In the bottom photo, as dusk settles in the valley of Rescue Creek, the resident bull charges back into the timber after shellacking himself with mud in the wallow near my tent. This is the same bull that I spotted earlier in the day from far away, doing a fairly good job of impersonating a bear. (Hey, it was a long ways off!)

I picked a fine site for my tent beneath a stand of pine at the edge of the meadow. The slope was perfect, the ground soft, and the view fantastic. However, each time I'd doze off, the bull would cut loose again. Finally around midnight, I gave it up and sat outside the tent for several hours enjoying the show. It's not often that you have the chance to enjoy such a wild spectacle, and I can sleep after I'm back in civilization.

The highlight of the night was hearing the long, drawn-out howl of a wolf around 5 in the morning. It sounded as if it was coming from the Blacktail Creek drainage, on the other side of the ridge in front of my camp.