Yellowstone

Not the TV series, but the actual place. It still exists. And after 36 years, I finally was able to return to that magnificent land. I last went in 1988, just shy of my seventh birthday and what I remember from that trip is three distinct images:

1) I remember watching as Old Faithful exploded boiling hot water some two hundred feet into the air.

2) I remember seeing a river of orange liquid hot magma (said just like Dr. Evil did).

3) I remember seeing a large bison standing in the middle of a dirt street lined with old wooden buildings and my dad running after the bison to take a picture, but then standing still long enough so that we could take a picture of him taking the picture.

Of those three memories, probably only the first one is accurate. I don’t think there was actually a river of liquid hot magma, but rather a rock formation, colored orange, of sediments and perhaps dried up magma that now is just a sketch of what was in the past. And that picture of my dad running after a bison? I think the story has been told to me so many times that I simply ingrained that image in my memory bank. But it did happen…as much as I can say anything from when I was six years old happened. Funny thing about memory.

But, 36 years later, I returned to Yellowstone and cemented memories of Old Faithful blowing her top, of seeing upwards of 30 bison roaming the gorgeous plains, eating dinner in West Yellowstone at a place called Hank’s Chop Shop, which is in Montana by the way, of staying at the best KOA I’ve ever stayed at—Mountainside—and spending eight hours driving through and seeing an American national treasure—Yellowstone National Park.

My journeys of late have been few and far between, mostly camping expeditions. It’s been six years since I left the country, but seeing the beautiful Oregon coast, the Red Wood Forest in northern California, some camping in eastern Washington, Idaho and Montana, it’s been nice to switch gears a bit and head out into nature and braving the elements.

Yellowstone was everything I wanted it to be and more—except, I was hoping to catch a glimpse of a grizzly bear from my car or a moose wading out in a stream, but luck wasn’t on my side in that respect. Montana is gorgeous and can truly set the mind at ease for any city dwellers who perhaps needs a break from the hustle and flow of life.

The trip was sort of going back many years into a past that I can barely remember; or, my family can barely remember perhaps. We started our journey in Seattle and headed to Butte, Montana to see my uncle who has lived in Butte his entire 90 years of life. Butte’s changed a hefty amount since his birth in 1934. It’s a bit of a ghost of its former self. We then headed to Yellowstone and it was exactly what I had hoped it to be. There wasn’t any reminiscence of the great fire of 1989, but was missing was the nostalgia of that time 36 years ago.

I guess that’s what I have to take from the entire trip. Time changes everything always. The moments we spend in the time that we spend them in are only there for that exact season. Then, they flutter off and become something else. I’m so happy I was able to spend that short time in Butte and Yellowstone because if there is a next time, I know it’ll be different than even this last time.

Such is life.