Sigrid Sanders
Travel
All photos ©2009 Clate Sanders - All rights reserved.  
 
 Yellowstone in Winter


Early on a cold, snowy morning in February, I stood on a tree-covered mountain with only a few other people, and listened to the haunting howl of a gray wolf. She sat alone on a snow-covered slope, some distance away, almost lost in the mist, facing into the dark green trees, lifting her head again and again, her long, mournful howl the only sound in the still, frosty air, and I could feel it as much as much as hear it.

Hearing the howl of a wolf, and seeing some of the wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park a little more than a decade ago were among the most memorable parts of a six-day National Geographic Expedition in 2008 to explore “Winter Wildlife in Yellowstone.” We traveled through a wonderland of snow, ice and steel-green rivers, majestic mountains, frozen waterfalls and wide valleys, watching bison, elk, big-horned sheep and red fox, bald eagles, ravens and trumpeter swans, and walking among the strange, other-worldly beauty of hot springs and geysers steaming in the snow. Click here to continue reading...


 
 Kiawah Island, June 2009


On a hot, sunny, humid afternoon in early June, a Wood Stork stood in a wide expanse of marsh grass and mudflats on the edge of a pond, its bare, mud-gray head and long down-curving bill looking prehistoric and strange. Great Egrets – tall, sinuous, long-necked and white – stalked in the water nearby. A Snowy Egret, a Tricolored Heron, two Glossy Ibis – the longer we looked, the more emerged from the background. Two Least Terns fluttered over the pond, flashing silvery white, hovering, pausing, diving in crisp, quick bursts. Click here to continue reading...