MAKING IT RURAL

My address is General Delivery, Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming.  I’ve never had a General Delivery address before.  I ordered something from Overstock and it took a month, several calls and a slight change of address to get here. UPS and Fedex don’t deliver to General Delivery. It’s too…..well…general.

Even though my package took forever to get here, my constant checking at the Post Office means the Clerk at the Post Office here now recognizes me. That’s kind of nice.  The Post Office itself is one of those oversized government edifices built an awfully long time ago (1936) when it was important that the government have oversized edifices that have that particular ‘I’m Government’ (with a capital G) look. The postal clerk is a seasonal worker just like me but paid better I’m sure (it IS government – even here). Now that I have all my packages, I only walk over there a couple times a week. It takes too much precious time, particularly if I have to detour around the elk.

Mail may be problematic at times here but the internet is really tricky. Provided for the Staff but oversubscribed, the Staff internet service is very slow if available at all.  I’m used to private high speed internet shared with only one other person. I haven’t had a working tv and have watched my favorite shows on my computer for a long time now. Not possible here in Mammoth. Still, if I get up in the wee hours of the morning – after the young employees have finally gone to bed - the speed of transmission is decent enough on the internet end. At 5am, it’s on my end that the receiving is a bit rough.

My cell phone works here at Mammoth – most of the time - but get too far down the hill to Gardiner or further into the Park and you lose touch with the world. I work here for a big company that has policies using cell phones during work hours anyway and can no longer answer my phone on my whim – or make a call when I want to find out if one of the hair salons in Bozeman, an hour and a half away, has an opening on Saturday.  Saturdays in market towns are very busy you know. By the time I can make my calls, at breaks and lunchtime, I have forgotten how important it is to get the hair out of my eyes and by the time I do remember all appointments have been taken. Fortunately, nowhere in Yellowstone will you find a job posting for fashion police.

My close friends who might want to get hold of me know to text. I get texts pretty regularly and will reply when the window of opportunity comes round – provided I’m not in one of the thousands of dead zones or hiking, rafting, cycling or generally goofing off in some incredibly beautiful place that doesn’t have cell service and shouldn’t have either. I don’t like to spend my time walking around with my cell phone stuck to my ear yelling “Can you hear me now?” when my free time is so precious and there are so many beautiful things to see.

Sometimes it feels that the ‘real world’ has taken a detour at the rusticated triumphal Roosevelt Arch on the north entrance road. It’s not that time is standing still – exactly. It’s just that Yellowstone is on rural time. Everything takes much longer than in the city. So you begin to cut out the inconsequential stuff – like hair cuts and pedicures – until you can get to the big city of Bozeman (population 38,000).

If you have to visit the dentist or optometrist, good luck. Most practitioners in the nearest small town called Livingston are booked up through the next month. So you do what your grandparents or parents did. If your crown falls out, you first try Supergluing it back in. If your glasses fall apart, you tape them back together. You make your own repairs, live with less and wait until you have a LOT of errands so that your entire time is not spent traveling to Bozeman or Cody or Jackson or sometimes West Yellowstone to get what you need.

Even going down to Gardiner Market is annoying because the road down from Mammoth to Gardiner is only 2-lane with hardly any shoulder, very steep sides and often has an RV taking up both lanes. And, of course, there are all those wild animals that have the right-of-way. Pedestrians come second on the right-of-way list. THAT doesn’t happen in the big city.

Motorized vehicles are way, way, way down on the right-of-way list. Horses even have a higher priority than cars.  And your car may not be the biggest thing on the highway, anyway. Bison have been known to crush cars. Lots of things can impede your ‘short trip’ to the store even though it is theoretically only six miles down the road.  It is pretty easy to discard the notion of going for a  'quick' beer if the beer is several miles down a road with everyone and everything having a higher priority than you do in your car. Easier to stay home, add storable red wine to your shopping list for the next time you DO go to town, put on your hiking boots and step out into Wonderland.

So, with nothing big city-ish to do and no real where to drive unless you have a few free hours, it becomes pretty easy to park your car and save gas.  I parked my car last Sunday after a trip to Bozeman and only drove it a few yards the whole week to re-park it in a better spot. I intend to drive back to Bozeman this weekend. I have enough errands to make the trip worth while and I’ll catch a movie and a Thai dinner while I’m there. And the Hot Springs are on my way back. Trips to the City are big events.

So how do we entertain ourselves here in Wonderland?  Obviously, with some of the most beautiful and intriguing scenery in the world, there are lots of places to visit during the day.  There are LOTS of short and medium-length hikes right here at Mammoth and I have yet to make it to more than three of them although I have taken organized hiking trips offered by Yellowstone Association and the Mammoth Employee Rec Department.

The Rec Department does a lot for the employees of the Park.  The three young men at Mammoth who run the activities plan white-water rafting, trips to the theater in West Yellowstone, group hiking trips all over the Park, bingo games, league sports, tournaments of all types, trivia nights and even a 4th of July trip to Livingston's Rodeo. Xanterra employees can also work out in a very nice gym that is more like my old high school gym than LA Fitness. (Personally, working out in a gym seems a bit too big-city when you have 3,468 square miles of wilderness to explore.) And if it's nighttime and you don’t feel like being active, there’s always card games in the dorms or the pubs here at Mammoth (see my post A Lady Walks into a Pub).

Of course, every National Park in the United States has Ranger talks and Ranger-led walks.  There are always videos available in the Visitor Centers as well.  All sorts of things to keep a person busy. The Yellowstone Association also offers all sorts of tours and hikes and awards various levels of ‘certificates’ if you participate in activities put on by the Association, the Rangers, or the Rec boys.  You can also do independent study and many of us do.  Part of my certificate work involves reading a fascinating early history of Yellowstone.

