Bubbling mud pots – with their pungent steam spiraling into the air – are a distinctive feature of one of our favorite spots on earth, America's first national park, Yellowstone. Yellowstone in autumn during the rutting season, bears lumbering along with their young, and buffalo grazing on grass remnants before the onslaught of winter. Yellowstone in spring when it's common to spot a fox leaping across a meadow, tantalized by a butterfly. Yellowstone in summer when folks fish in its wandering streams. We have yet to experience Yellowstone in winter. It must be spectacular.
At just the sound of its name, an awareness of the effulgence of life spreads through our bloodstreams and calls forth our own stories. On an autumn day, one of our daughters and her family accompanied us to Yellowstone. All but one of us stood in a meadow across from a hilly rise where two bull elk contended for a female. The air rocked with their trumpeting.
Camera in hand, our son-in-law, intrepid and determined, worked his way up the hill, scurrying from one tree to another, as he approached the pair. For a timeless moment everything was still. The meadow echoed with a silence surreal. Then a car pulled up near where we stood. Two women emerged and caught sight of the scene unfolding on the hillside as we stood holding our breath. When one of them shouted with disbelief, a decided German accent colored her words as they filled the air. "Look at that crazy man over there!" Our son-in-law still has the photos to prove he got away unscathed by his shenanigans, but in this instance we wouldn't recommend emulation.
Simply the sight of buffalo lumbering along the roads recalls scenes of the Native Americans who knew and lived in this land long before most of us, materialize before our eyes. The mud pot steam becomes smoke signals; the rainbow hues of its soil exhibits nature's own singular handiwork. It is a land so rich with life and beauty that its panorama inspires awe and poetry.
Smoke Signals
In a sprawling meadow atop the volcanic basin
a remnant of the last surviving wild bison herd
grazes on the remaining grasses of Yellowstone
before they disappear beneath relentless winter snow.
Steam rises from bubbling mud pots nearby
writing on the winter sky, like Native American
smoke signals might once have communicated
across the miles life-saving news of the hunt.
To imagine the meadows, mountains, and roadways
of Yellowstone stripped of these majestic creatures
is to imagine our country deprived of the people
who depended on the bison so long before we arrived. |
Autumn in Yellowstone
|
