11)6(05 its 925am

We got snowed and blowed and iced out of Yellowstone. It was in the middle of a drive out into Lamar Valley to see the wildlife purported to be thriving there, bears, wolves and the like, when, while watching a small family of bison laying around bored like, off in the distance a big distance mind you, Yellowstone is full of those, this massive cloud looks like a down pillow that has a massive tear and is spreading its feathers all over the valley. And it would have been great if they were feathers, I’m sure we would have made piles of them and through them around, but it was snow. Snow that is cold and icy.

But I have to rewind a little bit about that day because there was more to it than just that moment of things changing, although, it is those moments we do remember best. It kind of began with even the hint of the idea of Yellowstone. I mean, we had gone WAY way out of our way to get to Montana/Wyoming, and really just for this. So Yellowstone was engraved in our minds from the early days of the trip, something we have to see, and can’t miss, and you know, its good advice. And then it began with leaving Bozeman, and driving through the valley that enters into Yellowstone, following a perfect river past perfect ranches with perfect horses staring off into eternity in their yards. It began there because apparently my Great-Grandmother, Marion Sullivan, had lived there. And all the while we are driving through this magnificent valley, with peaks on either side and the promise of four seasons hiding in each single one, Van Morrison on the radio and enough instant mashed potatoes to not have a trouble on our minds.

The moment we pulled into our campground we were met by something I’d never had the tingle to experience, a whole heard of huge elk kind of carousing through the sites, yawing and yeeing and making the strangest whale like sounds you’d never expect to come out of them. The big old female elk make this entirely unexpected and therefore funny high pitched squeak somehow come out of their massive frames, as if a kitten were strapped into a microphone booth somewhere within them.

In the morning we were awoke by the herd passing two feet from where we slept in the back of the truck, as if a friendly neighbor going off to work with a cup of coffee in the hands.

Part of what makes Yellowstone neat is its geothermal activity, its unsettled molten core bubbling to the peaks of mountains in the middle of nowhere these murky and primordial stews of boiling water and algae, dripping down their own manufactured shapes of strange bowls and ornamental cups. Off in vast distance geyser valleys steam like a fleet of riverboats were making its way through the mountains. Underneath you on wooden boardwalks, crystal blue and blood red water hisses and bubbles, pits of mud churn on themselves and geysers erupt out of nowhere in frantic excitement, short lived, but excited nonetheless.

The thing that I love maybe the most about “nature”, as in, those places you go that are not paved maybe, is the sense of vastness that is completely opposite the dimensions of say a TV screen, or an apartment. A few years back I hiked around Mt. Hood (well, I won’t kid you, part way around Mt. Hood) with my great friends Mark and Jason. There are parts and pieces of Mountains that you know go with mountains because they wouldn’t fit on anything else. Boulders the size of the White House teeter on the edge of rocks the size of, well, rocks that are really big. Standing there, on and below these enormous gaps in space was the first time I really needed to seek out that place of grandeur.

Standing on river canyon edges that plummeted 2000 feet down into churning waters that rode past rugged mountains and geysers off into the horizon inseparable from the feeling of vastness. Purity, beauty, this could be the definition, something, be it inside you or not of you, most likely not worded out: vast.

We rushed to our campground which was a bit disappointing because it was as if they had put this particular campground (the last open campground we could get to) in the most boring spot in Yellowstone. Which is not that bad when you think about it. Plus it was Freezing with capital F and getting dark and there was ice and snow on the ground. We set up camp, our tarp flapping over our screen house, out in the frozen air, and drove out to look at more animals and just be in the valleys of Yosemite in the evening. The horizon grew more and more dark and we passed herds of bison and elk into the thick of a fat snow cloud, grey and dark and pouring snow like scattered papers in the wind. The light grew dark blue and murky, and the elk continued to feed as the windshield wipers scraped away the fresh ice beginning to land on it like a nuisance. We drove slowly in the absolute silence of snow stopping to stare at the open