Sometimes (not often) we hear guests complain that there is ‘nothing to do’. Yeah, well, go to DisneyWorld if that’s how you feel. This place is literally crawling with things to do. You just have to get out of your car and sometimes your comfort zone to do them.  But when you do, please remember that at Yellowstone the critters are more important than you are and they may be pretty grumpy about being in your photo with little Johnny. And for your own sake, give them plenty of right-of-way!

SWIMMING UPSTREAM

I stood on the bank, transfixed by the timeless act of procreation. The constantly moving water made it difficult to clearly see the beautiful spotted fish with the deep red slash under her gills until she ventured too far into the shallows. Then, she flapped and twisted and scurried to get past this latest obstacle. Some undeniable force was drawing her further and further upstream – into the shallow riffles of the little streambed in which she would cement her species’ future.

My female seemed to be alone but as I looked more carefully, I realized that many female and male Cutthroat jockeyed for position in the riffles, four and five at a time, around rocks, around branches caught by the fast-moving stream.  The reflective scales of the trout glittered as their bodies writhed against the current.  Deep-seated instinct and the struggle for survival forced the beautiful fish further up against the current. The spawn was on.

I was watching one of the oldest procreation rituals on Earth. Spawning species predate our own migration to the North American continent. Spawning occurs when aquatic animals spread eggs over a certain area to be then fertilized by the male. The complexity of  spawning rituals varies greatly from species to species.

For the Cutthroat, spawning takes place only under certain conditions. We know this because the Yellowstone Cutthroat has been the subject of much research due to the need to constantly monitor this species which is threatened by extinction. Additionally, from its very beginning, Yellowstone has had a long history of scientific cooperation with Universities and the Smithsonian.

The Cutthroat's survival is threatened by habitat loss, predation by birds and bears and competition for resources by more opportunistic fish like lake trout. The very first struggle they face in following their instinctual patterns of procreation is to find the exact stream where they were first eggs themselves. Fortunately, Cutthroat have an unusual sense of smell and a long memory which help them detect the chemical differences in the streams leading upstream from the lake on which they live. And, as fish go, Cutthroat aren’t very enthusiastic travelers, preferring to spend their entire lives near their original spawning stream.

Generally trout will start spawning only after the water gets above 50 degrees. However, my boot happened to accidentally slip into the small stream that funnels the snow melt to Yellowstone’ very aptly named Trout Lake and the water seemed really cold. I now wonder if the Yellowstone Cutthroat might be precocious spawners since Trout Lake was surely colder than 50 degrees!

Of course, even more critical than water temperature and finding their native ‘hood’ for a successful spawn is the ability to struggle up to the shallower riffles. Instinct drives these fishy parents far upstream where the roe can remain undisturbed for a couple weeks in order to consume all the nutrition it can from its egg sac for its journey down to the lake below. And all of this - the to-ing and the fro-ing - is done only by instinct. No GPS or road maps here.

Once the Cutthroat finds the perfect spot in the steam, both female and male participate.  After her mighty struggle upstream, the female finds the best-looking patch of streambed in which to shovel the stream detritus away with her tail forming a little bowl, called a redd. She then lays her hundreds of eggs in the redd and waits for a studly male (often more than one) to saunter by, dropping fishy sperm called milt over the eggs to fertilize them.

Observing just the beginning of the spawn, this entire process seemed very energetic. Like an IronFish contest. To me, it was a beautiful but vigorous tango between Mother Nature and her children. Walking up and down the stream confluence with the beautiful high-country lake, I watched these determined bearers of their species' future for nearly thirty minutes. I found myself holding my breath as the trout met obstacles along their way. I willed them and wanted them so badly to make it. This instinct, this undeniable power, is more than just an invitation - it is a need. Without replaying this instinctive ritual over and over each year, the Cutthroat cease to exist. Somehow, I feel if the Cutthroat can make it, in spite of all their natural and other obstacles, perhaps there is hope for my own silly species.

I suspect we humans, too, have been born with natural instinct that we have come to believe is untrustworthy and suspicious.  We are 'rational' beings, relying on information we get from our books and observation more than our senses and our instinct. Our species, unlike the cutthroat, may have only one truly great predator and that is ourselves. The longer I am in Yellowstone, the more I realize how far away we have come from our own instincts. Perhaps it is time for our species to learn from the determined Cutthroat. Perhaps we will realize that our species, too, is not immune to extinction and that our planet will be here much longer than we will if we don't learn to respect the environment around us. We are still very, very new to this beautiful blue marble and are surely still evolving. Perhaps it is time for us to consider exactly how we wish to evolve. In concert or in opposition to Mother Nature? Surely Mother Nature will win.

MY BUCKET LIST

My adventure to Yellowstone started all because of my Bucket List - you know, that list you have on paper or in your head of all the things you would like to accomplish before you die. There’s a movie about it starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.  Not that this movie, which I love, is exactly how I think people should use their Bucket Lists, but it’s a starting place to think about your own Bucket List and when you want to start clicking items off. 

Living in a National Park has been on my Bucket List since I learned that non-Ranger people actually can live in a National Park. I turned 60 this year. Somehow that’s a big milestone. When you are 50 it’s conceivable you just might make it to 100 but 60? Pretty much surely you have lived the better part of your life.  It’s time to get cracking. And now I’m living in Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park. Done.

