The first national park

Yellowstone is a magical, surreal place. It’s the World’s First National Park, an absolutely astounding, visionary move if you consider it took place in 1872.

It occupies 8,987 square kilometers – larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined - and only about 5% of it has paved roads and things like bathrooms or warming huts. The rest is wild. Let me tell you what I mean by wild: Luca and I were snowshoeing not that far from the lodge and saw, less than 50 feet away, a herd of bison galloping by.

Because we went in the winter, we saw a great variety of wildlife, from bald eagles to mule deer to coyotes to wolves. (While I was there, I read a book about the re-introduction of wolves into Yellowstone after their complete and utter extermination - I won’t break your heart with the details - so I know what a privilege seeing wolves was.)

Some aspects of the park are hard to believe even as they unfold before your eyes. Let me tell you about my most favorite: (at the risk of revealing I have the criteria of a 13 year old boy.)

A big area of Yellowstone (72 by 48 kilometers of it) is the caldera of an active supervolcano. The park has more than 10,000 thermal features and more than 300 geysers. This means that you can be walking around (we were) and all of a sudden see a sparkling pool of clear blue water shoot up into the sky (we did).

If you look into the horizon, the view is sweeping and vast and the skies are bigger than anywhere else – but interrupted by tall streams of steam as far as your eyes can see.

There are boiling pools of mud. You hear bubbling, gurgling, gushing sounds and see surfaces where the hot water has splashed and melted the snow and left behind blue and yellow and red marks on the surface of the Earth.

Consider Old Faithful, a geyser that erupts into a huge jet of hot water more or less every 94 minutes. 3,700 to 8,400 gallons of water are expelled each time, and just prior to the eruption, the water temperature at the vent is 204 degrees Fahrenheit (95.6 degrees centigrade.)

If you didn’t already know that all this was there, wouldn’t you think I was making it up? Isn’t it incredible that such a place actually exists? 

Photo by Luca, taken in Yellowstone National Park

I'm late I'm late I'm late

I know I know I know. My self-imposed blog-once- a-week rule of thumb is…limping. I have plenty of perfectly acceptable excuses, though: the holiday season, a one week trip to Yellowstone – everyone knows there is no coverage of any kind there - in the heart of a historically cold winter (numb fingers, even if there had been coverage), and a momentous birthday. (You try downplaying the fact you’re turning 40!)

On top of all this, since late November I’ve had way more work than usual. Given that many close friends have called me to tell me they have been laid off, I feel incredibly lucky and doubly duty bound.

And, did I mention my cold? I tried to work through it instead of pamper it (partly because I decided I was stronger than the virus, and partly because I was working under deadline), which resulted in my body demanding I sleep practically through a whole weekend (I complied.)

Which brings me to January 15.

I have a lot I want to tell you (and although they are all things I should have already told you, now it will have to be in the following weeks.) Our magical trip to the first national park in the United States. What I got for my birthday and how much I love her. The single New Year’s resolution I’ve decided upon. And, finally, what I’m going to commit to in my continued efforts to be environmentally responsible (it’s big, daring and geeky).

So, don’t give up on me.

 

Photo by Luca – outskirts of Yellowstone National Park

Hopeful

Maybe what I worry about fret over what I regret the nightmares the suspicions the doubts conclusions it might all be a lot simpler more linear I make too much of everything it’s all in my head

 

Photo: www.biology.arizona.edu

Parents

You like an intruder left pieces of yourself in my heart a long time ago so many years later I still come across buried relics and dust them off whether they are pertinent or not to the world I live in even if I disagree with what they represent I still love them because it was you who left them there

Photo: www.snellvilleumc.org

Luca becomes an American

Liar

In silence I admonish my lack of courage you are so afraid of everything so small you don't know what you are doing this is the end of the line then you ask if I am happy if I know who I am I open my mouth to confess to let it out but find it impossible to say this aloud it would not ring true

There is a liar in me and I will beat her every morning 

Photo: www.realsimple.com

Your night/my night

I envy you your sleep smooth and innocent your breath heavy your legs jerking as you dream you play soccer my nights gutted hollowed out at best short spurts of me nodding off scattered jumps in the dark short ragged episodes of different nightmares that flap like a torn up flag eight hours marked by the rhythm of your sweet deep sighs your reassuring light satisfied snores I wake up worn down worn out to see you stretch to hear you say with swollen sleepy eyes you don’t think you rested all that well

Photo: sos.noaa.gov