Yellowstone in ‘98

Waiting. That’s what we had be doing, my father, brother, and I. Waiting and watching, for thirty minutes. I remember that cold. It was the sort that crept its way under your parka, harpooning your skin. The frosty air dug into my size five hiking boots, numbing my toes and sweeping a tingle up my spine, biting the synapses in my brain like hundreds of bloodthirsty piranhas. Yes, my boyhood mind shouted in disdain, It is cold. But a steamy breeze enveloped us with motherly warmth. We stood some twelve feet from the crevice of an explosion in waiting. The vent gurgled and threatening water sloshed inside from wall to wall of the geyser’s crater. Geyserite (pale rock formed from the spew of natural fountains that crusts each geothermal feature) crumbled at this vent. The rocks had become innocent victims of the processes that created them in the first place.

This was Yellowstone in the sulfur winter. I ruminated on how the air smelled like spoiled eggs (even 17 years later, this is an apt analogy). For some reason, I liked the scent. It felt warm against my frozen nose, and its acidic clouds burned my eyes just enough to feel like I was basking in a tropical sun, but not so much to blind me. It’s an eccentric attraction, perhaps I even sound like a masochist. I choose to believe it falls along the bizarre nature of some people who love the odor of gasoline. Maybe I just like bad eggs.

The boardwalks bridging the gaps between each geothermal feature were snow covered, but the geysers and hot springs remained plain as any summer day. Their boiling water melted drifting snowflakes before the snowfall could touch the surface. I remember balling up a fist of powder, packing it down with my weak punches (my dad eventually compressed it to satisfaction for me), and throwing the snowball into the geyser runoff. In seconds, my cannonball was dissolved by the sweltering acid.

We could feel the ground beneath our feet grumble. A slight ache upset by rising pressure was surging to the mouth of the gurgling castle of geyserite. My dad directed our distracted attention. My brother and I gazed intently at the geyser’s mouth. We weren’t sure what to expect. A startling bellow belched from the hole. It frightened me, at first. Water that had lingered underground for hundreds of years--some of which fell when Columbus anchored in the Bahamas--erupted from the geyser’s glands. Massive fountains of steam and plumes of ancient water spewed into the sky.

We were in the Upper Geyser Basin, still one of the most active geothermal regions on the entire planet.

Presently, a magma chamber only a few thousand feet below the tourists shoes churns the stored rainwater around the entire Yellowstone caldera, super-heating the flows until steam erupts from the internal plumbing of each geyser. The resulting explosion is an awesome spectacle to behold. I was startled to learn from a seasoned park ranger that a vast majority of people who visit Yellowstone are unaware that the grounds they walk lie inside the jaws of an active volcano. Aren’t they in for the surprise of their lives...

At four, I was too small to comprehend this complex mechanism, but just old enough to appreciate the sacredness of its performance. The dancer erupting for us that day was named Castle Geyser.

My father had his arms draped around my brother and me while we watched. He was our guide, a manual for anything scientific in nature. I recall even then, at four years old, how I wished I could see Yellowstone through my father’s eyes. He was fascinated by the geological engine chugging under the volcano. The park bewitched him. Upon later visits, my father would lead us on epic hikes to show us the most isolated hot springs he could reach. He was informed of these remote treasures by park rangers; fellows with whom he could strike up deep conversations, I assume, because they spoke the same passionate language for the park. I longed to feel his affection for Yellowstone. I longed to love the place, like my father did, and my brother learned to do. I longed not to get left behind.

But I did.

Yellowstone is a beautiful and integral system of ecology, but it is a land I never fell in love with. I have hiked a hundred miles of back-country trail, covered even more just encircling the Upper Geyser Basin, it seems, following my brother around as he passionately regales park history. Whenever I accompany him, I can see the excitement foaming in his eyes. He’s like a rabid fox. That gaze of unfettered love for Yellowstone blazes inside his heart. It’s marked by a spark, and a firm smile, and the resolve to wait--for hours--in front of a geyser that hasn’t erupted in fifty years, just in case it decides to rise again after recent reports of activity. I don’t have those feelings of love, or the patience to endure waiting, for Yellowstone. While my brother treats the National Park as a lover, tenderly caressing her every curve, I see Yellowstone as an acquaintance. A friend of a friend. If we cross paths in the halls, maybe I’ll raise my hand or tilt my head in acknowledgement. For all my apathy, however, I do try and empathize with my brother’s feelings. More often than not, I’m parched for emotion. All I can think while staring at a steaming vent--waiting, no really, for hours--is that it is, in fact, a vent steaming. These days, I’m restless.

