OBSTACLES

Throughout my life, I can admit that there have been all kinds of obstacles I have encountered going to church – up too late on a Saturday night, out of town, on a backpack, unhappy with something the preacher said the previous Sunday, just didn’t feel like it - the ‘obstacles’ have been endless. But really, until last Sunday, my church attendance had never been potentially stalled because of a 1,500 pound hazard that could trample or hurt me so bad I’d be visiting the church in a pine box.

 

Mammoth has a beautiful little church, constructed of dark wood and stone, which has gorgeous stain-glass windows that say things like  

Bright and Beautiful All Creatures Great and Small,

All Things Wise and Wonderful,

The Lord God Made Them All

But Who Can Paint Like Nature?

Ok, the last line doesn't rhyme but how appropriate in Yellowstone? And the church is part of my village now and I wanted to see it – why not on Sunday morning? I could meet some other folks and see if this preacher was worth visiting. Even a bit of a rebel like me can use some strategies for living a moral life once in awhile. And I’ve always learned better in an environment chock-a-block stuffed with beauty and abundant in Nature. 

I’m only a little surprised the Yellowstone Bison like hanging out so near the church that occasionally they actually block the entrance. Maybe they like the singing or the organ music. I usually do too. Maybe they like those windows. But Yellowstone bison can be really dangerous. Just a few nights ago, a car was totaled just by running into a bison standing on the road.  Bison bulls are REALLY big. And unfriendly. So maybe they were there to listen to the music, but it seemed the prudent thing to do to leave the sidewalk that led right to the church steps, detouring to the other side of the street around the bison.  Of course, this unusual obstacle made a great metaphor for my relationship with religion. Lots of obstacles in the way but somehow I always find a way and a time back. 

Mammoth is full of obstacles.  Female elk, called cows, like the lush green lawn right next to Mammoth’s Post Office. Thrice I’ve had to ‘detour’ around them, walking out in the street (again) to get to the nearly 85-year-old stone federal-building-looking edifice that serves as Mammoth’s Post Office. May is particularly not a good season to try to get friendly with female elk. They are either about ready to give birth and are grouchy or they are protective of their young and grouchy.  Female elk can weigh up to 800 pounds. They are not afraid to come at you if they feel threatened or they feel you are threatening their young. They are considered precious enough (and dangerous enough) for Park Rangers to be assigned to keep on eye on them, moving road signs directing “AREA CLOSED-DANGER-DO NOT APPROACH THE ELK” and other foot traffic barriers around, following the grazing path of the lady elks.

I think life could be better if we all had similar warnings for the obstacles we are bound to encounter in our lives.  But then, again, would knowing an obstacle was coming up change our course? Perhaps not. Could we learn a few things because of our detours? Most probably so.

 It seems to me that sometimes Obstacles (with a capital “O”) have been some of my best teachers. Having to detour around the bison reminded me that Mother Nature is in charge, especially and legally here.  Having to detour around the elk reminded me that although I had a time limit to get to and back from the Post Office, the ‘greater scheme of things’ just might not be in sync with my time schedule.  Maybe I should just kick back and be awed by these impressive creatures. Maybe, just maybe, watching the lady elk trim the grass next to the Post Office is exactly what I needed those first few days. Kind of like ‘smelling the roses’ on steroids.

Obstacles can keep us from harm as well as put us in harm. Challenge us or defeat us. I fear far too often I let obstacles be my enemy rather than a friend. Frankly, sometimes they are. Generally, though, it seems to me that we can all learn from our obstacles, whether made by self or society. Great achievement sometimes arises from great impediment. Helen Keller comes to mind.

I suspect my five months in Yellowstone will provide many obstacles to live with or overcome. Some of them will be natural – like the bear and bison and elk. Others will be manmade – like the challenge of making new friends, learning a new job, living in a small space, being away from people I care about and who care about me.

Wouldn’t it be nice if I had a few road signs along the way? And a few good-looking Rangers to perfectly place them? I truly suspect I’m going to have to be my own Ranger, deciding just how close I can get to an obstacle before deciding to avoid it or learn from it. Henry Kaiser said that “Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.”  Maybe obstacles are exactly the same. Maybe it’s about time to get to work.

