Yellowstone and I; A Love Story

I have had the privilege of visiting Yellowstone National Park now for over half my life. My first visit to Yellowstone wasn’t until 1991, three years after the infamous fires that burned so much of this iconic national playground. My entrance at the time was through the aforementioned Grand Teton entrance, and I saw the aftermath of the fires work. At the time I remember thinking how tragic it was that this beautiful place had burned so prolifically. What I did not know then is that fire is an important part of the nature of Yellowstone, and the park environs would not be what they are today without its historically important role.

My visit to Yellowstone that day was only a few hours in duration. A friend and myself were camping quite a distance away in Northern Utah and decided to make a spur of the moment trek to Yellowstone as part of our camping trip. We vastly underestimated the time it would take us to reach the park from our camp spot and as a result, cheated ourselves out of a longer visit; for by the time we reached the park itself there were only a few hours left of daylight. We rushed through Grand Teton, not taking the time to see any of its wonder and beauty, in a mad rush to get to Old Faithful. Like almost any first time visitors, our vision of the park was intertwined inextricably with the iconic geysers image, and so to us Old Faithful was Yellowstone. Ironically, by the time we reached the geyser, it had just erupted, and we would not be able to see the geysers next eruption properly because by that time darkness would have descended.

Instead, we spent the next hour or so literally running through the geyser and hot pool basins, snapping pictures as we went for later, and more leisurely, perusal. (As an aside, I DO NOT RECOMMEND RUNNING ON THE BOARDWALKS OR WALKWAYS NEAR GEYSERS OR HOT POOLS! In your own adventures to Yellowstone exercise extreme caution in the thermal areas of the park! What I did not know at the time was that the majority of the hot pools are so hot that they can, literally, boil the flesh from your bones in a matter of minutes, and even a short exposure to their intense heat is enough to seriously injure and often kill those exposed.) In another ironic twist, the pictures I snapped did not turn out, as I had not threaded the spool of film correctly in the old Kodachrome camera I was using at the time (this was long before digital came along, and I have since hardily embraced that format), and I was left with nothing but fleeting memories of wondrous hot pools and fleeting colors that were fading in the early twilight. We left off our whirlwind tour of the hot springs areas before we even hit Grand Prismatic spring, that so often photographed hot pool, known around the world for its rainbow hues and impressive size. I had seen enough to intrigue me greatly; enough so that I was plagued with the desire to see more of it. I had already begun to fall under the Yellowstone spell.