The Craziness of Summer Returns to Yellowstone...

The craziness of another summer season has returned to Yellowstone Country and the lives of the YCG family.  I regret the fact that it has been several weeks since I last updated the Blog and I want to apologize to those of you who regularly journey through the pages of the YCG Field Journal.  It has been a wild ride the last four weeks, as the many irons I have in the fire collided.  As most of you know, YCG is a one-man show at this point in time and though I will do my best to regularly update the Field Journal, right now there don’t seem to be enough hours in the day for me to fulfill all of my obligations.  My last four weeks have been packed with weekend basketball tournaments, guiding, presentations, officiating a wedding in Spokane, Washington, and traveling to meet with community members, board members and potential YCG contributors. 

I was also honored to spend three days outside of Butte, Montana, with our friends from Hopa Mountain (hopamountain.org) at their Park County Youth Leadership Camp.  Hopa Mountin Director and founder, Bonnie Satchatello-Sawyer, invited me to join their talented roster of speakers and counselors for their weeklong camp, where I was given the opportunity to address a tremendous group of young people.  I forged many strong bonds with the future leaders of Park Country, and though this was a Hopa Mountain event, our work together speaks directly to the power of collaboration.       

In another collaborative effort, in recent weeks I worked with the Yellowstone Association and the Turner Twelve (twelve inspiring high school students from depths of Dallas, Texas).  I was very excited to welcome these future conservation leaders to Yellowstone National Park and to share with them the YCG vision.  And finally, I met with a group of college students with the Wild Rockies Field Institute from Missoula, Montana.  These adventurous and dedicated conservationists were journeying for eight weeks throughout the Yellowstone, Central Idaho, and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems in an effort to better understand the role of the grizzly bear. 

After a surging spring runoff, the rivers are beginning to mellow a bit and with the return of the clearing waters—all but the mighty Yellowstone, which is always the last to clear—so too have anglers from all over the world descended upon the rivers of Yellowstone Country.  And with the arrival of traveling anglers, my duties as a Montana fly fishing guide have returned.   Though I usually spend many hours each week focused on the demands of the YCG office, I consider my work as a fly fishing guide and the head boys’ basketball coach here in Gardiner extensions of my work with YCG.  All of it is about guiding young people, adults, conservationists and non-conservationists in an effort to deepen their connection to the land and waters that sustain us all, both physically and spiritually—with the goal being to elicit a commitment from individuals and communities alike to nurture the wildness and spirit of Yellowstone Country.    

With that said, I will continue to do my best to keep you up-to-date through our Field Journal on the happenings of Yellowstone Country!

Peace Be the Journey,

~Michael Leach, Director