 

A RIVER OF UNCERTAINTY

My son is a wise-acre. “Mom, don’t be nervous. I’m sure the other kids will like you.” Dan knew I was a little nervous. He remembered how he felt when I dropped him off at college for the first time. And after all, this was the first time in over 30 years that I was going back to live in the dorm. The first time for a very long time that I moved to a place I knew not a single soul.

Living in a National Park has been an item on my Bucket List forever. The trick to this particular item is that to live in a National Park, you have to work in a National Park. Working in a National Park means being employed by either the federal government (Park Service) or a concessionaire that provides hospitality and retail services for the Park.

‘Living’ in a National Park is really more like going to camp.  You might share a dorm room with someone you’ve never met. You eat dormitory food – high carb with lots of pasta and questionable meat with even more questionable sauce.  At least in my EDR (Employee Dining Room) there are always fresh fruits, vegetables and a salad bar.

I am a creature who enjoys her comforts. I like fresh, recently roasted coffee by a local coffee roaster that I buy when I shop at a Farmer’s Market for organic fruits and vegetables. I buy my cage free white, brown and green eggs at the same Farmer’s Market from a woman whose husband is the Extension Agent for a neighboring county. I like her; I think her chickens probably like her and like laying eggs for her. Occasionally I buy a hot fresh Orange Cranberry scone from Adobe Rose for breakfast. Or at least I did.

I have a nice townhome in a neighborhood full of nice townhomes and patio homes. My neighbors and I enjoy a heated Jacuzzi and swimming pool large enough to actually swim laps. We can play tennis on one of two courts and take the walking trail through the wash to get there. In my townhome, you will find framed art on my walls. Persian and Oriental rugs hug my feet when I cross my wood-floored rooms. The bright desert sun is filtered through the e-glass of the sliding glass door through which I can see the wonderfully lush wash directly behind my house and the mountains to the north.  Now I'm living in half of a dorm room and my housemate’s 20-year-old son is living in my bedroom.

So what am I doing here? Here, where I have my cosmetics at least temporarily stored in plastic bags on the floor of my small closet. Here, where I had to ‘borrow’ a microwavable glass from the cafeteria to heat my coffee water in the community microwave so I could drain it through the coffee I brought along to make my morning brew in my one-cup camping coffee-maker? Here, where I have to schlep down the hall to use the toilet or take a shower? I actually have asked myself that question a lot these last few days.

I’ve had a lot of losses in the last year, the kind that demand you reassess your life’s priorities. What I've learned is that Loss, of any kind, is both a taking away and giving to.  My revered mother’s death was certainly a taking away kind of loss but all of our mothers die and we all know this. In the end, Mother’s death was also a giving to. Rather than constantly flying back and forth across the country as I have for the last two years especially, I am now free to pursue other relationships and other opportunities for relationship. Even my siblings and I are free learn to enjoy each other as individuals, not just because Mother would expect that but because family is in the end what each of us yearns for. We call each other Sis and Brother now more than we ever did before Mom’s long illness drew us closer together.

The inertia of our lives is very hard to reverse. Our lives are like those giant cruise ships that take miles and miles of ocean to turn around. It's easier to set a course and then follow it no matter what.  Wouldn’t it be helpful if cruise ships could just stop, sort of pick themselves up and turn in another direction? I suspect my rather extreme move, from my comfortable foothills home to a Spartan dorm, is my way of stopping – that thing most of us think about at least once or twice in our lives but rarely do. Stopping what we are doing that for some reason is no longer the best fit. Stopping a life that if it were clothing would need alteration at the very least or, if unalterable, given to Goodwill.  

This kind of Stopping – being miles away from my family, my ‘village’, my home and my work, strikes at the heart of one of the aspects of my character that my recent losses allowed me to see needs work – my need to be in control.  I couldn’t stop Mother from dying no matter how often I visited; I simply can’t guilt my son to come back to his home town to live; I can’t solve my dear friends’ financial or family troubles. I can’t control what is happening in Asia or even what is happening in my hometown. OK, here it is.  I am officially giving up control. 

A good Stopping, I am discovering, means allowing yourself to be swept down a river of uncertainty. Ironically, I am discovering there is nothing like living with uncertainty to provide that sense that everything will be alright no matter what. I’m learning that for me, controlling is not the answer; learning how to flow is the answer. I am finding that sometimes Stopping, although it might feel like abandoning ship, is an efficient way to sort out what we really need for the rest of our lives.  Maybe it turns out to be more of the same. Maybe it turns out to be something completely different. Actually, there really is no point to a Bucket List, I think, unless you use it to examine how your dreams actually fit with your personal reality. I am finding I agree with Victor Frankl, “When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”  In the end, maybe I am the life raft.