I don’t happen to keep my Bucket List on paper although I learned last night that my son Dan does - well he does the modern version and keeps it on his iPhone.  His Bucket List has some of the same things on it that mine had when I was his age – climb all the highest mountains on the seven continents, backpack Alaska, visit Africa. It also has some things I never wanted to do like bungee and base jump. He is my son, not my duplicate after all.

My Bucket List when I was my son’s age was also filled with physically challenging activities that I have now done or don’t plan to do. Life has a way of changing your priorities. I no longer need to see the highest mountains in all seven continents; I’ve learned I’m not a peak-bagger. I’m now content with visiting the seven continents, period. I still need to visit South America, Antarctica and Africa for that one.

As we get older, our experience widens and we keep ‘becoming’. So as I’ve clicked off the years, I’ve added a few items as well as removed some. My List now includes going to an Ashram for a retreat. I’m not even sure I knew what an Ashram was when I was Dan’s age. I didn’t start my yoga practice until I was in my 30s and I’m still working on the meditation part. My monkey mind, you know.

Dan and my lists are similar in that some of the items are completely in our control and others require the cooperation of others. Visiting Alaska for example is in our control. We just have to decide it will happen, get our plans together and go.  On the other hand, one of the highest items on my current Bucket List is to hold my first grandchild. Obviously, I need a little cooperation from Dan and his life partner for that one.

For me, my Bucket List is an important and very real part of my life. I hold to the promise that you are never too old to dream, never too old to add something that sometimes feels impossible but is so only in the mind. In a way, a Bucket List, no matter what your current age, is about who you want to become. It is highly likely you will be influenced by your Bucket List items as you go through life (successfully backpacking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim in my 30s has led to many, many other adventures for me). At the very least, your Bucket List gives you a reason to stay healthy and look forward to crossing off your items.

My List is a set of highway signs for my life, a way of measuring where I am today as opposed to yesterday. Can I STILL backpack Denali? I’m pretty sure I can even at 60 years old. Can I STILL dive the Great Barrier Reef? Probably but maybe not so deep. If diving bothers my ears, I'll snorkel instead. The main point of my Bucket List is to answer the question: Am I living my life in a way that is consistent with my dreams? My Bucket List? It’s a way of being honest with myself in a fun way, a way that allows me an out if something is no longer interesting or feasible but gives me plenty of room for challenge and growth.

In the end, an honest yet flexible Bucket List gives even us reasonable, responsible people an out. So what if it’s a little crazy! It’s on the List. My List helps direct me down pathways so that in the end, when I am taking my last breath, when I am ready to accomplish the very last item on my Bucket List, I can say “I’ve lived a full and fulfilling life and I’m now ready for that last next big adventure.”

A LADY WALKS INTO A PUB

A Oregonian, An Arizonan and an Indonesian met in a bar…….happens all the time in Yellowstone’s employee pub. I visit the pubs a reasonable amount. Besides all the Ranger talks, the bingo night and coming up soon the trivia night, there’s nothing much to do at night at Mammoth.  TV is nonexistent (except in the pubs); internet is so slow watching a giant sloth move a few inches takes even more time than usual on Hulu or Netflix. But one thing Yellowstone’s nights have that is rare everywhere else is the world is an international employees’ pub.

There are actually two pubs at Mammoth Hot Springs. In either pub, unlike most other pubs in America that are not in airports, you will meet an amazing array of people from all over the world. The public pub, the one I call the ‘big persons’ pub’ which is a little ageist I admit, is right off the Mammoth Dining Room, on the first floor of my dorm building. There Patrick, a Buckeye from Ohio, or Jessica from Houston, both young but already proficient at bartending, will pleasantly pour you a decent cabernet in a real wine glass. (Side note - Ive never white-water rafted with one of my bartenders before. Such a pleasant raft down the Gallatin, Patrick!)

This public pub, called The Lounge in rather large letters on the side of the building, is all low tables and comfortable seating with a foot rest at the bar and mirrored glass to reflect the bottles of Courvoisier and Ketel One. The visitors staying at Mammoth’s main lodge are paying tidy sums for rooms without a phone or TV or even bathrooms in most cases. They expect a pretty decent selection of good alcohol. When I’m really tired of Moosedrool (the Missoula microbrew not the real thing) or another even more local microbrew, I go to the big people’s pub for a glass of decent cabernet or merlot and to talk with visitors from all over the world.

The employees’ pub is pretty stark but clean, which is made possible by the cracked tile floor. It’s in an old building tucked into employee housing (my ‘hood) sandwiched in between two dorms which usually have their fair share of young employees. The pub has a couple pool tables, a TV pretty much constantly turned to sports channels, a juke box and a pretty decent if limited selection of local microbrews at good prices.

Forget drinking the wine. Long experience tells the pub managers that most of the employees going there regularly are either sports fans or younger employees who haven’t developed a taste for wines costing over $5 a glass. PBR is a favorite beer in this crowd.

Even at the employees’ pub you are reminded how limiting our dependency on only one language can be. I’m always afraid those young people from Russia are telling great stories (don’t Russians tell really great stories? Think Dostoyevsky or Solzhenitsyn) about a mother bear and her twin cubs. Xanterra employees mostly come from all over the United States but there are still quite a few that come from abroad. Working at Yellowstone is a pretty safe transition for a young foreigner with limited English skills. Most young Americans are open and friendly and are glad to share their taste in beers with the kid from Slovenia or Russia or Ecuador.

I find the location of two pubs, one pretty much directly beneath me and one just a few steps away, irresistible. Location, location, location.  I don’t even need a designated driver – ever. I also find the wide range of people in both pubs to be fascinating.

