Reading: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Watching: geysers and bison and waterfalls

Moving: some walking

4 September 2002: Yellowstone

I last saw Yellowstone five years ago, nine years after the big fire. I didn't see much more reforestation now than I did in 1997. The neighboring car-campers at Jenny Lake were shocked by the nude hillsides and the piddly little trees. They were from Alabama, where it rains more, where the growing season is longer, whose soil has much more organic material in it than the Rockies'. Over a century ago, someone decided he was going to homestead on the west side of what would be Rocky Mountain National Park. His cabin, abandoned over a century minus a year or two ago, has partly collapsed; snow has stove in the roof. But the logs are almost entirely unrotted for the same reason his attempt to sow a hay field failed. No growing season. The devastation by fire of so many acres in Yellowstone wouldn't matter so much if there weren't so little of it (Yellowstone), if there were more wild land left.

Dragon's MouthI bet Yellowstone survived as a park not only because the geological features are so bizarre and nearly unique and treasurable but more because those features make it untillable. Sometimes you get bison soup in your geysers. Really.

They're not that bright. There are hoofprints within yards of the mouths of gaping caves spouting boiling water and sulfuric acid, features with names like Dragon's Mouth and Churning Cauldron and Sour Lake (which I thought looked pleasantly cool and green and inviting until I read the sign that said its water would burn your skin like battery acid).

Yellowstone River valleyRDC said that this valley must have won the ribbon for Best Diorama (and there were road signs that read "Wildlife Exhibit," as if critters were always there, as they are, stuffed and mounted, in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science).

bisonFrequently there are bison jams in Yellowstone, not just because of rubbernecking (although that's most of it) but also because they stroll across the road, to get to the geysers on the other side. This one was about ten feet from the road.

bison in mudAbout their not being so very bright, the bison. Here a pair of bison struggle toward the rest of the herd to the right (in the above picture). These bison might have been part crow, because that's certainly how they approached their destination. Never mind going around the mud. We watched for a while, from a turn-out, with binoculars, in awe of the valley's beauty, also scanning for bear). The second bison did not have the advantage of the first's ground-breaking, as it would if the impediment had been snow. But they made it. Perhaps they had splatchers like Don's.

(As I type, I'm sitting at the dining table, with Blake perched on my shoulder, preening his tail. As he releases each feather, it snaps back to hit me in the face. Yet according to him I am the one at fault here.)

The goal for the day was the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. This I liked better than the Grand Canyon of Grand Canyonness. Not to dismiss the beauty or grandeur or the "Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell You" (except I was up on the rim like a sensible person instead of down in the crucible of heat and mule piss) aspect of the actual Grand Canyon, but I liked this better. Probably because it was (much) smaller, small enough to encompass with the knekkid eye. Similarly, Yellowstone Lake failed to impress me. Again, it's big, the biggest lake I have ever seen (I'm pretty sure). I like Jenny Lake, Crescent Lake, Uncas Lake (officially a Pond), because I can look at the whole thing at once. Or something.

Yet I love the ocean. Well, maybe because I grew up on Long Island Sound, the most pissant, unfashionable spiral arm of it.

closer to the LowerUpperSo. Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Through this canyon, Yellowstone River drops over two falls, imaginatively named Upper and Lower. The Lower [left] is bigger. Taller. We scampered as close as we were legally allowed to the Lower Falls (down 500 feet, including 300 steps, along a trail peppered with signs warning how steep it is, and how anyone with a heart or lung or any severe condition should Stay Away. That was pretty pathe).

You can see in the left of the Lower Falls kind of a shape of a fish jumping upstream. Maybe that's just me. I did see a perfectly peacocky cloud, though. Anyway, at the fish's head must be a huge protuding rock, a determined one. Look how the falls have hewn down the cliff wall.

The canyon was mostly yellow (I figure this was the eponymous feature) except where the spray allowed some green. There was a lot of spray, and therefore rainbows. There were occasionally double rainbows, and I don't understand how second arc knows that the first one is there so that it can reverse its colors. Unless the second arc is a reflection of the first? Another thing to look up.

 

the lower fallsThe Lower Falls from Painter's Point, zoomed in.

twisted treeDownstream of Painter's Point, a tree dead probably by lightning and having lost its bark, shows how it grew by twisting into the prevailing wind.

 

 

The Grand Canyon of the YellstoneAnd upstream again, zoomed all the way out:

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone from Painter's Point.

I recommend Beethoven's Ninth for viewing this.

(RDC happened to play the Ode to Joy as I typed. Blake is singing along. He whistles and does his imitation of song (into RDC's hand, where the acoustics are best) during the voice passages, and shuts up during the pauses. He has no sense of melody or rhythm but he unquestionably is participating with the chorus. Possibly trying to out-loud it, but still.)

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Then we bought two three-dollar showers at Grand Canyon village. Such a lovely shower. I had asked how many minutes of hot water the price bought, but it buys you admission. You can spend the day in there.

I didn't quite. I did wash my every finger and toe singly, three times over, just like Agba. Then I bought more View-Master reels.

And then we went home and RDC cooked up some ground bison for our tacos.

After dark we set off for a clear spot to use my star chart. It's for 30-40 degrees north, so it was a little off even after I dialed it to the time and date. But I found Draco (very easy, right between the two Dippers) and Cassiopeia (also easy) and Cepheus (a little harder) and then some zodiac constellations to the south--Sagittarius and Scorpius the most primary, because it is September (!).

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Last modified 14 September 2002

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