LOG CABINS

Utah is blessed with some of the most stunning topography I have ever seen. I live in the Grand Canyon State so I know awesome topography. But Utah has Canyonlands, Arches, Capital Reef-Escalante, Zion, and Bryce Canyon National Parks to begin with. Utah has something else – beautiful, tidy Mormon settlements up lush green valleys.  

This last trip, for the most part, I followed Highway 89 up from Flagstaff Arizona, working my way through Kanab near Utah’s southern border with Arizona pretty much all the way to Provo.  A stretch of this incredible country is taken up by the tourist industry surrounding Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, but starting right after the last tourist trap at Zion’s junction with 89, the valley opens up to small and beautifully kept ranches and farms.  

Nearly 150 years ago, Mormon settlers came to these valleys where the snowmelt fills the Virgin and Sevier Rivers. These early settlers organized the abundant water from the mountains into irrigation systems which would make the land arable and prosperous. This is land where well-muscled, shining horses lope in fields of bright green grass under towering, snow-capped mountains, where the cattle seem extra fat and glossy. This is land that one generation would hand down to the next. This is land that deserved defending, man and woman, shoulder to shoulder, whether from fire to foe. 

Mormons have a tradition of preserving their histories, honoring the pioneers who came before and the elders of their families.  Each small town offers a museum in which the histories of the families settling these valleys are retold.  Often, the museum itself is another relic of the past, a stately home of a prosperous merchant family or the valleys’ first public buildings. 

But the first homes of the first settlers in these valleys would have been settlers homes - sturdy, tight cabins made with logs or indigenous stone. In the early days, large families meant more hands to work the land.  Soon, these farm and ranch families would build large, spacious houses which could accommodate many sons and daughters of the land. 

I imagine that in each one of those large houses, the entire family would gather over tables full of the labor of their own hands. I imagine they told and retold the Mormon Pioneers’ migration to Salt Lake. Most assuredly, they would have told stories of their families’ elders, of years with generous rains that brought bumper crops or many calves and foals, of the laborious rebuilding after destructive floods, of winters so severe that nearly all the livestock were lost. Perhaps the families swapped stories of sons of great or questionable courage or recounted the beautiful daughters who became matriarchs of their own families. The children of these valleys didn’t have to ‘come home’ for their families’ stories; they never left these green and orderly valleys. 

Curiously incongruous with many of these tidy ranches and farms, clearly deserted but maintained log or stone cabins dot the farms and ranches. At first I assumed these structures were like the corn bins or mangers in my native Missouri, left-over buildings repurposed for the industry of the land. But as the miles passed and the number of these structures grew, I began to realize these cabins have not been kept for storage or shelter but rather something my tradition would call shrines. 

The obvious importance of these cabins started me thinking about the matriarch and patriarchs of the area who lived in these cabins.  I wondered if the stories they told would be similar to the stories of my family, snippets of family history that told something about my ancestors.  Like how our matriarch, my beautiful, part-Cherokee grandmother Victoria, chose my grandfather among her available suitors. Grandfather David had the advantage over the other subsistence-farming suitors - a good horse named Old Dan, an asset in very rural northeastern Oklahoma in the early 1900s. Old Dan is like a family ancestor to me.  

I thought about the stories Grandfather David would tell of his father and grandfather building the tiny, stone church which still stands near Grove. To come from a family that helped build a church, a structure that has lasted well over a century – well that is something for which to be proud.  I thought of the story of my own Mother’s December birth in a tiny, two-room cabin on a table in front of the pot-belly stove, the warmest spot in the cabin. I thought of Grandfather David’s mother, the area mid-wife, helping Victoria usher her own grandchild in to a cold and frosty Oklahoma winter. I felt the strength of my own ancestors as I drove through these lush Utah valleys. 

Remembering my own family’s stories, I began to suspect these incongruously rustic cabins and their stories might have been kept to remind each new generation where they came from and to influence their present. I think ‘relic’ is the wrong word to use when describing a stone church or a log cabin from our ancestral past. ‘Relic’ is a word that implies its usefulness is in the past. I suspect that is simply not true of these log cabins. The cabins, not unlike the church I can still visit when I pass through Oklahoma, have a place in this present. Knowing where we come from influences our present decisions, making it so much easier to decide who we want to be and where we want to go. That is the gift of our ancestors.

