John Wise

Dissolved minerals in waters heated by processes deep underground flow, and when they do they have the potential to pool in places. As these calcium carbonate-rich waters deposit their chemical soup, they start forming travertine. Layer upon layer, the molecules bind to other nearby molecules of similar makeup, while at the edges of where the water pools, ridges form faster than on the bottom of the pool that has a larger surface area and before you know it (in geological terms) you are left with terraced pools of cascading water that are laying down floor tiles and countertops for people well into the future.

Here at Mammoth Hot Springs, the process of making travertine is happening right before our eyes. Things are not working like a perpetual machine of great efficiency because the heavily mineralized waters are not guaranteed to always be running. Maybe the plumbing below is broken, or winter didn’t deposit enough snow, changing the water table? Whatever the reason, it is likely the travertine pools we see on our trip will not be the ones you see on yours. The mineral deposits will still be here, but the water that is feeding them may have dried up or is flowing over another part of the mass that has been forming.

From the steam billowing off of the hot springs, the water condenses on nearby stuff, in this case, these pine needles, and as it freezes, the water molecules can build up, forming these mini ice knives that show you which way the wind was blowing.

I find it interesting how the colors shift across this dry travertine and am intrigued, although it is only basic chemistry, at how the particulate mixture of the hot spring waters while making delivery of its runoff drops off the molecules that will shade one section with darker hues while on an adjacent pool, the water’s darker molecules now depleted leave the water to deliver a cleaner whiter calcium just next door. It all makes me wish I’d paid more attention in class and taken some advanced chemistry classes.

The cave has escaped its dark prison and turned the world inside out while psychedelically presenting itself to us to test if we believe what we see. Every day, we search for novelty in our own lives, try to find something new to entertain us, need to see a new movie or play a new video game, and yet here is nature offering us infinity while challenging the mind to find a vocabulary to adequately describe what we perceive. Even when presented with all the time we might need or like to analyze but a small corner of our world, we could spend a lifetime trying to accumulate the poetry of expression and scientific knowledge to remotely describe the beauty and complexity in that which we are attempting to comprehend. This then begs the question of when we encounter the nearly alienesque universe of the truly psychedelic how, if we only rarely encounter those states, can we begin to describe what they are when we can barely explain the totality of what’s occurring when an ocean wave breaks on a sandy shore?

The old lady in the tree troll is from an old German fairy tale first noted by the Brothers Grimm almost 200 years ago. It was one of the scarier stories made all the worse as the spirit occupying the tree was left there with the passing of the cursed person’s mother-in-law.

Maybe you are getting the idea that I’ve run out of impressions to write about from our trip out here? Well, maybe I have.

While moss tendrils growing out of lichen and bark are not something you see every day, it’s also something that, once it has been described and shown, what more could be said? I could drone on about the molecular structure or its place in the scheme of evolution, but maybe that geeky stuff gets tiring. Oh well, then here goes the nerd out about the scene pictured. The green tendrils are Wolf Lichen, a.k.a. Letharia Vulpina. The turquoise lichen are filaments of fungi that colonies of cyanobacteria, a.k.a. algae, take up residence in living symbiotically as a happy family. As for the bark that these lichens are living on, well, that’s obvious: it’s a conifer. Why is this so obvious? It’s because the Wolf Lichen grows on the bark of these trees in particular. Finally, do not try to eat this lichen as it is toxic, especially to wolves and foxes, but it is a good source of dying fabrics and yarns. Now, you probably know considerably more about lichen than when you started reading this blog entry.

I’m not pulling a rabbit out of my hat regarding telling some interesting tidbits about these ice cycles; I just thought they looked cool, especially with that carbonated-looking water below them.

Took off down the Grand Loop Road to visit a corner of the park we’ve not been in yet, but at the Tower General Store, we reached the end of the road as it was already closed for winter. While we did get this view of the Yellowstone River, we won’t get to visit Mt. Washburn on this trip, maybe someday.

So, instead, we drove back out to the Lamar Valley and dipped our toe into Montana. As we already have a photo of Jutta and Caroline in front of a Montana state sign, we instead snapped this one upon reentering Wyoming. We stopped along the way many times and walked out to the Lamar River and at one particular bend in the river where Soda Butte Creek and the Lamar meet, we stopped for a good long time and just watched the area as we had been told that the day before there was a wolf pack seen here with an elk that had met its end. I’m pretty sure they were not paying their respects but were instead having a snack. No luck seeing or hearing wolves on this visit to Yellowstone, but no big deal as things have been just perfect.