And for this crowd, the pubs here at Mammoth function like I suspect the pubs in small towns in the US and all over Ireland – a meeting place for friends and ideas. The Park is smart to make sure that in addition to the employee rec center, a pub is available for employees. It’s really not about the job for most of us.  It’s about the Park. Most of us don’t have a ‘home’ unless we define it as the Park itself. We need a place to hang out and talk.  What do we talk about? The Park, of course. The animals, the birds, the wetlands, the activities, the stupid tourists who get way too close to Mama Elk or Brother Bison.

Last night I met a botanist at the employee pub who is monitoring Yellowstone wetlands for the Park Service. He's worked seasonally in the Park for years to get the position he currently holds. He is pretty typical of the cadre of Xanterra and Park seasonals who work here during the summer, perhaps at another Park during the winter or perhaps back home doing odd jobs, working ski patrol or anything else they can just in order to be back again next year. Sometimes they get lucky enough to get a full-time job like him in the Park. If they don’t, they’ll be back next year because living in the Park is what they do and what they dream of doing fulltime.

Living in the Park means you are a member of an elite subculture not inclined to think about Martha Stewart but rather Mother Grizzly.  Many employees would think it silly to be rapturous over new wine stems but deem it perfectly normal to wax on and on and on about an eaglet hatching. It doesn’t matter that everything you own fits into the trunk and backseat of your car – as long as there is room for your gear and for your kayak or canoe on top.

I don’t know if I’ll become one of those people who live the rest of the year in a way that frees them up to live in Yellowstone in the summer. It’s interesting to think about. I confess I am still rapturous about my 4" memory foam topper for my dorm bed arriving this morning. Perhaps I’ll blog about it one day. But right now, it’s just about that time of night. Time to get down to the pub.

GIANT SANDWORMS AND SPINEY SKELETONS

The giant maw seemed to invite me into its inky darkness. Rolls upon rolls of its serpentine body curved out toward the rocky hill above. The sun beat relentlessly down so that I could see heat waves above its dark, shiny skin. Even though the air was cool, it was already hot in this place of sand and cinder. And for one moment in the darkening sunset, I imagined a Giant Sandworm, a fictional predator of Frank Herbert’s Dune instead of this forbidding, open-mouthed lava tube. 

I was not on Arrakis, Herbert’s fictional planet of Giant Sandworms and nomadic Zensunni wanderers, but in Craters of the Moon National Monument, five miles from the trailhead. The landscape is eerily barren. A series of eruptions over many thousand years has left a huge mass of cinder cones and lava flows in the eastern Snake River Plain, covering more than 7,500 square miles. A fountain of fire over 1,500 feet left Big Cinder, at 700 feet the tallest cinder cone in Craters of the Moon. Where fire didn’t shoot out white hot lava rock cinders building up around the base of the fire into a cone, glowing molten lava slithered down the plain, leaving huge long tubes, some even big enough to become hills and land forms, often leaving caves in their empty insides. Still elsewhere, the Earth’s crust witnessed the destructive power of fire as explosions shattered rock, sending the debris high into the air before falling into rubble heaps on the ground. Even Disney could not have imagined this.

 

My giant lava tube, looking very much like what I imagine Frank Herbert had in mind for his Arrakis Giant Sandworms, lay in a great bowl formed to the north of Sentinel Cinder Cone. My companion and I had been headed for Echo Crater, a collapsed section of Inferno Cone which provides some shade from the relentless high desert sun. Expecting a distinct trail, we passed the Crater and found ourselves in the lava flow area just below Sentinel Cone, approximately 1 mile further down the trail. The topography is tormented, and the going is slow once you pass Inferno Cone. The route, sometimes easily identified in wide avenues of cinder, quickly disappears where the sagebrush has been able to get a foothold in the hot, rocky soil. Once in the sagebrush, only the occasional lava rock cairns alert us we are moving in the right direction.

 

By the time we got to Sentinel, we had been walking well over two hours. We were hot and our feet were sore from the constant heat traveling through our very serviceable boots. And we were seriously worried about what was left of our water. We were even more tired than usual, having walked another 2.3 miles even before starting out on our hike to Echo Crater.

 

The backpack to Echo was an afterthought to the main event of the weekend, a Ranger-lead Flower Walk. Twice per year on two consecutive Saturdays, Ranger Lennie, a full-time Ranger at Craters, conducts a walk around the ancient Broken Top Cone describing not just the many blooms at this time of year but also other interesting and even edible plants. I had made reservations months before when I was returning from skiing in Ketchum, Idaho when the air was cold and the brilliant unbroken snow softened the twisted terrain.  I wanted to see Craters in a different season, just before the heat made it too hot and dry to hike from the car to the Park Service latrines at the trailheads.

 

I was lucky. Even though some of the flowers were just past their peak, others were in full bloom. Several species, like the monkeyflower and the penstemon, were familiar to me. Others, like scorpionweed, named for the similarity of the flower pod to a striking scorpion, and Spiny Skeletonweed, a member of the lettuce family with a skeletal structure and subtle purple flowers, were entirely new.  Many of the blooms were incredibly tiny and delicate in sharp contrast to the dark, tortured cinder, boulder and rock landscape.

 

Even in this barren desert (Craters only gets about 13 inches of rainfall on average per year), edible plants such as buckwheat, wire lettuce and desert parsley are abundant in the cracks of the lava flows and on the hills of the older cones where Mother Nature has done her work to soften the landscape. The dominant tree is the Limber Pine, a monoecious plant having both male and female parts on the same plant. The ‘normal’ female pinecone carries seeds which are then scattered in various ways-usually by hungry birds and wily rodents. The Limber Pine has the familiar female cones but it also has tiny clusters of softly colored male pinecones at the tips of its branches which do not produce seeds. The Ranger told us that this Limber Pine is unique in the pine world, being the only pine that produces both male and female cones.

