Category: Mammals

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A Day at the Chariot Races

Chariot Racing in Utah Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Chariot Racing in Utah
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
A few weeks ago, I met someone who mentioned she used to be involved in chariot racing.

Chariot Racing Team Courtesy & Copyright Wendy Wilker, Photographer
Chariot Racing Team
Courtesy & Copyright Wendy Wilker, Photographer
“Chariots?” I asked. “Like in ancient Roman days?”

“Sort of.” she said. She explained how today’s chariot racing in the Intermountain West involves two horses pulling a small aluminum chariot with the driver standing in the cart.

She mentioned the Regional Championships were coming up at the Golden Spike Arena in Ogden that weekend. So on Saturday, I jumped in my car . I got to the Arena just after the first race.

As I was strolling up to the rail running along the side of the racetrack, the horses in the next race shot by me. I was a little stunned by the hammering of the hooves on the dry dirt, the jangling of the harnesses, the strange whirring of the bicycle wheels — let alone the screaming of the spectators.

For the horses, it was an all out sprint for a quarter mile and it was over in 21 seconds.

In Roman times, the races lasted much longer. A typical race went 7 laps on a U-shaped racetrack with dangerously tight turns on both ends. Wealthy Roman Citizens owned the horses, but they usually sent a slave to drive the team. A crowd favorite was the daredevil slave charioteer Scorpius, who won 2,048 races before he died in a crash at the age of 26. Stories of chariot racing go all the way back to Homer’s Iliad where the Spartan king Menelaus was accused of cheating in a chariot race.

Rome’s racetrack was called the Circus Maximus and it could seat 250,000 spectators.

Back in Pioneer times in Utah, farmers liked to brag about how fast their horses could go, so challenges were made, and the issue usually settled by an informal race. The first official chariot race took place down the main street in Jackson Wyoming in 1950. For the following decades, chariot racing was very popular. Hundreds of teams would show up at the local races.

Going back to the Golden Spike racetrack, I walked up to where the races were starting. I asked if I could get close and climb up on the sidebars of the starting gate and they said ,”Sure.” From there I got an eyeball-to-eyeball view of the horses impatiently banging around in the starting chutes.

I think I was expecting a “Ready, Set, Go” and a starter pistol fired into the air. What I got was a mighty clang of metal on metal when the starter pulled a lever. The gates slammed open, the horses lunged forward, and dirt flew by me.

When the dust finally settled, the days winners were a team from Logan, who clocked in at 20.40 seconds – just 3 hundredths of a second off the world record.

On the way out I stopped to talk to three old timers still standing around chewing the fat.

“The sport is dying out,” one said.

“It’s getting expensive to keep a horse,” said the second.

The third summed it all up for me:
“Used to be you were really someone if you had a car. Now you’re really someone if you have a horse.”

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild about all the horses in Utah.

Credits:

Photos: Courtesy and Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Chariot Racing Team, Courtesy and Copyright Wendy Wilker, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright © Anderson, Howe, and Wakeman Utah Public Radio upr.org
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Wild About Utah Postings

https://www.facebook.com/reel/917556147927681 Courtesy Wendy Wilker

American Chariot Racing, https://www.goldenspikeeventcenter.com/event-details/acr-chariot-races-7

World Chariots, https://www.goldenspikeeventcenter.com/event-details/world-chariots-8

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Elusive Wolves

Wolf Footprints in the River of No Return Wilderness Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
Wolf Footprints in the River of No Return Wilderness
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
“A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow…. Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) pays heed to that call. To the deer it is a reminder of the way of all flesh, to the pine a forecast of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a promise of gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank…. Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself. Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.”
Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like A Mountain

In January three wolves were killed by the US Department of Agriculture and Food in Cache Valley, near Avon. The wolves wandered into a corner of northern Utah (more or less north of I-80 and east of I-84) where wolves are exempt from protection.

These were not the first wolves in northern Utah in modern times. I came across tracks in the Bear River Range a dozen years ago. There have been at least 21 documented sitings of wolves in Utah since 2004.