Abendrot is the German word for describing the red color of the sky as the sun sets. Abendrot elicits oohs and aahs from Jutta every time she spots a bit of it; that and sagenhaft which translates to fabulous or marvelous. Das Abendrot war sagenhaft, and now you’ve learned a little German, too.

There’s a delight in traveling with my mother-in-law, as regardless of how fast I may want to bolt through a landscape, she’s not going to indulge me by running behind me. In any case, that would just be rude, and so I get to slow down and spend more contemplative time taking in details I may have otherwise passed by. While I will prod her to stay awake on our drives so she can see where she’s been out here, she effectively sets the pace. Something else that adds to the positive experience of bringing her on these excursions is that she shares with us the same level of enthusiasm, the enjoyment of basking in the beauty of it all, and lets us know how beguiled she is.

Jutta is just as likely to pause to inspect a leaf, a particular stone that’s caught her eye, an insect, the patterns in the ice, or the evolving shades in the morning and late-day skies. She hears birds that I’ve tuned out while I’m listening to venting gasses, and then she brings them to my attention, though I’m of little value in identifying them by their call for her.

We ventured out into the Upper Geyser Basin here in front of the Old Faithful Inn early this morning and spent about four hours meandering along the boardwalk and trails out to the Morning Glory Pool and then back again. Our bags are packed and loaded in the car. We are staying up in Mammoth Hot Springs for a couple of nights, but before we start our drive north, we need some lunch.

Heading out into Lamar Valley in the northeast corner of the park with considerably better weather than we had earlier in the year.

If time allowed, we would park the car and walk out following the stream and then maybe cut across to the forest before seeing if there was a safe way to head up the mountainside for a view back this way. Instead, we’ll have to sate ourselves with a hundred stops along the road to jump out of the car for a closer look and stare for a longer moment than driving by at 30 mph allows. If ever there was a park in America that would benefit from having a parallel bike path next to the road, Yellowstone is it.

While technically, Jutta has now been to Montana, it hardly counts just crossing the state line; I can already see a visit to Glacier National Park in the future.

This is one of those curiosities that Jutta needed a photo in front of as she’d never stood on the 45th Parallel before.

We are heading out of the park for Jutta’s second visit to Montana, this time to Gardiner, where we are looking for dinner. What we found was Helen’s Corral Drive-in burger joint where we had the opportunity to try our first elk burger ever. As I said earlier, we are staying at Mammoth Hot Springs, and for the next two nights, we’ll have a small cabin to call home.

The sky has cleared up down here at the Tetons, but that won’t draw us in from leaving for Yellowstone. While the amount of snow and cloud cover might change in these mountains, the very environment is a lot less likely to change as dynamically as that up north in North America’s largest caldera. During our visit earlier in the year, a ranger had pointed out how the fire of 1988 might have very well scarred the park but also opened up views that no living human had ever seen. Then there’s the hydrology that’s affected by snow, rain, and factors such as ground temperature due to the movement of magma or earthquakes that alter the plumbing within the Yellowstone ecosystem. This all suggests that the activity from week to week and season to season could be impacting what we might see on any subsequent visit. So, let’s go!

Here we are again at what was also our last stop on our way out of the park last May. The grand mythological status Yellowstone holds in my imagination makes the place even bigger and more exotic for me, I believe than for someone who might have grown up nearby. As a kid, this park was the place of wild nature, bison, bears including Yogi Bear who lived in Jellystone, Old Faithful, geysers, and mud pots like in Disneyland, but it was all a million miles away from Los Angeles in some place only certain fortunate people traveled to. It may as well have been on another continent. But here I am for a second time, not only in my lifetime but in the same year.

With five full days to explore Yellowstone, the plan is to go slow, although this is a mode of travel that, as of yet, is unfamiliar to Caroline and me. While we had essentially three full days on our previous visit, I’m hoping that nearly double that will allow us to see just about everything in the park. Yes, I can be that naive, but my logic is that combined with the other days, we should start to approach having seen the majority of Yellowstone. So, seeing we passed it last time, we take the time to walk over and visit Moose Falls, and immediately, I’m thrust into the primordial forest where mists drift into the sunlight, filtering down to the primitive land as life is taking hold and trying to give rise to the future. I’m seriously enchanted and feel as though I’ve seen something profoundly special.