My restive state has little to do with impatience (I hope). I don’t want to be ungrateful. I adore my brother and love listening to him describe the geology of Yellowstone. He is a geophysics major. While I’m told his field offers many lucrative opportunities, Sam just wants to live life in Yellowstone. I envy his commitment, and his care. I respect him, but not because he loves the park. When Sam visits--he travels there on average twice per year--he doesn’t gaze at Yellowstone with proprietary eyes. He has never dangled an unduly power of ownership over the place. He couldn’t. If he had to, for the sake of preservation, he would never visit the park again, even though that pain that would follow him for the rest of his life.

I remember one vacation, in 2015. It was at the height of an allergenic summer. My eyes were a glassy carmine, and the entire ten days we were there, my nose wouldn’t stop sniffling. I was miserable, there was no convincing me otherwise. My stubbornness knows no bounds. Those summer allergens in Wyoming wage brutal wars against my immune system. For some reason, I can’t explain why, I agreed to accompany my brother on a pre-dawn excursion. He wanted to see an eruption. A geyser which had been inactive for years, had suddenly awakened. It was performing at regular intervals on its stage in Norris Geyser Basin, so my brother had bought us two tickets for a showing at first light.

This excursion was nothing new. By my brother’s passion, I have seen animals and places, and undertaken adventures I would have never otherwise found on my own (a great many of these have been before dawn). I have watched eagles soar over the infant forrest, and the remains of their ancestors, burnt headstones from the fires of ‘88; spied bears stalking the woods; hiked fourteen miles to Heart lake (which, while named after Hart Hunney, actually looks like a valentine by some cosmic coincidence), and then trudged the fourteen solemn miles out of camp that next day. Although, perhaps it had only been seven miles there, and another seven back again. Time and distance get muddled when blisters comb your feet and sores scream at your heels after taking fifty thousand steps in one day. It’s funny. Those are the days I love most. Afterward, it’s just me and my family, having a beer or hard cider or whisky, laughing at how crazy we must seem. “We’re only normal on the outside,” my brother remarks. The evening often fades quickly. We say goodnight and crawl in bed with our sore bones, blistered-bug-bitten bodies, hopped up on painkillers for our tender muscles, and sleep.

He woke me up well before dawn with a gentle shake of my elbow. I shot up, unaware of my location for a moment. I opened my bloodshot eyes to those familiarly enthused globes glowing at me.

“Time to go!” he whispered.

I popped two benedryl, washed my eyes with visine, and sprayed my nostrils with prescription strength nasal relief medicine. It had become my morning ritual. Damn you Yellowstone, I thought. I washed my hair three times to remove any allergens stuck inside, and rubbed anti-inch cream over my bug bites. My skin looked like a war-zone of scarlet bumps.

I drank black coffee during the forty-five minute drive to Norris, because the caffeine seemed to ease my ailments. Still, I was only marginally available that day. Even after ingesting my anti-allergy cocktail, the pollen's got to me about twenty minutes after leaving the car, and setting out on the trail. I kept asking myself, with every step, Why am I here??? Of course I had myself to blame.

I had planned that vacation. I just woke up one day, dialed my brother up, and asked him if he wanted to venture to Yellowstone. Of course he said yes. He always says yes. We convinced my father, mother, and sister to come along too. We invented a plan, which went off the rails (as plans tend to do) once we arrived, and it wasn’t until we had driven the ten hours across Colorado and Wyoming, and settled into bed in a modestly rented condo in West Yellowstone, that I began questioning my choices. Am I really a masochist? Maybe I just like bad eggs.

Ten minutes into our adventure that morning, I had a splitting headache, a running nose, and owned one eye--so crusty--that it wouldn’t open. I parted its eye-lid, and forced more visine onto my pupil. Still, this did nothing more than make my eye itch. I kept one palm on they eye. I looked like a pirate who had left his eye-patch in the pocket of his other trousers.

“That’s why you have two eyes,” Sam reminded me. He sat down, and patted the earth next to him, with an inviting smile on his face. “It’s about to go. Any minute now.”

I was too useless to argue, so I took my place. And for two hours, we silently waited.