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National Geographic : 1979 Jul
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At the peak of daring, a hotdogging skier soars spread-eaglebefore landing on a mountainside.Those who play in the park's one million acres-aswell as those who just stand and gaze-must keep their distance and respect the park's originalresidents, the animals. Among them are unpredictableand potentially lethal grizzlies. DOUGLASH. CHADWICK Pass, and the narrow valleys of the west slope were replaced by a landscape wider and drier and a thousand feet higher on the average. Snowy crests of limestone tilted above foothills where aspen groves had just started their green-up, and prairie grasses were brightened by early pasqueflowers, yellow bells, and moss campion. This is big-sky country; the beginning of the Great Plains. "When I scrambled up to the top of Rising Wolf Mountain, I could see all the way to Great Falls with binoculars. That's about 150 miles east of here," Dick Mattson, a friend who works as a park ranger-naturalist, told me when I visited him in his East Glacier ranger station. Rummaging through his file of historical documents, Dick showed me how most of the eastern half of Glacier Park was created out of lands formerly used by Blackfeet Indians, whose reservation adjoins the park's entire eastern boundary. That afternoon as clouds continued to pile up over the mountains, the dark-bellied sky crackled with jagged light and Thunder strode back into the land. He had been away since fall, and to celebrate his return-for who but this mighty sky spirit sends rains to make the berries full and the sweet grasses tall across the plains-the Blackfeet always opened the medicine pipe bundle. As the hides of elk and grizzly bear were un wrapped, many songs were sung. Berries were ceremonially planted, and a flute called the birds back into the country. As today, the loons were always among the first to arrive, followed by the meadow larks, and then the grebes, mergansers, swallows, and their hunters, bald eagles and falcons. The bundle is still opened each spring, and the songs are still sung, though not as many know the words now. 128
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