grizzly kindlingizing four doors on our Kintla Lodge looking for strawberry jam, Iris refusing to leave our pickup until "those grizzlies stop roaring" after researchers snared them at Moose City, two charges by moose, and well … maybe that New York Times writer was more accurate than I first thought; however, if I ever hear cougars screaming and wolves ululating … I'm outta there.

OF COURSE! I looked up "ululating" before writing this. For all I knew it meant something sorta nasty. Dictionary says, "Ululating: To howl or hoot, to wail or lament loudly."

Sometimes women ululate … if it rains on a new hairdo.

G. George Ostrom is a Kalispell resident and a national-award winning Hungry Horse News columnist.