Historical accounts tell of a hard core, mountain man named John Colter arriving back at the trading post for the yearly rendezvous telling stories of water shooting straight into the air out of the ground and rivers so hot you could catch a trout already cooked. This fantastical land was given the name Colter’s Hell and was written off as the hallucinations of a man with no companionship for too long. Then more people discovered the area, Jim Bridger being one. Ultimately the area would become one of America’s first National Parks: Yellowstone.
It was a drive down memory lane for me this morning. I woke up from a camp at a fishing access on the Yellowstone River on Hwy 89 south toward the North entrance of the Park. The drive took me past Pray, MT and the entrance to Yellowstone Bible Camp that I attended several times during High School. I also drove by Corwin Springs, reminding me of Ben and Katie: friends that I’ve come to have a number of great adventures with. The mountains with snow on them standing in stark contrast to the brown of the rolling foothills below took me back to the wheat fields behind our house in Cut Bank, where the stubble of the now-harvested wheat fields swept west until the white peaks of the Rockies thrust up blocking their path. Then there was that family reunion on my mom’s side that brought us all together for a week. But that was a long time ago. It is interesting to see how things look familiar to you and yet totally different. I was looking at the mountains and the rivers with a renewed appreciation, with years of hunting, fishing, and climbing the mountains of my Montana home.
Herd of bison in front of steam coming from the Artists Paint Pots.
In “Colter’s Hell” this morning I was greeted in Mammoth to a herd of elk. It was cool to see them milling around and I had fun trying to memorize their shape, color, and movements so as to help my hunting chances when I get home from my trip. I got to see the beauty of terraces being built from water bubbling to the surface from deep below, depositing the minerals that it carries with it. At one point I ran around the boardwalk at the Fountain Mud Pots and saw a geyser in action, some crazy gushing water (that I found out was created in the ‘50s when an earthquake occurred 25 miles away in Montana), and the mud pots themselves dancing away their curious bubbly dance. Then there was the herd of bison crossing the road, silhouetted by steam from a nearby hot spring, a coyote pouncing on some unfortunate creature out in a field, and a white ermine literally porpoise-ing through the snow. Unfortunately I missed the gushing of Old Faithful by mere minutes. I pouted and begged it to prove unfaithful, erupting early just once for me, but alas it held to its ideals.
Upset after missing Old Faithful, which is steaming just to the left of my head.
In fact I feel like I could go on and on about the wonders of the earth that is available to see in Yellowstone: the blanket of snow created a unique atmosphere, rivers rushing over steep precipices into the boiling channel below, and more mountains than I could take in while driving. What an incredible testament to a Creator! Everywhere I looked it seemed as though I was catching glimpses of Heaven in this place dubbed a “hell.”
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