My wife Jan and I were on a photo vacation in Montana. The day we arrived we ran into a small traffic jam in Glacier National Park (US side).

People were jumping out of their cars with cameras, chasing after a family of Rocky Mountain Goats crossing the highway. We commented how it would be nice to take some pictures of them, but without the mob mentality and without harassing the goats.  

Early the next morning, we hiked out on a trail near the place we had seen the goats. After reaching a viewpoint, taking some pictures, and heading back to the car, we ran into a large family of goats.

It was more like the 30 or so goats, including kids, ran into us. We sat down to watch them. As we sat there, the goats ignored us, moving closer, surrounding both of us, until the billy in the picture came up beside me, so close I could have touched him (he was too close for my camera lens to focus on), but I thought better of it since he was a lot larger than anything I wanted to have a scuffle with.

The goat looked at me, gave a sigh, lay down, closed his eyes, and took a nap next to me, as I sat there taking pictures of the others from time to time. Jan, also taking pictures, turned around, saw us, and took the picture of the goat and me hanging out together.

We were surrounded by the herd for about 20 minutes until some tourons came running up the trail, shouting about “GOATS!” The goats moved on. We did too.