 

It was only after the hike around Broken Top cinder cone was complete that we started out with our heavily laden packs (there are no reliable water sources in Craters of the Moon Wilderness Area).  We each had a hydropack and two other bottles of water which all together probably added close to eight pounds to each of our packs. We also had our sleeping pads and bags, food, extra clothing for warmth and anything else we felt we needed. We each carried a tent although neither of us had the energy or the will to pitch it once we arrived at Sentinel. Neither of us had shouldered a pack for months. Despite the relatively flat terrain, this backpack would be a good first outing after our breaks from backpacking! The heat and lack of available water made the short hike (a little less than 5 miles) to the shadeless Sentinel a challenge.

 

Backpacking or even hiking into a new area, particularly one that is vastly different geologically than you are used to, has its own deficits and rewards. The deficit is always something you did not forsee for which you did not plan.  The benefits? We saw beautiful plants and several birds, like the violet-green swallow, which we normally would never see in our familiar environments. We saw trees that looked bewitched and ready to carry the local witches to their coven meetings. We saw lava rocks left with an iridescent blue patina that we could only wish we could capture on film.  We slept under an incredible open sky under a ceiling bursting with stars. The greatest reward? We pushed beyond our comfort zones. We tried something new. We conquered Craters’ late spring season. We saw the Spiny Skeleton and even if just for a moment were transported to Arrakis, imagining the Giant Sandworm.

THRILLS, CHILLS AND SPILLS!

I was splashed, thrashed and trashed. I got a soaking that left me choking. At times I trembled in panic and a little fear. Undoubtedly I felt humbled. And I will probably need therapy but I SURVIVED the white water of the Gallatin River. 

I didn’t grow up white-water rafting.  Most of Missouri’s rivers are lazy, gentle things. You get a group together, get several large tire tubes, tie a net to one of them to carry the beer and tube down the Ozark's overgrown creeks like the Current River’s sweet placidness. 

 

I think I had tubing in mind when I tried my first white-water adventure on the Roaring Fork River in Colorado. That wasn’t what the Roaring Fork had in mind at all that day. To be honest, I remember being told that the snow melt made the water cold – really cold. I remember being told and maybe signing something that said something about white-water being a dangerous activity and that if I died it was my own fault.

 

It was my ex-husband’s idea. The people Dennis worked with put this together as a ‘group activity’. Dennis and I were already living the adventurous life in Boulder Colorado hiking, backpacking, and learning how to rock climb. But we’d never been white-water rafting before the Roaring Fork literally pulled us into its raging current.  We hit a suckhole and BOOM, the wave ‘crunched’ the boat and both Dennis and I went flying out into the violent water.

 

Let me be very clear. The Colorado snowmelt should NOT be described as ‘cold’. It was FREEZING and for seconds that seemed like hours I believed something had vacuumed all the air out of my body.  I was close to the raft and was quickly rescued by my fellow rafters who were fortunate enough to remain in the boat. I searched for my husband and did not see him in all the foamy white water.  I thought I might be a widow before he ever had a chance to build up a pension. I screamed “My husband!” and then I saw a familiar hand clinging to the rope circling the boat. I didn’t raft for a good twenty years after that.

 

Eventually my adventure quotient required I take up rafting again. I have had the opportunity to raft down the Arkansas River in Colorado and the Upper Salt in Arizona. Each time I go there is a tiny warning in my head that I completely ignore. White-water rafting is thrilling and chilling but mostly it is a cunning competition between you and the river. If you fight the river, you lose. If you move with the river, the river will give you the ride of your life.

 

Montana Whitewater is perhaps the most organized raft company I’ve ever come across. Its permanent headquarters at Three Forks, Montana below Bozeman offers a gift shop, a cafe, all the gear you are going to need for your white-water trip and even changing rooms where you can strip to your bathing suit and pull on the extremely tight neoprene wetsuits, your equally tight neoprene booties, your fleece vest, your splash jacket and of course your PFD (Personal Flotation Device - a PFD is really what we’d call a life jacket but I assume some marketing genius realized that ‘life jacket’ gave off the wrong aura.) AND when you get done with your rafting and back to raft central, you can continue your pee your pants adventure day with a trip on their zipline.  All adventure all the time. This place is not in the least bit like the temporary Gilligan’s Islandish trailer and tents we Arizonans encounter on the Salt. This place is really flash.

 

So after you suit up, you all help each other get in the raft by slipping into the freezing water and sort of hoisting yourself into the boat. The boat is kind of like a big oval blowup backyard leaky (self-bailing) swimming pool with three or four ‘ribs’ in the middle where you sit and paddle your head off when your guide yells things like ‘Two Forward’. The guide is yelling because the roar of the river makes it hard to hear the instructions.

 

The instruction I like the most is ‘All Forward Hard’ which means you have an appointment with the mother of all rapids and if you don’t get your paddle in the water and paddle in sync with your fellow rafters you are going to take an unplanned swim. (Side note – as part of your ‘safety lesson’ prior to putting the boat into the water your guide instructs you how to get into the white-water rescue position – feet first, butt down. I’ve always wondered if I would remember the white-water rescue position in 40 degree water.) When you conquer a big rapid or reach your pullout point, all your fellow rafters put their paddles in the air for a paddle high-five. It’s really cool. Really.

