After days of looking at exploding pools of steam and a few bubbles which accompanied them, Emily enjoyed them so thoroughly it was hard ot resist the temptation to follow her awe like a drunk puppy, we met up with Molly in Mammoth which is nothing like the rest of the park. Where south yellow stone was layered under five to ten feet of snow, Mammoth was the paragon of the American fifties outdoor memory. The deer run around and enjoy the town that is half built to assist tourist on their journeys through the rest of the park and the other half to maintain the ranger staff. We could have been in Disneyland.
Mammoth was plaster cast and coasted in formaldehyde to remain in it’s 1850’s feel of outdoorys memory with an accompanying Teddy Roosevelt poster. It exists only to accompany the massive expanse untamed mountains, rivers and life that have remarked unpon the town with a quick yawn. Elk roam right through the streets and prosper in the surrounding meadows, keeping their young close to the temporary settlement, which will pass soon after we leave, or cease to care.
The Mammoth visitor center is made of stone, I would think to stand the harsh winters, but even that will not and cannot outlast the wild that tramples, prances, thrashes, grows, and births all around it. Mammoth was built to help people marvel at Yellowstone, but in it’s exhibition it felt as if it became a marvel to the people visiting in it self. The restaurants and gift shopts, the little everythings, and the rv sites which give only a bink of what the park has to offer. Even the roads that cover a sliver of the park go straight to the geysers – depriving any traveler of the journey and effort of creating a worthwhile trip of the spectacle.
Chris and I drank
Emily was enthralled.
We met Jim something or other, who was in charge of the park. He was kind for the brief moment I saw him and I have little to say other than that. That park rangers and employees seemed detached from the ‘park’ itself. They weren’t there for the buildings of the park in it’s tourist state. When we asked one ranger what he enjoyed most about the park he answered that the backcountry was where he attempted to spend most of his time.
I got the feeling that they were trying to tell everyone else about the park in a way that vacationers who have been to Africa or any third world country attempt to explain it’s magisty, except the rangers are in the park- and everyone sees it- but they don’t, not to the rangers.
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the bluntness of the American west. It’s not rolling or gentle like the Appalachian Mountains and their transition to the plains and the forests that blend and meld. No. The raw force of snow and ice that engulfed northern Wyoming starts and stops, the geysers explode and the buffalo block roads. They don’t care about you. You, me, we, are guests, maybe closer to mosquitoes or squirrels to the bears and bison, if only we could be as harmless.
And rangers see this, the people who have worked there year after year. But it takes time, and effort, and appreciation. All ideas that the park does not provide, the land does, and the car-burdened tourists don’t go to see the land, they go to see the park. Untill they are mauled by a bear or moose, and then it smacks them in the face, or arm, or leg.
We went to the backcountry for two days and camped by a river, talking about Emily and ‘ time in the park, and what they’d be doing. I slept in a hammock. Burned my eyebrows making breakfast.
Outside the parks north entrance arch, there’s a town with the worst kind of memorabilia, the kind that other people manufacture and acts as a a substitute for memories which people use but never had. But they had Internet access and coffee, so we spent time there before the girls moved into there new house. We met two film students who were making a documentary and invited them to stay at the house after they saw old faithful. Spencer and Lance were hysterical and crude. They brought the Jamison.
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