From my notebook that
day:
Approaching
Yellowstone on 89, the Absaroka Mountains soaring before us and to the left,
clouds gathered grey and misty with rain as we cross through Yankee Jim
Canyon. Entering the spattering rain
between the ranges in the narrow canyon, beyond it, more mountains framed foggy
in a yellow morning haze. The
Yellowstone River flowing, placidly now to our right, knobby rocks thrust like
fits punching toward the sky.
The light from the
clouds punches back with finger of heavenly streams of light caressing the
landscape. On the other side of the
river, bright green stretches of narrow irrigated fields sit in contrast to the
yellow grass horse-grazed meadows. Red
patches here and there were fall-bearing berry bushes push forth their winter
fruit.
I want to eschew the
houses and ranches—the white man’s presence—aware of the irony that we are
enjoying this from our car on a well-paved road. Still, my spirit longs only to
connect with the land, with the Divine forces of nature exhibited within.
We entered the gate of Yellowstone from the north at
Gardiner, Montana. A couple of miles later we crossed into Wyoming. We ate
lunch at the Mammoth Visitor Center, saw some geysers from a distance—mainly because
we were both so tired and hurting from the drive that neither of us was much
interested in walking the trails or up stairs of any kind. We were to do our
share of walking before the day was over, but physical pain and exhaustion
dogged our every step.
Yellowstone is the
smell of sulphur and rain and driving through skeleton forests, the remnants of
long-extinguished wildfires. The surprise of Yellowstone Lake!
 |
| Mammoth Village |
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| Elk just laying around on the lawns. |
 |
| Terrace Grill |
 |
| Even the bathrooms have a wilderness motif. |
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| Fort Yellowstone |
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| Vintage Yellowstone tour bus. |
We drive on, up,
up into the rain and the smell of sulphur lingers here among the dead, blackened
and sun-bleached trunks of the long-burnt pines. We move even higher, into the
raincloud itself, into the shadow of a hostile mountain with a taste for human
lives. I sense waves of hostility, of a
great sense of danger washes over me.
In Yellowstone, we saw buffalo (bison), up close and
personal, and pronghorns and waterfalls. We passed away from the hostile mountain and the sense of danger faded into the distance. We emerged, hours later, from the
eastern gate near Wapiti, Wyoming, and drove across a long flat stretch toward
Cody, where we stopped for the night.