 

The Gallatin is a burly river in the spring (I love that word – burly – got it from our trip guide. Cool, huh!?). It throws your boat around pretty much constantly. Rivers are rated from Class 1 through Class 5. The Current would be a low Class 1 unless in flood. There are Class 6 rivers but only dead people ever try them. I like to stay in the Class 3 and Class 4 range. Our trip, because the Gallatin was engorged with rapidly melting snow, experienced one Class 4 which would normally have been a high Class 3. Good enough for me. After we went safely through it, we could all be a bit smug as we watched another boat dump not only two paddlers but also its guide!

 

Largely due to the skill of our boat’s guide, all of us stayed in our boat from beginning to end.  Tom, our guide, was probably the best and the most experienced raft guide with whom I have ever had the pleasure to paddle. I learned a lot about the River (that’s part of his job), more about paddling in a high volume river (it’s his job to explain how we are all going to get down this raging rock and roll water slide by working together and doing exactly what he says) and myself.

 

Adventure of any type always gives you insights about how you might handle the big events in your life. That’s one of the reasons I do adventurous things. If I can raft a river, I can certainly climb a mountain. If I can climb a mountain, I can certainly visit some country completely foreign to me. If I can visit some country….. Well, you get the idea.

 

So I get a little waterlogged. So I get what feels like a pail of ice water thrown into my face many times before we get to the pullout. So I am tired and cold and wet (those suits aren’t really for keeping you dry but more like not waterlogged or hypothermic). As my t-shirt says, I survived the splashing, thrashing and crashing. Honestly, a good contest with a rebellious, burly river is what I call FUN!

SEEKERS AND SUVIVORS

I’m a little sad tonight. I drove one of my new friends at Yellowstone off to the Bozeman airport today. Ali was an Inspector for Housekeeping.  An Inspector makes sure the army of mostly young Room Attendants properly fluff the pillows, clean the bathrooms, remove the trash, and shine the sink faucets in the manner expected by the Mammoth guests.  Ali suffered a common and sometimes inevitable ailment common to a person in her position when she was training one of her young charges how to do things the Ali way. She is returning to her family in order to recover.

Ali, a long-time immigrant to the US, is bright, funny and Indonesian. Like me, she is a bit of a rebel but always looking for the sunny side of life. We hit it off right away. I don’t know if she will be able to return but as we passed through the verdant valleys north of Mammoth, we talked about the incredible beauty of the place and how she had so little time to explore it. I will miss her. 

That got me to thinking once again about the reasons we all come to the Park to work. Is there a common thread?  If so, what is it? There are over 3,000 Xanterra employees in the Park and I’m sure there are as many stories as employees.  I have been reluctant to share the stories of my fellow workers because some of them would be instantly recognizable to others. In order to be fair to those who told me their stories in confidence, I have changed the names of all and the circumstances of some in order to honor their confidences. 

Full-time jobs here are at a premium. A Manager I have come to know fairly well came here many years ago to work a season as a Server and fell in love with the place. She is a veteran traveler, a seeker of new places and new faces. After her season, she took up residence in Gardiner, a place she calls Paradise, running a small successful business until the recession closed it down. Then she did what any Gardinerite without an income but with a will to stay in Gardiner would do – applied to work in the Park. She was seasonal for a few years after which she landed a full-time job in the department she now supervises. She can’t think of living anywhere else.  Many of the long-time employees feel the same way. Maybe it’s something in the water. 

Some employees are Returners, a name Xanterra calls those people who come every summer to the same or different jobs from all over the place just in order to be in this place for the summer. Summer is a special time in which thousands of extra jobs need filling at the same time the elk and bison are calving, the valleys are greening, and the rivers are running high. Kim and Syd, husband and wife, have been returning for a short five years. Kim, retired from social work, and Syd, retired from the Justice system, initially came their first year on the advice of a friend in order to supplement their social security. But frankly, these two are life-long adventurers, so a Yellowstone job was a better fit than Cinderella’s glass slipper. Kim is a two-time cancer survivor and insists the long-term consequences of chemo and radiation will NOT keep her from doing what she wants to do. I got to know Kim and Syd on a white-water raft trip.  They used to be white-water guides and wanted to experience the thrill of white-water again. The Gallatin River gave all of us the best it had to offer. By the way, I’m not sure Kim and Syd remember they are retired. 

Two other Returners are so recognizable I have asked them for their permission to write about them.  I will still change their names but they are so unique other employees will know immediately who they are.  The Sisters, as they are called, are not only siblings but best friends.  They spend their winters in the home they own together in a Florida retirement village; they travel the world together; they hit the casino together and take smoke breaks together. Being close to my sisters, I of course feel they are very lucky to have a sister with whom to do all these things. 

These smart, savvy sisters are in their late seventies.  They both clawed their way to responsible positions in the 60s when it was difficult for women to claw her way past the kitchen. They both have families but got divorced at a time it was unusual to do so in order to pursue their careers and individual interests. They were feminists before that word became popular. Lori, the sister I know best, is extremely competent, a quality I appreciate. Without a college degree, she was promoted to an Audit position in the 60s at Arthur Anderson. She worked in far-flung places like Germany and Point Barrow. Wherever she worked, she used her work as an opportunity to travel as much as possible. Betty, her sister, took a similar path. These two have a brother who married an Ecuadorian and moved there so I’m thinking this wandering might be genetic. Lori and Betty say this is their last year because they want to travel more and work less. 