Wolf Footprints Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
Wolf Footprints
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer

Wolf Footprints in Snow Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer Wolf Footprints in Snow
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer

In the winter of 2002, on the last day of a four-day, fifty-five mile ski tour, deep in Idaho’s River of No Return Wilderness, a friend and I were setting a skin-track (a backcountry skiing term for breaking a trail) from the Salmon River up to the canyon rim. We traveled through spaced-out ponderosa pines through light snowflakes until we topped out on flat ground, 5,000 feet above the river. The forest abruptly transitioned to thick lodge pole pines. At our feet, all the snow was packed down with fresh wolf tracks. There was no new snow in the tracks, yet snow continued to fall from above. A pack of wolves had coalesced where we stood moments before our arrival.

Though I had seen wolf tracks before, I was still taken aback by the sheer size.

There are only two known cases of wolves killing people in the last century in North America. Statistically, you are more likely to be killed by a dear, an elk, a moose, a snake, a falling tree, an insect sting, lightening, or just about anything else than you are to be attacked by a wolf. Even with that knowledge, we could not escape a feeling of vulnerability. We looked around cautiously.

Five sets of evenly-spaced wolf tracks, parallel to one another, lead down the trail—the trail we had to follow. After about one hundred meters of skiing, one set of tracks peeled off to the left, disappearing into the lodgepole pine forest. A hundred meters later, a second set of wolf tracks turned off, this time to the right. A hundred meters more, and another set peeled off to the left. Consistent with pattern, a fourth set veered off to the right one hundred meters later, once again.

The wolf pack undoubtably watched us from all points of the compass. On high alert, we scanned the woods constantly for flashes of movement, for golden eyes peering from behind the timber, but saw nothing.

The middle set of tracks—the fifth wolf’s tracks—continued for another mile down the snow-covered trail before they too, turned off into the forest and vanished. We never caught a glimpse of any of them.

I think about those elusive wolves frequently. A wolf encounter is an zenith wilderness experience.

In Thinking Like a Mountain, Aldo Leopold described his younger self shooting a wolf and coming upon it in time to watch it die:
“I was young then,” he wrote, “and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die [in the wolf’s eyes], I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

I’m not suggesting wolves shouldn’t be managed, but I would like to see wildlife biologists making those decisions and that they are applied with consistency.

Leopold concluded,
“…Too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: ‘In wildness is the salvation of the world.’ Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”

I am Eric Newell and I am wild about Utah.

Credits:
Images: Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright © Hugh Jones (Rubber Rodeo-Before I Go Away) and to J. Chase and K.W. Baldwin
Text: Eric Newell, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University
Additional Reading: Eric Newell

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah Pieces by Eric Newell

Moilanen, Samantha, State officials killed three wolves in northern Utah. Here’s why., The Salt Lake Tribune, Jan. 27, 2026, 4:09 p.m., Updated: Jan. 28, 2026, https://www.sltrib.com/news/2026/01/27/utah-officials-kill-three-wolves/

Lofton, Shelby, 3 wolves killed in Cache County; picture prompts concern over ‘lethal removal’, KSL.com, KSL Broadcasting Salt Lake City UT, Deseret Digital Media, Jan. 28, 2026, https://www.ksl.com/article/51439305

Allen, Corbin, USU ecologists weigh in on wolves killed near Avon The Herald Journal a.k.a. HJNews, Jan 30, 2026, https://www.hjnews.com/news/local/usu-ecologists-weigh-in-on-wolves-killed-near-avon/article_8132fca5-2ca1-4d69-9ae7-3107b4008f52.html

Gilbert, Lael, USU Ecologists Offer Expert Perspective About Gray Wolves Found in Cache Valley, Land & Environment, USU Today, Utah State University, January 29, 2026, https://www.usu.edu/today/story/usu-ecologists-offer-expert-perspective-about-gray-wolves-found-in-cache-valley/

Leopold, Aldo, Thinking Like a Mountain,, Ecotone, Inc, https://www.ecotoneinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/aldo-leopold-tlam.pdf
See also this copy on the Sierra Club website: https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/sce/rocky-mountain-chapter/Wolves-Resources/Thinking%20Like%20a%20Mountain%20-%20Aldo%20Leopold.pdf

The Yellowstone Wolf Reintroduction: A Timeline, The Greater Yellowstone Coalition, https://greateryellowstone.org/yellowstone-wolf-reintroduction

Wolves in Utah, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Utah Department of Natural Resources, Last Updated: Tuesday, September 9, 2025, https://wildlife.utah.gov/wolves.html

