Yellowstone ramblings

Drive west, and the corn and soybean fields gradually give way to wheat and milo, which gives way to rangeland and cattle, which gives way to sagebrush and the occasional bug-eyed antelope. Keep going, and you’ll eventually find a place where it appears that hell hath boiled over.

Welcome to the super volcano that’s known as Yellowstone.

Some years ago, my wife and I undertook an expedition to Yellowstone. Why? “Because we’re adventuresome” or “We like to learn new things” would be good answers, but in truth, I was inspired by the Yogi Bear cartoons I watched as a kid.

After white-knuckling through two mountain ranges, we finally arrived at Yellowstone. As we neared Lake Yellowstone, my wife wrinkled her nose and glanced at me accusingly. “It wasn’t me,” I protested.

For once, it wasn’t. The park’s volcanism causes many areas to emit a sulfuric odor. Yellowstone smells farty.

Yellowstone is a land of steam and snow. At the end of May, snow was still thick in the high country while steam rose from the shores of frozen Lake Yellowstone.

Steam pours from random openings in the earth, as if someone is running a humungous underground clothes dryer. These are called fumaroles, from the Latin “fuma,” meaning “really stinky,” and “role,” meaning “hole in the ground.”

There are also geysers. More than half of the planet’s geysers are in Yellowstone, including the most famous of them all, Old Faithful.

The Old Faithful site is highly civilized, featuring a historic log hotel, paved roads, T-shirt vendors and so on. A section of road had just been upgraded, and steam wafted from the new roadcut.

Old Faithful erupts approximately every 90 minutes. We had time, so we waited on the benches provided by the National Park Service.

We heard voices from all over the world. People were speaking French, Russian and Italian. I chatted with folks who were from Germany and saw others who hailed from India and Eastern Asia. It was as if the UN had convened in the midst of the steamy, smelly wilderness.

Old Faithful doesn’t go off with a bang. Its eruption builds slowly, in fits and starts, huffing and chuffing and burping puffs of steam like a balky locomotive. As with many highly anticipated events, it was over much too soon.

Strolling from the viewing area, I was stopped by an elderly gentleman who asked if he’d missed the eruption. I said it had just finished.

 “Was it worth it?” the old guy asked. I said it was. Besides, how many times do you get to sit and watch a scheduled geyser? He decided to hang around for the next eruption, so I can truthfully say I sent a geezer to the geyser.

We decided to drive around the park to see what else we could see. Wildlife, especially bears, was high on our list.

It wasn’t long before we encountered a herd of bison. They lumbered slowly across the road as if they owned it. We weren’t about to challenge the horned herbivores’ perception.

Cars clustered at the roadside marked the site of several grazing elk. The elk were so accustomed to being photographed that I wouldn’t have been surprised if a tourist posed with his arm around an elk’s neck.

We soon became adept at spotting wildlife. The main spoor we followed was clumps of cars parked at the roadside. Another useful sign was photographers who had miniature Hubble telescopes bolted to their cameras.

We stopped at one such cluster and were treated to the sight of a lone wolf nonchalantly loping along in the distance.

I spoke to the guy next to me and learned that he was Mike Hassell, a volunteer ranger at the park. I asked him about Yellowstone’s wolf population.

 “We have nine packs and about 120 wolves,” he said. “That’s down from about 300 some years ago. Before the wolves were reintroduced, the park had around 14,000 elk; it now has roughly 10,000. The slow and the stupid elk are no longer with us.”

Hiking up to the yawning basin that’s known as Excelsior Geyser Crater, my glasses suddenly fogged over. This had nothing to do with the fact that I was walking briskly uphill at 8,000 feet of altitude. A cloud of steam had billowed over me, exposing me directly to the heat of Earth’s beating heart. I now know how it feels to be a steamed carrot.

We never saw any bears, which was a huge disappointment. They must have been out in the forest, doing whatever it is that bears do in the woods.

My guess is they were enjoying picnic baskets.

Jerry Nelson is a recovering dairy farmer from Volga, South Dakota. He and his wife, Julie, have two sons and live on the farm where Jerry’s great-grandfather homesteaded over 110 years ago. Feel free to email him at [email protected].