A lot of the new employees are young people between their third and last year of college. Tom, who now works in one of the social programs in the Park, came for his first time several years ago and now, armed with a degree, he is back trying to live his life as fully as he can while he makes plans for the future. Yellowstone is a good place to live life fully while you are thinking through things. Yellowstone can highjack those same plans, though, because no other place offers the sheer diversity of beauty of Yellowstone.

 

Xanterra does not just hire Americans. In the spirit of the Park service for years and years, young people from all over the world are attracted to the mystery of Yellowstone. It is their BIG OE (overseas experience), a chance to live and work in America. I have met a young man from Ecuador (who I promptly introduced to The Sisters) and another from Serbia. Surely these young people are seekers of the highest order to travel so far from their families alone to work in an unknown and particularly wild environment. 

There are others, like me, here for the first time. We all have our different reasons for coming to the Park.  Many are retired and looking for something interesting to do. For me, it provides a sabbatical from my ‘real’ life in order for me to consider how I want to spend the rest of my life. For my friend Sally, newly retired from teaching and a recent survivor of a serous tumor, it is a time to find out what adventure feels like and how she might live a more adventurous life. 

Of course, these short stories of my new friends just cut the surface of the complex, adventurous seekers who choose to come to the Park.  All of us have deeper reasons we have been drawn to this place. Some of us have felt such trauma that we can only heal in the clean wilderness that is Yellowstone. Others seek that perfect place for our souls to flourish. Most of us are experienced survivors as travelers often are. Those of us who seem to be the happiest here are usually the ones who will be happy anywhere. It’s just that Yellowstone makes us even happier.

 

As seekers, we all share the will to keep that wonder of small children alive. We need Yellowstone for that daily dose of breathless awe. We are all addicted to that moment of amazement as the sun crests the mountains and shines on the Terraces or we witness the birth of an elk or see an eagle soaring in the sunlight.  I suspect all of us who are happy here at Yellowstone have just a wee bit of Peter Pan in us. And Yellowstone is our Neverland.

 

MY YELLOWSTONE

Magnificent, glorious, stupendous. I swear I’ve been overusing these adjectives when trying to describe Yellowstone to family and friends.  I’ve tried to think of new adjectives - grand, amazing, stupendous – but eventually even those new adjectives somehow lose their descriptive power when used over and over. 

I’ve taken to using a thesaurus to find new words but sometimes those words just don’t have the same original power.  For example, under ‘magnificent’ are words such as superb and wonderful. A really great dinner is superb and a really considerate man is wonderful (and rare). But these words just don’t describe my Yellowstone which is so very many things I am having so much trouble coming up with a succinct way to describe all of what I feel about the Park. 

Maybe it would be easier if I start with something very concrete. How about topography?  OK. Let’s see, Yellowstone is mountainous and green, flat and grassy, carved with rivers and streams that flow over high and impressive waterfalls, some of which flow into the largest natural lake above 7,000 feet in the United States. Its valleys look like something out of a movie set. It also has violently erupting geysers and rainbow-colored thermal areas. Ugh. How do you come up with a succinct way of saying all that? 

So maybe I could come summarize the animals. Everyone knows about the iconic Yellowstone bears and elk and moose and wolf and bison. There are quite a large number of other animals as well. I saw a badger on my way back on Chief Joseph Scenic Byway. I’ve seen beaver ponds so there must be beaver. I've seen all kinds of little critters like pika and marmot. Yellowstone’s website says Yellowstone has the largest concentration of mammals the lower 48 states, with 67 different mammals. How do you succinctly describe such a biological treasure? I guess I could describe it as having great diversity in its animal population. 

Birds also seem to be in abundance. Black-billed magpies hang out right outside my window at Mammoth. Cow birds like to follow the bison around because they stir up the insects as the plod through Yellowstone’s meadows.  But in looking through a definitive guide to Yellowstone birds, it appears there are only nine full-time residents of Yellowstone, including tiny birds like the chickadee and nuthatch to the larger and pesky raven, to the much larger and magnificent (there’s that word again) Canadian Goose.  And, of course, there are Bald Eagles like the one I saw just a few days ago hiking along Lava Creek.  I guess even though there are only nine full-time aves in the Park, they represent a good variety among birdlife and are joined by other migrating species during the summer. 

Maybe it is easier to describe the fishing in Yellowstone. Turns out Yellowstone has 13 native species and several introduced species. It has become a world-class fly fishing destination because of its seven trout species, including three native trout. That’s a lot of good eating. You won’t be eating the cutthroat, though, because anglers are required to gently release the cutthroat, a native endangered by the bigger, stronger lake trout, back into the water. You can fish any one of Yellowstone’s 10 rivers or its four major lakes, including Yellowstone Lake, the largest fresh-water lake above 7,000 in the lower 48.  If you get tired of that you could try fishing in one of Yellowstone’s gazillion creeks. Fishing in Yellowstone….well…….it has great diversity. 

Perhaps it would be easier to describe the visitors. Generally, the 3.9 million visitors are from all over the world. They are from England, France, Holland, Japan, Germany, Australia, Spain, Ireland, Mexico, Switzerland and Canada. I’ve heard German, French, Asian languages, Dutch, Spanish, all kinds of English accents, including Kiwi and Aussie.  I’ve seen families from all over the world come to see our bison and bear. I am told that some of these tourists have a difficult time grasping the concept of ‘wild life’, trying to set their toddlers upon a elk’s back or calling the Rangers to let them know ‘one of your bison has broken through its fence.’ On the other hand, I’ve met determined Yellowstone goers, including the young woman I met at Old Faithful who is a geyser chaser – dedicating her life to observing the geysers so closely, she is an unofficial member of the Park staff and provides the Rangers warnings of impending geyser eruptions. There are also ‘returners’ which seems like an understatement for people like my fellow employee Barb who has returned to work seasonally at Yellowstone for 17 years. There are probably as many reasons people come to the Park as there are people in the Park.