History of Wolf Management, Yellowstone National Park, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/historyculture/wolf-management.htm

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Reindeer Visit

Yuki the Reindeer from the Mountain West Animal Hospital. Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Yuki the Reindeer from the Mountain West Animal Hospital
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Mary with Bluebell the Reindeer from the Rockin Reindeer Ranch at the Ogden City Christmas Square. Copyright Mary Heers Mary with Bluebell the Reindeer
from the
Rockin Reindeer Ranch
Ogden City Christmas Square
Copyright Mary Heers

I first time I came face to face with a living, breathing reindeer was a few weeks ago at the Reindeer Express hosted by Utah State University vet students. Two vets from the Mt. West Animal Hospital near Provo had brought two of their reindeer with them to Cache Valley and were standing by to answer our questions.

The first thing I learned was that both male and female reindeer grow a new set of antlers every year. The antlers are solid bone and can weigh up to 15 pounds. The males usually drop their antlers in Nov after the mating season, while the females keep theirs a few months longer – until after they drop their calves in the Spring. A vet student chimed in. He said reindeer losing their antlers looks a lot like us losing a baby tooth. The antlers get a little wobbly and simply fall off. The reindeer just keeps grazing.

Now I was hot on the trail of reindeer in Utah. I went to the Ogden City Christmas Square to meet Bluebell from the Rockin Reindeer farm near Ogden. As admirers were taking pictures, Bluebell’s owner told me that watching the antlers regrow could be pretty exciting. Every morning you could get up and easily see how the antlers had grown another inch overnight.

I also learned if you listened closely, you could hear a clicking when the reindeer walked. The first time they heard it, they thought something was terribly wrong. But all reindeer click when the tendon in their leg slides over a bone. Clicking seems to be a way for the herd to find each other in white-out winter weather.

Another adaptation to intense cold is the hair that covers every reindeer’s nose This helps keep it warm in the reindeers natural habitat in the far north.

I can trace my own fascination with reindeer to my childhood days when my father arranged for a friend of his to dress up as Santa and personally deliver a big white sack full of presents to our house. The fact that Santa rang our doorbell didn’t strike me as odd since we didn’t have a chimney. One Christmas Eve I was talking all day about how I would soon get to meet Santa’s reindeer. When the doorbell rang, I rushed to open the door. There was Santa with his big white sack. No reindeer.

“Where are the reindeer?” I asked.

“I left them down the street,” Santa said. “Let’s go see them after we open the presents. “

That did the trick. I forgot all about the reindeer.

But now that I’m older and wiser, I know that most male reindeer drop their antlers in Nov, while the females keep theirs a few more months. So the odds are very, very good that the Santa that rang my doorbell was driving an all-female dream team.

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy Mary Heers,
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright © Friend Weller, Utah Public Radio upr.org
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Wild About Utah Postings

Heaps, Spenser, (The Daily Herald), Springville veterinarian and his reindeer find success, Salt Lake Tribune, June 6, 2015 https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=2596124&itype=CMSID

Bott, Isaac, DocBott – Musings of a mixed animal veterinarian, https://docbott.org/

Rockin Reindeer Ranch, https://www.rockinreindeerranch.com/

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The Tenacity of Beavers

Beaver at Dam, Courtesy Pixabay
Beaver at Dam
Courtesy Pixabay
The most important lessons I can give my daughter are not through me, but instead those found best in the wild. Though she can’t talk, I know she still listens. Though her childhood amnesia is inevitable, I know that neural circuits are still being formed. Those circuits will do her good one day.

Our favorite lesson is in the tenacity of beavers.

This winter, we took one of our favorite hikes through knee-deep postholing snow to one of our favorite beaver dams. The dogs trot ahead, sniff snuffing at the path, darting to the stream that runs alongside our trail and back, and lead us as they have many times before up the trail. When we come to the great beaver dam, one that assuredly took not just years but generations of beavers to build, we stop for a snack and water, and let our daughter sit quizzically in the springtime slush. I explain to her the parts of the beaver’s home: the dam, the lodge, how they store their food. She listens while she smushes snow in her mittens, neural circuits are formed, and we pack up to start the slushy walk back to the car. A good day’s hike and lesson. A Greek proverb is dusted off in my mind, that a society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they know they shall never sit. Those beavers are good Greeks, but likely poor hoplites.

