It Takes an Oreamnos americanus

For this year's vacation photos I took, I used 450 MB of CF disk storage for the more than 500 digital images and a half-dozen or so of AVI. I spent this past week's evenings reliving the trip by culling, cataloging, and archiving this parcel of vacation memories into a CD.

Last year in our trip to celebrate Louis and Clark's Bicentennial Expendition, we visited the Waterton NP (Alberta, Canada) and the Glacier NP in Montana. We ferried through the Gates of the Mountain, we saw the headwaters of the Missouri River at Bozman Montana; and we rode on the Second Transcontinental Railroad from Montana to Idaho over the Continental Divide. In all these places, we didn't see one mountain goat in the wild. And for that matter, we hardly saw any creatures of the wild, other than ospreys. So it was thrilling, to say the least, we saw mountain goats nonchantlantly went about munching on the shrubs and flowers at Mt. Rushmore A Mountain Goat (Oreamnos americanus) from Scenes of Black Hills, SD. It was a really a serendipitous find of these shy and oft elusive rocky cliff dwellers.

Surely, in this cursed and fallen world awaiting a new birth (Romans 8:22). The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (The Grand Teton and Yellowstone NPS), is formed along fault lines and on top of a supervolcano. Forbodingly and paradoxically, the beauty of this wilderness has much to do with these geologic instabilities. It is "charged with the grandeur of God."(1)

If these park systems are as magnificient as every vistor seems to agree, I can not begin to image how beautiful a perfect new heaven and a new earth would be like (Revelation 21:1). Hence, the Mt. Rushmore mountain goat serves as a prudent reminder of God's unfathomable wisdom.

In the Book of Job, God speaks of nature and its being. Though we understood very little of it, He tells us of His disciplinary designs. God, being the immutable "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14 NASB), owes man, His creation, no explanation whatsoever. In Job Chapter 39 (NIV), we read God puts the questions of the rhythm of life to Job:

1 "Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?
Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn?

2 Do you count the months till they bear?
Do you know the time they give birth?

3 They crouch down and bring forth their young;
their labor pains are ended.

4 Their young thrive and grow strong in the wilds;
they leave and do not return.

5 "Who let the wild donkey go free?
Who untied his ropes?

6 I gave him the wasteland as his home,
the salt flats as his habitat.

7 He laughs at the commotion in the town;
he does not hear a driver's shout.

8 He ranges the hills for his pasture
and searches for any green thing.

9 "Will the wild ox consent to serve you?
Will he stay by your manger at night?

10 Can you hold him to the furrow with a harness?
Will he till the valleys behind you?

11 Will you rely on him for his great strength?
Will you leave your heavy work to him?

12 Can you trust him to bring in your grain
and gather it to your threshing floor?

13 "The wings of the ostrich flap joyfully,
but they cannot compare with the pinions and feathers of the stork.

14 She lays her eggs on the ground
and lets them warm in the sand,

15 unmindful that a foot may crush them,
that some wild animal may trample them.

16 She treats her young harshly, as if they were not hers;
she cares not that her labor was in vain,

17 for God did not endow her with wisdom
or give her a share of good sense.

18 Yet when she spreads her feathers to run,
she laughs at horse and rider.

19 "Do you give the horse his strength
or clothe his neck with a flowing mane?

20 Do you make him leap like a locust,
striking terror with his proud snorting?

21 He paws fiercely, rejoicing in his strength,
and charges into the fray.

22 He laughs at fear, afraid of nothing;
he does not shy away from the sword.

23 The quiver rattles against his side,
along with the flashing spear and lance.

24 In frenzied excitement he eats up the ground;
he cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.

25 At the blast of the trumpet he snorts, 'Aha!'
He catches the scent of battle from afar,
the shout of commanders and the battle cry.

26 "Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom
and spread his wings toward the south?

27 Does the eagle soar at your command
and build his nest on high?

28 He dwells on a cliff and stays there at night;
a rocky crag is his stronghold.

29 From there he seeks out his food;
his eyes detect it from afar.

30 His young ones feast on blood,
and where the slain are, there is he."


The wonders of the physical universe and the marvels of the animal kingdown, such as those seen at the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, display God's wisdom beyond any conception of understanding. The Mt. Rushmore mountain goat photo shall ever be a memento of God's providential grace.

(1) Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "God's Grandeur".