Day Five: Yellowstone and Beyond

 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

Elk just laying around on the lawns.

Terrace Grill

Even the bathrooms have a wilderness motif.

Fort Yellowstone

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.