Later that spring, we return to the dam, our trail shortened by melted snow. Snow is gone from the trail, but still holding fast in the mountains above. The travel is easier, muddier, but the beaver Platonic Republic justly endures. I explain the parts of the Castorian city-state yet again, and explain what the beavers are doing now as we see fresh aspen fells. They’re collecting good sugars and preparing for their kits. Kallipolis endures, as it has, another year out of dozens of millennia, and even without a cud of pulp in sight. I wonder if beavers have oral traditions?

Time then passes as we all pass through space, and summer buds, blooms, and begins to fade. The cattle have come, grazed, trammeled, and been driven off yet again. We return to Xanadu in the early morning before the sun beats hard. We can get even closer to the dam now that the Forest gates are open, and we prepare for our adventure. My daughter looks around excitedly and drinks water from her cup. The dogs look around excitedly at all the leftover cow pies to investigate. Luckily they’ve dried.

We exit the car and make our short way to the beavers only to discover that tragedy has struck between spring and now. The dam has burst. Like the River Isen, a great work of nature has blown a hole in the waterkeep, and drained the promised pond. The shoreline has receded like a tonsure, the lodge’s secret doors exposed as if by moonlit ithildin, and the water flowing with Newtonian determination towards Great Salt Lake.

It’s shocking at first, seeing this anchor of time heaved asunder, the work of generations of beavers up and smote by spring runoff. All that labor. All those lives well-lived. Perhaps not wasted, but at least now remembered with a sigh. I sigh out as well, and explain this all to my daughter. She listens, pulls on cow-mown grasses, synapses fire, and circuits connect. We complete our hike and eventually go home.

Finally, early this fall we set off for the utopia-that-was once more. Colors have begun to change to golds and crimson. The air is more crisp; the heat more bearable. We saddle up in the toddler backpack, and see what there is to see of the beavers. We arrive to the wonders of hope and joy, and the tenacity of beavers.

The dam it appears is not abandoned. The labor of generations is honored with the restoration of the work. Not in its entirety mind you, for that will again take years and perhaps generations, but the work is underway regardless. Greek thinking again prevails. Whether by purpose or itch it matters not, but slowly the pond is regrowing. The shoreline has risen to swallow back and douse bare earth, and the water is a bit more wine-dark. I excitedly show my daughter, who excitedly is playing with my hat, the work that has happened, and the work yet to do. The beavers will not quit when allowed to do so. They are tenacious little buggers whose teeth grow forever. We take it all in and continue our hike, and eventually go back home. A new proverb pops into my head. A society grows great when we get to work and, figuratively, give a dam.

I’m Patrick Kelly and I’m Wild About Utah.
 
Credits:

Images: Beaver & Dam Image Courtesy Pixabay, Public Domain
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright Friend Weller, Utah Public Radio with and Anderson, Howe, & Wakeman.
Text:    Patrick Kelly, Stokes Nature Center, https://logannature.org
Included Links: Lyle Bingham, Webmaster, WildAboutUtah.org

Additional Reading

Greene, Jack, I’m a Beaver Believer, Wild About Utah, December 19, 2022, https://wildaboututah.org/im-a-beaver-believer/

Bingham, Lyle, Welcoming Rodent Engineers, Wild About Utah, February 7, 2022, https://wildaboututah.org/welcoming-rodent-engineers/

Hellstern, Ron, Leave it to Beaver, Wild About Utah, July 30, 2018, https://wildaboututah.org/leave-it-to-beaver/

Leavitt, Shauna, Beaver–Helping Keep Water on Drying Lands, Wild About Utah, April 17, 2017, https://wildaboututah.org/the-beaver-helping-keep-water-on-drying-lands/

Strand, Holly, Beavers: The Original Army Corps of Engineers, Wild About Utah, April 29, 2010, https://wildaboututah.org/beavers-the-original-army-corps-of-engineers/

Goldfarb, Ben, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, Chelsea Green Publishing, March 8, 2019, https://www.amazon.com/Eager-Surprising-Secret-Beavers-Matter/dp/1603589082/ref=asc_df_1603589082/