Grizzly with cubs Glacier huckleberry meadow
— — the weeks the berry purples the slope.
Not only on a wall.
“Late August in Glacier. The huckleberry slopes above the timberline turn deep purple-red and a sow brings her cubs up to feed. They work a single hillside for hours, the cubs eating what they're shown, the mother rarely looking up. Hikers give the meadow a wide berth and watch from below. from the studio
Grizzly with cubs Glacier huckleberry meadow, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Glacier National Park, in northwest Montana, holds one of the densest grizzly bear populations in the lower forty-eight. The National Park Service estimates roughly three hundred grizzlies live within the park's million acres, with cubs typically born in winter dens and emerging in spring. Huckleberry meadows on the eastern slopes — above the Many Glacier and Two Medicine valleys — are core late-summer feeding ground, drawing sows and yearling cubs to the same hillsides each August.
Huckleberries on the east side ripen in late July and peak through August into early September, depending on snowmelt and elevation. The berries hold roughly 80 percent of a Glacier grizzly's late-summer caloric intake, according to long-running park research. Sows with cubs work the same productive slopes year after year, often within sight of trails. By late September the berries are gone and bears move down toward the valleys to feed on serviceberry and dig for biscuitroot before denning.
The park asks hikers to travel in groups of three or more during huckleberry season, to make steady noise on blind corners, and to carry bear spray on the hip. If a sow with cubs is on the trail, the rule is to back off and wait, not pass. The Many Glacier and Two Medicine areas concentrate sightings; rangers post daily bear activity reports at the visitor centres. Photography is welcome at distance with long glass, not closer than the park's hundred-yard minimum.