Yellowstone

We knew we’d reached civilization when we hit Jackson. There was a bookstore AND a healthfood store AND yuppies in birkenstocks (and just a trace of local condescension). We stocked up on veggieburger, ate spinach croissants, drank exotic tea, and perused the lit. A clutch of high country titles I’d like to nose through.. Ruxton’s autobiography, some unfamiliar Stegner, a book by Dobie on coyotes.. but our purses are thin and lightsout is early anyhow. I did notice that most of the good stuff was published by U. of Oklahoma, so I’ll stalk their catalog in fatter times.

Teton Lakes

Postcard View

We were about to need it. We were on the doorstep of Yellowstone Park, where Mother Earth exposes herself to ogling lines of Japanese and American tourists, and we didn’t have a guide. We joined the cue. Between Jackson and Yellowstone the highway parallels the most photographed mountain view in America: the Grand Tetons. This is placemat and motel-art country, and I just figured out why it has that timeless quality reserved for National icons. Those peaks have been frozen in so many photographs their morphic resonance is in a standing wave. They’ll be stopped dead in so many 20th century photo albums they’ll never escape. Peggy says they scream in the 60minute photo joints around here every time a Teton shot appears. Of course we stopped and took pictures.

In some ways this is the naked heart of North America. It straddles the continental divide and runs up to the 45th parallel of latitude.. halfway to the pole from the equator. And it may be emblematic of our present state: over the hill, but only halfway there. Much of Yellowstone was burned over by the fire of 1988, and you drive for miles through scorched earth, with the black spears of burned lodgepole pines jabbing the sky all around. We come to see nature in the raw, and she’s blistered. It’s still a spectacle. At Grant City we stopped to mail some letters, and the park rangers were burning a pile of lodgepoles. The acrid smoke clung to us for miles. Just a memento of nature at play.

Fire View

Old Faithful (Bryce)

We were clever, though. We took our drawing supplies, because we knew we would have to wait for the BIG MOMENT. We did wonder why everyone else was gathering on benches on the side opposite to us. But we were smug in the knowledge that we had the artist’s view, and didn’t behave like lemmings. So when she whooshed her spritz we got what we deserved. We were downwind. I can show you the watercolors.. sort of.

By the time we left the geological war zone our revs were running down. But we had miles to go before ... (we’d booked into the Super8 north of the park.. on the first day of off season rates!). The north end of the park woke us right up. The West is full of discontinuities. You drive out of one landscape into another, radically different, in the blink of an eye. Out of the dense verticality of lodgepole forests in steep mountains we were suddenly in rolling high prairie alongside the Yellowstone River, with herds of buffalo grazing, for all the world like in a Catlin or a Miller.

Moran

Moranscape

Out of that plunging declivity we drove into mountain meadows with luminous yellow aspens, orange and bronze grasses and small shrubs, and the dusty sage. Then into pine woods where the road snaked between looming hills again. On the hillsides and along the river, elk were browsing in the low-angled light. Plumes of fragrant steam rose up on either hand and we’d pass through the broken rubble of volcanic aftermath and tectonic excess. Holy Buffalo. The north gate of Yellowstone features Mammoth Hot Springs, a whole hanging garden of sulfurous delight looking down on a hospital spa where elk wander in the street, followed by Kodaclicking tourists. Us, too...us, too. And then it’s a switchback descent out of the magic kingdom into Gardiner. And a room at the inn.

Oct. 2 - Yellowstone Wilds Who? explorers, naturalists, artists, tourists What? first national park with many geographic marvels (Old Faithful, Grand Canyon of the Rockies, mammoth hot springs) Where? northwestern Wyoming When? created 1872 How? created by geological forces over eons, made accessible in 20th century by extensive tourist infrastructure Topics: national parks, endangered species, wild v. domesticated Questions : How do you give people access to the wilderness? How can you provide wildlife protection and promote tourism?

Old Faithful

Old Faithful (Peggy)

From the earliest explorers, Native Americans and Anglos have recognized Yellowstone’s power and worked to protest it and share it. Thomas Moran’s incredible oils of Yellowstone were part of a successful campaign to create a national park to “save” the place for the future. The park has been consciously structured and modernized for tourists and VIEWING.

Mammoth Hot Spring is an incredible area where minerals have built up a series of terraced pools that spill down a hillside to a small plateau where a clinic was established for those taking the water. The pools still hiss and heave and flow. You follow long boardwalks and stairs to skirt the springs. Frequent signs warn that the ground is unstable and that tourists have been scalded to death. Stay on boardwalks. (Why do I trust the ground under the boardwalk?)

Mammoth Hot Springs

Geyser Bus

The park must also provide services for visitors; there are medical clinics, restaurants, gift shops, gas stations, auto mechanics. There is a huge staff of service providers and maintenance staff who also need housing and transportation. There is garbage from everyone - candy wrappers and film cartons and plastic bags. So there are thousands of specially constructed garbage cans. (We heard that Yosemite had gotten so crowded that you can no longer drive through that park. You leave your car outside and are ferried around on special park service trolleys.)

