THE JUDICIARY : In Yellowstone, They Call Him ‘Your Honor’ : Magistrate Steven Cole is the country’s only federal judge to live in and oversee a national park.

All living things must either adapt to the snow and cold that drape the nation’s oldest national park in a vast white blanket each winter, or leave.

Elk migrate to lowlands. Grizzly bears hibernate. And U.S. Magistrate Steven Cole retreats to his wood-paneled lair to catch up on months’ worth of paperwork while the sounds of Eric Clapton issue from a boombox next to a frost-coated window.

“As you can see, I’m not busting my butt dealing with bad guys,” Cole said, referring to another species that migrates to less frigid climes.

“There’s not much to do in winter except contemplate the vagaries and vicissitudes of life--and deal with snowmobile drivers under the influence,” said the 48-year-old federal judge whose sole jurisdiction is Yellowstone. “But I wouldn’t say I come up with many profound conclusions.”

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Yet when the snow begins to melt and the trickle of spring visitors turns into a summer torrent, Cole often works seven days a week. And not just as judge, but as his own secretary, clerk, court recorder and bailiff in what is arguably the smallest courtroom in the West.

Cole is the only federal judge to live in and oversee a national park, and he’s only the fourth magistrate in the last 100 years of park history. Since serious felonies, such as rape and murder, are transferred to the U.S. District Court in Cheyenne, Cole handles lesser crimes.

That means his summer docket is routinely crowded with drunk-driving and drug-related cases.

But there are unusual crimes as well, the kind that could only happen within Yellowstone’s 2.2 million acres: geyser vandalism, elk horn collecting, poaching on federal parkland and amateur photographers who pester park bison.

In one recent case, a tourist was fined a few hundred dollars for tossing hunks of dry ice into the Giantess Geyser to make it erupt, which it did. A few years ago, Cole fined another man for tossing chunks of a wooden desk into Old Faithful just to watch them get burped out.

These and wildlife harassment cases have convinced Cole “not to expect a heck of a lot from human nature.”

“I’ve seen people try to pet elk on the nose; that’s really stupid, because they can really hurt you,” he said. “And every year we get people stomped into strawberry jam for trying to put their arm around a bison for a photograph.”

Cole has little patience with repeat offenders who persist in defiling geyser formations or stealing such park resources as shed elk antlers, which fetch on average $6 a pound for uses that include trophy mounts, jewelry and even medicinal remedies. Chronic violators can expect hefty fines, even banishment from the park.

Ranger Jerry Ryder, one of Yellowstone’s 80 law enforcement officials who bring cases to the magistrate, usually likes the justice he sees meted out in Cole’s tiny courtroom, which houses two desks and the judicial bench.

“Some snowmobiles go 90 miles per hour, and some fools drive them that fast after a beer lunch at Old Faithful Lodge,” Ryder said. “Steve (Cole) will usually whack a drunk driver pretty hard.”

Cole, who is recovering from a kidney transplant operation, is a descendant of Wyoming cowpunchers. In 1974, the then-lawyer and ardent fisherman first learned that Yellowstone had its own magistrate.

“At first I wondered, ‘What the hell does a judge do in Yellowstone?’ ” he recalled. “Then I thought, ‘Well, he probably fly fishes a lot. I better keep my eye on that job.’ ”

That paid off in the summer of 1980, when then-Magistrate James Brown became ill and temporary replacements were needed to handle his docket. Cole volunteered. A few months later, he succeeded Brown, who retired after 30 years on the job.

Cole and his wife, Maurine, have two daughters and one son.

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He said that his 14 years in Yellowstone have made him a “cheerful pessimist.”

Take his theory about people who practice his own hobby, stalking Yellowstone’s trout with artificial flies: “People who take up fly fishing can’t be all bad, although I’ve had people in my courtroom who severely test that theory.”

“I’ve always looked at my life as a stick that somebody kicked into a creek, and it ended up here--which is not a bad place to be,” Cole said. “I’m the luckiest guy on the face of the Earth. No question about it.”