MAPPING OUT MY LIFE

Nearly every explorer in history was either mapping new territory, checking already crudely mapped territory or checking out some other adventurer’s idea of what an uncharted place might look like, having seen it or imagined it from afar.

I love maps. We’re not talking about the itty bitty ones you can pull up from the net.  I am talking about atlases that just cover one state and are over 100 pages. To me, US Road Atlases, with one state per every page or two (or four in the case of California and Texas), are just a start. 

I am particular about my Atlases. I prefer the Rand McNally Atlas for your typical Road Atlas of the US. It’s almost always reliable if you have a copy only two or three years old. Its map key is not terribly extensive – the greater the scale of the map, the less detail it’s going to have so the fewer symbols to explain. But, it has a lot of detailed insets for major towns which aren’t too helpful if you actually have to drive in that town but it gives you an idea of the traffic flow of the town so you can come into town maybe someplace a little less crowded or find a way around it.  The Rand McNally has a pretty decent index of towns, too, although you really need a magnifying glass to see them. Most importantly, a good US Road Atlas is usually great if you are traveling on the Interstate system.

Therein is the problem. I am not an Interstate person – unless I have to get from Point A to Point B in an awful hurry. (Like the time I was in Vail vacationing and my teenage son unsuccessfully practiced a BMX trick on his mountain bike. Even though he said he was ‘ok’, I could hear in his voice he had one hell of a headache and possibly a concussion. Seriously, you CAN make it from Vail CO to Tucson AZ in less than 12 hours. (It was my personal best.)  But, injury or illness aside, I would much rather take the long way to get there because travel is to be savored, not taken in big bites like a Big Mac. (I don’t eat Big Macs either.) The journey is my destination; I’m generally not in a big hurry to get to its end.

If I am particular about my general purpose, all-inclusive US Road Atlas, I am downright obsessive about my State Atlases. In the West, there are basically two publishers of State Road Atlases that reliable map stores (like the venerable Tucson Map and Flag Center at www.mapsmithus.com) will carry – DeLorme and Benchmark.  Both have approximately the same scale, but the Benchmark is to Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit as DeLorme is to Jim Beam Black. Both will get you where you want to be in a pretty decent way whether you are looking to get socially relaxed or heart-broken, crying your eyes out toasted. The difference is how you get there. The Wild Turkey is more complex than the Beam.  And it’s the same with DeLorme and Benchmark.

DeLorme is more like the Rand McNally of state atlases.  Pretty fair detail (its map legend takes up one column on the inside cover) but the DeLorme assumes, just like the Rand McNally does, that you are not a crazy driver seeking the thrill of going over some God-forsaken road through the wilderness.  On the other hand, the Benchmark assumes you absolutely need this information.  The Delorme calls out the mountain ranges and valleys but the Benchmark gives you the same in topographic detail (it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it). And Benchmark's Map Legend takes up an entire page. If Benchmark was a man, I might date it. It is just so pretty and interesting.

Benchmark’s maps in the section with the topographic maps are called ‘Landscape’ maps. Beautifully colored gems in greens and browns and yellows and blues, they are just plain fun to look at. But Benchmark is more than just a pretty face. If I'm looking for a natural hot spring, I want Benchmark to lead the way. If I want to know how to get over some mountain range or down from some wilderness bench, I want Benchmark sitting right next to me. And, or course, the advice of a local who can reassure me that YiHa, who does not have 4WD, can make it over the ‘bad road’. Let me tell you, there are no bad roads only very challenging ones.

This trip I have two Delormes and two Benchmarks.  The DeLormes will get me through Utah and Wyoming, which is okay because although I want to go ‘the road never traveled’, I’m alone and not looking to walk forty miles back to town because of a broken truck (or worse).  I’ll stick pretty much to paved roads or at least roads that are marked for your ordinary 2WD vehicle.  The Delormes will get me to Yellowstone okay.

But once in Yellowstone, I intend to spend every weekend checking out the topography of Montana and Idaho at least. I need my Benchmarks for that. If I can find a Benchmark Wyoming, I’ll learn more about Wyoming, too. My truck YiHa is one tough and well-maintained high-clearance vehicle and I am a driver that just loves a challenging road.