One task is to protect and cultivate the flora - and you must prevent the tourists from taking one flower, one rock, one pine cone. Silly? Multiple each by the millions who come through each year. I found myself constantly aware of the dozens of footprints across every bare spot, the legions of cigarette butts at any stop.

Geyser Parking

Bison Valley

Every five to ten minutes as we drove we would come upon a few parked cars with people training cameras and binoculars on an animal or animals. In fact the way to find the wildlife in Yellowstone is to watch for stopped cars. In spite of all the warnings, people show very little sense. We saw tourists advancing on herds of buffalo and heavily antlered elk, even with small yappy dogs alongside! People may think the camera makes them immune.

The very access provided to tourists - the safe approaches and views - masks the truths. The wilderness is dangerous and powerful. Yellowstone was formed violently. Thermal eruptions and fires and earthquakes and buffalo attacks still occur. I got chills at many spots where we stopped, thinking that the scene could be exploded anytime. Why was everyone placidly taking pictures? Still there are magic moments. We did see a bighorned sheep way up on a mountain outlined against the sky.

Steaming Beach

Woosh

When we woke up in Gardiner neither of us had the oomph to pack up Festiva and ride. We had been aiming for a pitstop in Missoula at a friend’s sister’s house, but the 45th parallel was where we all fell down. We had puting to do, there was a hot pool in the motel, the folks were friendly and helpful, our supper of fresh trout last night had been perfect, it was the off season, and we were pooched. Peggy actually found us fresh salad for lunch, what more could you hope for?

After we caught up on our electronic correspondence, we decided that a long walk in the magic kingdom was in order, so we drove through the stone triumphal arch that is the north gate to Yellowstone Park, and parked beside the river that flows below the caldera. The Gardiner River. At the beginning of the path we were warned that 20,000 people use it every year, and not to disturb the environment, no nude bathing, no, no, no. That warm federal presence. Here was an unmapped walk on the outskirts of the Park, and it was still at risk from over-use. We had tried to eyeball signs of the the emigrants along the Oregon trail, but couldn’t distinguish pickup tracks from wagonruts, and here were the grooves of contemporary pilgrims searching for renewal. We’d simply been looking in the wrong place for the marks of great migrations.

Boiling River

Brain of the Mountains

We walked on, Peggy carefully keeping to high and solid ground, Bryce poking here and there, trying not to step on the vegetation. The water in Boiling River was, indeed, boiling to the touch. There were sauna caves where you came out smelling like an underground nightmare. Then there was a boiling pool in which the sediments had left colored patterns on a mound of rock just below the surface. It looked like to top of a huge exposed brain, steaming and stinking under a cindery white outcrop: the great brain of the mountains.

Subdued, we repassed the water celebrants, and came face to antler with a herd of elk standing in the cooler waters, and browsing in the shade of the junipers. The nature stuff comes too fast and furious in this place. You begin to wonder about “wild” animals that are so tame you have to fence your flowers in town. The Disneyland atmosphere at Yellowstone muddles that separation between nature and culture which enables respect. The magic of manicured encounters is movie magic, and the fastforward display at Yellowstone is like channel surfing. Oh, there’s another elk. There are pullovers for every encounter. See the bison, here. Film, gas, and ice cream, with mud geysers. Stop here for photo op.

Elk Parking

Bison in the bend

Our encounters with bison in the badlands seemed almost a meeting of equals. In this park the animals seem there for show. The fact that there have been a number of gorings (one recent fatality) indicates that there is little sense of wild clinging to these park performers. Now they are reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone, and handing out literature about how wolves are good for the ecology.. and the spirit of the place. I’m unconvinced that encounters with wolves can make a wilderness out of the Mall Of The Wild. Yellowstone IS a magic kingdom, as travelers from Colter on down have proclaimed, but are we loving Nature to death here? (John Colter left the Lewis and Clark party on their return trip, at the Mandan villages, and retraced their steps to the Yellowstone, which he ascended to trap beaver, and became the first American to report on this wonderland.)

So we remounted Festiva and took one last canter up onto the caldera to walk around the Mammoth Springs. There is a globular pillar standing at the foot of the mineral terraces topped with steaming turquoise pools. Descending from the heights, the pillar looks to be surmounted by a squat samurai . Nature having her little joke with the tourists.

Bryce's Samurai

Yellow Stones

We spoke with a ranger, a retired Ag. Department administrator from DC, who had answers for all our questions. For example: “Yellowstone” was an Indian name in translation, which is how Lewis and Clark could identify it at its mouth by a name describing its headwaters.. by word of mouth. And that the yellow isn’t minerals but strains of bacteria. Bacteria which thrive above the sterilization point, and which might be found on the hot planets to sunward. He referenced the monographs.

We stopped for ice cream with elk in Mammoth. Then made our last descent from the Park. On the final switchbacks cars were pulled off whichaway, with tripodded long-lensers all aiming uphill at the surrounding cliffs. And, YES. On the canyon rim, silhouetted against that pure western blue, was a bighorn sheep. Well out of petting distance, still king of his own realm. Maybe he’s a reintroduced critter, but he still dances on the edge of magic. What does the brain of the mountains think? Who knows what the Yellowstones tell us. Don’t drink the water.

Tourist stop