Treasuring Yellowstone

I don't know exactly what the allure was to going to Yellowstone National Park, but I think it was everything that it offered. by the time I was 15, I had visited Yellowstone 9 times. I enjoyed seeing Old Faithful, the geyser that erupted in water spouts every hour (at that time vs 90 minutes now). I remember the bears that inhabited the campgrounds and picnic areas. Sometimes they would cross the roads and back traffic up because people would cut their engines off and start taking pictures or trying to feed them. One trip I counted over 100 bears. Regularly I would count over 70. (Today people make trips without seeing them at all). One of the main features I enjoyed was the hike to the Paint Pots. Different colored mud came boiling out of the ground in spots. Sometimes the mud was pink or orange, sometimes it was dark brown and rust, occasionally ruddy red. I remember also staying at the foot of the majestic Grand Teton mountain in Jackson Hole Wyoming. I could hike around on the lower elevations of the mountain, always dreaming of climbing to the top. Jackson Hole would have a actors at dusk ride out on horseback and act out a shooting in a saloon and an hanging in the town square.

Today I look back on the Yellowstone experience and see good times, full of beauty and excitement. Even though they are days gone by, they were and still represent the good that life has to offer. In my adulthood, I have been able to recreate that experience only once... days of beauty and excitement. I looked forward to what each day would bring during that time period... days as idyllic and majestic as the outline of the Grand Teton on the landscape, as colorful as the Paint Pots bubbling from the ground, as spectacular as the heated water of the geyser spewing 50 feet into the air at regular intervals, and as mesmerizing as the bears crossing the roads by the picnic grounds. And because the Yellowstone experience has been recreated only once in my lifetime, I hold it in the highest of highest esteem. It is sacred ground. Nothing can touch it.