BEING

Sometimes we are so busy getting to where we are going, we forget to enjoy where we are.  Last night, I felt exhausted from all the details of my leaving. I was probably ‘grey with exhaustion’ when I walked through the door of my townhome. I walked right past my housemate Annie, making a beeline through my great room for my bedroom haven.  “I can’t talk. I need quiet; I need to sleep.” And then I shut the French doors and the world out of my bedroom.  It was only 8:30.

This morning I felt rested and immediately my mind starting making lists.  So many things left undone.  I felt my anxiety rise again.  I could also hear the birds, excitedly chattering away at the imminent arrival of Brother Sun from behind the ridge to the east.  I could hear them exchanging news that THIS day is special, THIS day is beautiful. Can’t you feel it already? THIS day the seed will be fresh and flavorful, THIS day Junior will finally leave his nest and FLY!

Sometimes we get so very good at Doing, we forget about Being. This morning, the birds seem particularly passionate in their calling me out to enjoy Being.

On a morning such as this, my back garden is not the quiet sanctuary you might think one needs to Be. My townhome sits high above what we desert-dwellers call a ‘wash’ which drains from the Catalinas through the ridges of my foothills into the city's valley below. A wash, first and foremost, serves as a critter highway the year round. Sometimes in the spring and fall but mostly during our monsoons, the sandy channel carries wild, rushing rain draining from the Catalinas to the usually dry river bed below.  This combination provides endless opportunities for the wildlife in my neighborhood; the wash is their lifeblood.

My wash is magical. Right now, the wash is still verdant from our few spring rains. Around me, small blossoms still hang on the trees and bushes.  Tiny yellow flowers for the Palo Verdes (literally translated Green Trees); white waxy blooms on my fragrant garden jasmine; delicate purple on my neighbor’s lacy crepe myrtle. Generous white blooms erupt from the Saguaro. I spy tiny fluffy yellow balls of pollen on my bright green leafy lysiloma.

I am waiting for my ‘Doing’ gene to kick in but, with my feathery friends’ help, my ‘Being’ gene is winning. The birds call to me “What a beautiful morning! Life is good! Let’s enjoy it and sing.” I move to the back garden and my ears nearly burst from bird song.  The morning is still cool but the warmth on my cheek reminds me that Brother Sun is relentlessly and rapidly making his strides across the cloudless sky.

Behind me I hear an ardent woodpecker broadcasting his availability on my neighbor’s roof flashing.  The neighbor to the north announces his awakening to the chattering throng with his very practiced and believable ‘bob white’ whistle, letting the birds know he is scattering seed on his patio and is ready to be entertained.  The shadows on the Catalinas play hide and seek with the rising Brother Sun.

I breathe. I rest with my eyes closed. I can’t completely relax because the birds' cacophony is so very noisy but I am complete. I am one with my universe for at least a few seconds. THIS day is special, THIS day is beautiful. THIS day is to savor slowly and mindfully like the best Swiss chocolate. Can’t you feel it already? THIS day is one to breathe in.

ROLLING ON DOWN THE HIGHWAY

Just a few hours after I turned 16, my mother declared we were taking the family car to Missouri Department of Motor Vehicles to get my driver’s license. Being a busy mother of two toddlers and an infant, she had had enough of schlepping the brood to the store to pick up nappies and groceries. She had become downright resentful of picking me up after school for my endless club meetings, play rehearsals, games and other school events. She had a new job for me – Haas family courier and chauffeur.

I admit I was a bit embarrassed by our chunky old station wagon –with its bench seats front and back with another bench seat in the very back. At least that back bench seat, which faced backwards instead of forwards, was kind of fun if you were small enough to fit in it.  But basically, the station wagon was NOT the car I wanted to be driving. Even though it was far from the first car of my dreams, the minute my foot hit the pedal on my first errand by myself, I fell in love. Not with that old wagon which I would eventually accidentally wrap around the utility pole in front of my house, but with cars.

I blame it on my Mom.  Mom often had to raise my older sister and me pretty much on her own. My father, a journeyman lineman, liked to work natural disasters – hurricanes, tornadoes, floods.  When Dad was away as he often was, Mom stuffed her sleepy little girls in the backseat as she drove through the darkened, empty streets of Independence to relieve her loneliness. I grew up thinking cars were a great way to unpack your mental baggage.  Wheels were cathartic.