 

My conclusion? It is impossible to come up with a succinct picture of my Yellowstone National Park. Even the words ‘National Treasure’ don’t quite grasp its scope. I encourage you to come to Yellowstone to find your own adjectives. If you want hiking, Yellowstone has over 1,100 MILES of trail. You want white water? It’s here! You want wildlife that you can observe from your car? Yup – over in Lamar Valley. You interested in geology like geysers? Yellowstone has the largest concentration of thermal features in the world. You want knock your socks off views from your luxurious hotel room? Try Lake Lodge. Whatever you want – Yellowstone has it. I even saw a bottle of Glenfiddich in the Mammoth Hot Springs bar. Come to Yellowstone. You don’t have to stay for five months like I am but I swear no matter how long you stay, whether it is two days or two weeks, you will want to come back for more.

QUAINT COUNTRY CODY

Quaint country Cody, Wyoming is a market town just outside of East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park.  ‘Just outside’ in these parts means about 52 miles of what Teddy Roosevelt called “the 52 most beautiful miles in America”.  This is ranch country that starts high up near Pahaska Teepee squeezed between the North Absaroka and the Washakie Wildernesses continuing down the Shoshone River to Boulder Basin ranchland. This is country where parents put their kids on horses as soon as they can walk. These are not ‘gentlemen’s ranches’ but working ranches and the work is hard, long and carried out in breath-takingly beautiful surroundings. This is where young kids grow up wanting to be rodeo stars. 

When I was a child growing up in Missouri, my Dad had a good friend who competed in rodeos. I always thought it was kind of odd to have rodeos in Missouri but I liked the look of the earnest, clean-cut young men and women. I liked the sparkly costumes of the young women who performed trick or drill team riding. I especially liked the idea of the cowboy and cowgirl, living a life on an open range where the skills displayed in competition (and rodeo is definitely a competition) were not only useful but necessary. 

I wondered what it would be like to sleep under the stars listening to the cattle lowing nearby. I read Zane Grey. I watched the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers. I liked the physical toughness and mental stamina that I thought would be required to live such a life.  

Back when the American West was a vast open range, huge herds of cattle were gathered up in roundups and herded across the Territories to slaughterhouses to fulfill the demand for beef back East. Cowboys, responsible for rounding up these cattle in the open range and branding their cattle so one outfit’s cattle could be distinguished from another, moved from place to place with the herd, sleeping on the ground under the stars, working in the driving rain. 

Cowboy life was hard and required great skills including roping, horse breaking, herding, and branding. A skilled cowboy generally meant an equally skilled horse as the former could not adequately perform these duties without the latter. Cowboys, like any other skilled worker, were rightfully proud of their skill and often competed to see which cowboy could rope and tie a calf faster in preparation for branding or who could stay on a wild horse longer. These competitions became know as rodeos - the very same rodeos I grew up with as a child. 

Cody, Wyoming has one of the biggest rodeo arenas in the west and a long season of nightly rodeos beginning June 1 through the summer. Tourists and locals alike crowd into the Cody Stampede arena to watch the young competitors, most from ranching families in Oklahoma, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming trying to hang on to the culture and tradition of ranching in the west.  Often the cowgirls and cowboys who compete at Cody also compete on the college rodeo circuit (yes there is a college rodeo conference). Even the younger cowboys get into the act in the steer-riding competition, wearing helmets and protective clothing. Rodeo is a sport that can literally kill you. And the ‘gear’ is an animal, tack, a cinch and grit. 

I know some will read this and say ‘that’s animal abuse’. Maybe so.  It seemed at times that a horse looked pretty ticked off at being put in a stall and ‘cinched’. In the timed trial of calf-roping, during which a cowboy lassoes a calf from the back of his horse, then jumps off the horse to throw the calf on the ground and tie at last three of its hooves together, it did look like a calf might be temporarily uncomfortable until untied. One calf even managed to get its head twisted the opposite way of its body before the watchful rodeo clowns could untie it. 

But when the star rodeo clown called for ‘all the kids’ to come down into the arena for the calf-chasing contest, magic happened. We all waited and waited in the stands as well over 100 kids lines up, 5 and unders in front (to give them a handicap), 6 to 12 in back.  Then, the gates of the squeeze chute opened and three little but husky calves ran out into the melee. Kids ran one way and then the next, chasing the fleet calves to grab the ribbon tied to their tails. It reminded me of my flag football days. And everyone – the kids, the spectators, the regular cowboys and cowgirls had a great time. We felt proud of the three winners and applauded like crazy when they were awarded their gift certificates for their Dairy Queen Blizzards. 

Where else in America does this happen? How often do you see competitors literally put themselves in front of a hard-running, well-muscled horse to help each other when one gets in trouble, like one did in the bronc-riding competition? There is something special about ranch people. There is something special about rodeo. Sure, the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association probably has its divas just like the NFL. But somehow, the culture of ranching instills a sense of responsibility to your fellow cowboy and girl that I’m not sure can be found in other sports.

I love this particular throw-back to the early American (well technically Spanish) West. I love the fact that this competition celebrates the skill of a culture and a business that is hanging on by a thread. The rodeo brings me back to the days of my dreaming about cowboys and pretty cowgirls riding their horses fast and furiously across the ranches and canyons of the Wild West.