Yesterday I was on my way home from a little adventure (which I'll get to in a minute) and, as I passed by one of the meadows in the park, I cast a skeptical eye in that direction and wondered when "they" would be making an appearance. It took all of about 500 feet to get my answer. The Utah Prairie Dogs had gone below ground to hibernate in late October, so it was right at 4 months since I had last seen one. I've since checked out 3 colonies in the park and there is activity at all of them, and I saw activity at another colony outside the park. The snow is still pretty deep so finding food must be a little tough. Even with that, this one looks pretty plump and must have had a lot of food stored away.

The tree at left was the object of my adventure yesterday. I happened upon it about 10 days ago while leading a snowshoe hike out near Bryce Point and it is one of the more mature examples I've seen here. The others I've seen are, for the most part, rather spindly, while this one had some bulk (trunk about 10 to 12 inches in diameter) . With the rate of erosion here as high as it is, Bristlecone Pines (Pinus longaeva) don't live as long as they do in the White Mountains of Eastern California, where a tree called "Methuselah" is about 4,800 years old, they can still live longer here than everything else around. The oldest one known at Bryce Canyon, now unfortunately dead, lived about 1,600 years. Bristlecone Pines are the oldest living single organisms on the planet.

Far from being an expert, I'm guessing this one is maybe 1,000 years old based upon size and what I have read about their rate of growth. If I'm right, it means this tree would have been a sapling during the time of the Fremont Culture (Ancestral Puebloans who inhabited portions of Utah concurrent with the more famous Puebloans - formerly called Anasazi - who inhabited the Four Corners region) and Europe would have been mired in the Dark Ages. Kind of cool when you think about it. Of course that's nothing when you realize Methuselah would have been a sapling during the time of the pharaohs . . .