After we explained what the Continental Divide is to Jutta, she wanted to stop for a photo to prove she stood on the hydrological line that delineates which way water will flow as it drops on the United States. On one side, the water will flow in the direction of the Pacific, and on the other, it essentially flows to the Atlantic, while some will also find its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

This is the world-famous Fishing Cone geyser at the West Thumb Geyser Basin. We’ve not seen this geyser in action so while it does emit a small amount of steam, we’ll have to take other’s word for it that it did spout water at one time. Today, it is considered a hot spring, but in its heyday, it could blast water up to 40 feet in the air (12 meters). It earned its name back in the 19th century when one could fish from its edge, and the popular story from back then was you could swing your catch right into the hot waters of the geyser and cook your fish without even taking it off the hook. Maybe a tall tale, but it sounds reasonable to me.

Back in the 19th century and early 20th century, it was said that the waters of Yellowstone’s hot springs were so clear that you could see forever into their depths. From changes that are occurring below the surface to uninformed visitors tossing coins, sticks, rocks, and other debris into the hot springs and geysers, we are seeing changes to the park’s features where cooling can cause murky waters and/or changes to the bacterial chemical composition that influences the colors, vibrancy, and general health of the location that is being abused.

To stand in the steam, breathe the hint of sulfur in the air, and watch the mists drift off the hot springs, all the while safe upon boardwalks that have been built directly over and next to hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles is a luxury we get to indulge just by putting ourselves here in the park. Yet, this isn’t good enough for some people who cannot heed the warning signs that implore visitors to stay on the trails and paths to protect the fragile ecosystem. Okay, so I have to admit some guilt, such as when I reach down to touch a bacterial mat, because who doesn’t want to know what space chicken feels like? And no, I’ve not tasted it to find out if it tastes like chicken.

Sparkling midday sun off the Firehole River while steam rises on this golden fall day and bison graze, oblivious to those of us who marvel at the spectacle of what should be normal. Just before arriving here to witness this serene field of majesty, we spotted a grizzly in the woods tending to a kill. Its meal might have been an elk, and there may have been a cub or two with the bear, but the whole scene was heavily obscured by the trees. As it was fairly close to the road we thought it a better idea to keep on moving before momma bear decided it needed to protect the carcass of its children’s lunch.

Knowing that we are staying at the Old Faithful Inn, we decided to pass it for now as we’ll have a couple more opportunities to walk its basin, and so we are using the daylight to give Jutta a broad overview of the park, similar to what we’ve already had. The short road that follows the Firehole Canyon Drive ends near this small waterfall that is kind of out of sight behind the rocks, though you can get the idea of what’s there by the white water rushing by. Just after this photo was taken, Jutta stumbled and fell on her knee; this is becoming a bit of a tradition where my mother-in-law gives us a scare early in the trip. Fortunately, this was a minor misstep that didn’t create an issue at all.

Anywhere else, mud is a nuisance, but here in Yellowstone at the Artists Paintpots, it is an art that comes with its own soundtrack as gas bubbles out of the hot frothing pit of doom. Doom because if you fall into any of these boiling traps, your time on this earth as a sentient being is probably coming to an end.

Not all muds are created equally, either. With the thicker paste of this goop comes different sounds that are heavier. Curiously I wonder if these mud pots are also like quicksand that once you enter, even if it wasn’t a cauldron of seething hot death, would you be pulled into the depths never to be seen again?

If you look at the “sticks” behind Jutta and Caroline, you’ll see some of the damage done by the fire from 12 years ago. Just before the fire, you would be looking at a forest line and may not be able to see the horizon shaped by the hillside where the trees were standing. Over time, this will all grow back and future generations won’t be seeing Yellowstone in quite the same we are seeing it today.

Here, we can get a good idea of what the tree line looked like before the fire. While many areas were dramatically affected by the clearing process of fire, some were unscathed. You are now at Gibbon Meadows after returning from the Artist Paint Pots Trail.

The Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River near Canyon Village only get a passing glance, which is better than nothing, but it’s getting late in the day and we are only at the halfway point for getting back to the Old Faithful Inn.

Long shadows of me standing on a bridge to take this photo give you a pretty good idea about just how late it is.

There’s no recollection of exactly where we were when I snapped this photo, and that’s okay because there’s always more to see and another reason to come back, not only to this location but to Yellowstone in general. What an amazing reintroduction to this giant corner in the northwest of Wyoming, and yet we’ve only seen a tiny part of it so far. Time to check into our rustic room over at Old Faithful Inn and get some dinner at their beautiful restaurant.