Although periodically homebound with little ones, Mom loved the freedom her cars gave her. To have two cars in the 60s was a rarity in our neighborhood and she was one of the few women on our street with one of her own. No doubt attempting to atone for his wanderlust ways, Dad bought Mom a sporty little Corvair Monza in the mid-60s.  Mom, my older sister and I loved that car.  But by the time I was 16, I had three more siblings and the Monza had given away to that hulk of a station wagon.

My senior year of college, my parents handed me down my first car, a Ford Fairlane 500 which was Robin’s Egg blue, probably got 8 mpg and could carry eight co-eds packed tightly (nobody worried about safety back then).  My lifelong love of cars was cemented in that car which I named Blue Bomb Betsy.  A few days after graduating from college in 1975, I took my first solo Road Trip – completely against the wishes of my concerned ‘young women shouldn’t travel alone’ parents . Betsy and I drove all the way from Columbia down the back roads and interstates of Missouri and Oklahoma to Yukon, the home of my grandparents. I had many miles and hours to dream of my future. I dreamed of getting a job and having my own apartment, a dream I sealed by buying a covered casserole from an Ozark Pottery factory outlet outside Springfield.  I felt unbelievably grown up and I still have that casserole.  By the time I made Joplin, I was totally and completely hooked on Road Trips.

Since then, I have driven hundreds of thousands of miles on back roads and interstates. Driving is my preferred mode of transport if I have the time.  I’ve driven over mountain passes in the Rockies with snow piled higher than my little Datsun pickup. I’ve driven the paved canals between endless acres of corn and wheat in Kansas and Nebraska with my growing son in my green Ford Ranger. I’ve driven through land so flat with roads so straight, a y-junction or curve was cause to celebrate our road hypnosis finally being broken.

At 36 years old, I carried my sleepy 8-week-old son to my pickup and drove all night through the inky blackness of New Mexico to spend a week in Vail, Colorado. Those long miles helped me sort through the big change from being a married adventurous professional woman to being all that PLUS a Mom.  Eighteen years later, long single again, I drove that same child to college in Montana, 1300 miles away from home. I left Missoula for a Road Trip down the West Coast to give me time to transition from being a Mom living with her child to being an empty-nester before arriving back home to the very loud silence.

One week from today, my well-maintained and road-worthy Toyota Tacoma YiHa and I head out on another Road Trip. The day I have to be in Mammoth Hot Springs for work, May 23^rd, is a Thursday. Leaving the weekend before gives me plenty of time to get there and more importantly gives me many miles and hours to unpack the mental baggage I accumulated over my 59^th year. My Road Trip provides me time to ponder my priorities for the next decade of my life.

I’ve been asked which route I’m taking. One of the cardinal Haas Rules for Road Trips is to take a route I’ve never taken if at all possible. Having lived in the west for nearly 40 years, that gets more and more difficult but consulting my Benchmark Atlases for roads I’ve never taken, I have a vague plan which takes me up through the Kaibab Plateau, through Northeastern Utah to Southwestern Wyoming and then up through Jackson.

Somehow it’s important to me that I enter Yellowstone from the South Entrance and slowly make my way to its northern entrance at Mammoth. I want to stop and visit old friends along the way - the deep blue Jenny and Jackson Lakes in the Grand Tetons and then, within Yellowstone, Lewis Falls, Yellowstone Lake and Old Faithful. I want to be once more awed by the powerful beauty and mystery of this tiny patch of the cosmos.

This patch, with its active geysers and thermal areas, soaring snow-capped mountains, rushing waterfalls and abundant wildlife, will be my home for the next five months.  I hope to leave Yellowstone with new friends and new adventures to share with my friends back home. I hope I carry away lessons from the forests and the fumaroles, lessons that will continue to guide me until I need to take my next Road Trip. Rolling on down the highway, for me, is more than getting from one physical destination to another. For me, it is the possibility of and a metaphor for change.

PACKING MY COVERED WAGON

Just think about it. When our forefathers and mothers moved out West , they had to literally carry an entire household with them.  The choices they needed to make! In the end, only the most necessary items would be chosen. Something REALLY special, like a family portrait, could have been considered frivolous to many pioneering settlers of the West.

Usually when I take Road Trips, I know I’ll be in or near a big city at some point so if supplies are low or I’ve lost some important item, it can be replaced. I know where all the Cabellas and Bass Pro Shops are in the states I frequent. Supermarkets and big box discounters are ubiquitous even in the small towns of America.  I can usually take comfort in the knowledge that what I need will be readily available.

And then there is Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park.  There ARE general stores in the park itself but what about the items I’ll need to set up ‘house’ in my dorm room? What about that little bookshelf I just know I’m going to need? The twin sheets and pillows? Where the heck will I get that twin-sized memory foam mattress pad?

Gardiner Montana is the nearest town to Mammoth. Gardiner, according to its Chamber of Commerce website has a population of 891 persons as of the last census. The Chamber’s directory lists one food market, called Gardiner Market, and five saloons with names like Iron Horse and Two Bit. It lists 14 places to eat, some of which do double-duty like the Iron Horse and the Tumbleweed Book Store and Café.

The drugstore, appropriately named Gardiner Drugs, also doubles as a coffee house and is the only listing under ‘variety store’.  I’ve been in quite a few small western towns and it is not uncommon for the drug store or the grocery to carry merchandise you might find in a variety store. So maybe I don’t have to look any further than Gardiner for my new twin sheets and my memory foam but I’m not counting on it.

Trying to figure out how far I might have to go, I googled ‘Walmart in Montana’. I’d be pretty desperate to take my trade to Walmart but sometimes in these little bitty towns in the West, that’s the only place with sufficient variety to satisfy my big city ways.

There are other ‘border towns’ surrounding the Park.  There’s West Yellowstone, MT, population 1,298 people, to the southwest. I’ve been there before-in January 2008. Nice people, quaint couple-block main street with art galleries and shops, most of which were closed for the winter.  West Yellowstone is less than 50 miles and according to Google Maps only about an hour and a half from Mammoth – unless, of course, a bison decides it wants the right-of-way until it gets good and ready to move on down the road. Googling for a Walmart in West Yellowstone directs me to Rexburg ID, even further on down the road or Bozeman MT, two and a half hours north of Mammoth.

The sweet quiet little town of Cody Wyoming is only about 2 hours to the southeast. I even have a friend who lives there so I could visit AND shop.  Cody has 9,653 persons as of the 2011 census. Not a small town in these parts – that’s almost a city by Montana and Wyoming standards. Heck, Cody even has a Walmart. Super-sized even.

An amazingly beautiful three hours to the south is Jackson Wyoming.  GoogleMaps declares the route straight through the Park is just a tad over 3 hours but I know how beautiful Lewis Falls and the Grand Tetons are.  Forget that being a short trip. I’d need to plan on staying overnight. Jackson is pretty much Wyoming’s Vail, with art galleries and a pretty city center for which parking is at a premium and the beer drafts are expensive and have microbrew labels.  Jackson ‘s population is about the same as Cody but it seems to me that Jackson is to Vail as Cody is to Craig, Colorado. Never heard of it? Well, I’m guessing most people haven’t heard of sleepy Cody either.

Montana actually has three border towns but Red Lodge, the other one sort of due east of Mammoth, probably doesn’t get nearly the Yellowstone traffic Gardiner or West Yellowstone do.  For one thing, Red Lodge has NO access to Yellowstone during much of the fall and spring and all of the winter.  Although its population is almost the same as Gardiner, its history is not quite so tied into Yellowstone National Park. At one time, it was a mining center of Montana and now it is one of Montana’s premier ski resorts and the second home choice for many of the 1%.

To get to Red Lodge from Mammoth, you pass through the village of Cooke City, where 100 hearty souls live year-round. Cooke City is accessible by vehicle only through YNP in the winter although you can come in from the east by snowmobile over Colter Pass which is open only for snow vehicles in the winter. Although lending its rich gold-mining history and its wonderful winter sports, Cooke City doesn’t have much to add to the shopping around YNP.

In reviewing my options, I’ve decided to start packing early. The most important stuff – my backpacking and camping gear – will be decided first and put in my soft-sided luggage carrier in the bed of my truck with my bike.  I’m taking my electric piano, too, which sits comfortably across the entire back seat of YiHa, my truck.  After I see how much room is left, personal items like books, clothing and toiletries are next. I’m really beginning to feel like a pioneer. Thank god I have pictures of my family on my smartphone!