home on the range

Moonrise over Yellowstone Lake
Originally uploaded by bison_on_the_piano.

I wrote this story up for a friend who shared a great Wyoming fish story about leeches, and I’m of the opinion that it’s just not right to get a good story like that without sharing one in return. This one isn’t as good as the leech story, but it’s the only Wyoming story I had handy, so it’ll have to do.

This story is only interesting because it happened at all.

Seven years into my marriage to B., one year before he decided to go his own way, two years before I found out about his new direction, and three years before the divorce decree was final, we went to Yellowstone. The trip saved us for a little while, but it wasn’t enough to save us altogether.

I had been sick too much (and hadn't yet been diagnosed or received the treatment that would cure me good), he had been working too much, and we hadn’t seen much of each other at all for awhile. So we took three days off from work and drove the distance from Seattle to Gardiner, Montana in a day.

We didn’t tell anyone that we were going. We just left.

We listened to the audiotape of a River Runs Through It on the drive. I had seen the movie, but was unprepared for the whammy that the book packed. My grandfather had died a few years before this trip, and I was missing him fiercely. He was born in Gardiner, and approached fly fishing like the sacrament that it is to most folks around there. He had one of those holy tackle boxes that I suspect your grandfather had, and his reels were all stored lovingly in purple felt Crown Royal pouches. (Bompa liked to drink almost as much as he liked to fish.)

So Maclean’s book made me think of Bompa – the father character especially -- and it also made me think of my dad – the younger son character did that – the changes he goes through with his family and the conclusions that the brother comes to by the end of the book about his brother.

My dad is a brilliant guy – but it's the kind of brilliant that’s full of heartbreak. We’ve always been close – he's close to all his kids -- and we’re both given to long, rambling philosophical wanderings -- I’ve had more long conversations about crazy things that make perfect sense with my father than with anyone else I’ve known.

But from the time I was in high school to just a few years ago he was going through some hard times financially, and after all we kids moved out of the house he headed to the hills to hide out and figure out what to do next. He was living in Green River, Wyoming on very little at the time of this story, and I hadn’t seen him since my grandfather's funeral, about two years before. I wasn’t too concerned about it – it was normal by this point – and I didn’t feel estranged from him – but I missed him.

So I sobbed my way through the last chapter of the audio book, and was thinking long and hard on my father and my grandfather and the strange terroir of the place I was in and wondering why I felt more at home there than anywhere else in the world.

It was autumn when we went, heading into winter: The grasses were golden and the buffalo and the elk were seeking out the heat of the hot springs and the geysers in the belly of the caldera, where the steam rose into the icy air.

We stayed the first night at Mammoth Hot Springs – and learned when we got there that the road we expected to take straight down to Yellowstone Lodge had just been closed for the winter. We would have to take a longer road around the next day to get where we were going. Our route would take us by the big old grand hotel on Lake Yellowstone (built in the 1890s) – I had read about it, and wrote it off in favor of going straight to Yellowstone Lodge (largest log cabin structure in the world!) and staying there for a couple of nights in a row. But since we had to go by there anyway I thought it would be cool to stay the night. I asked B. if he would be open to that. He said “No.”

I then did something unusual: even though he said no, I said, “well, I would”, and then turned to the ranger behind the desk, who was explaining all this to me, and asked if he could help me shuffle our reservations around. This probably had something to do with the fact that I’m a sucker for National Park hotels and lodges and hope to visit every one of them before I die, and also with the fact that B. had been whining about something and I was feeling impatient with him, but I like to think it also had something to do with getting the stars into alignment for what would happen next.

So we set out on our drive for the Lake Yellowstone Hotel, with all kinds of plans to stop and do all kinds of things. The sun was intensely bright that whole day – especially amazing having just come out of the drizzle of Seattle – but the wind had blown all the clouds away and there was no cover to keep the heat in – the temperatures dropped and it was getting really cold really fast. Given the wind and the cold we canceled our plans to hike down to Yellowstone Falls, and cancelled a handful of other stops as well. We did pause to see a black bear that had wondered down to the road and attracted a crowd, and to see some buffalo along the way. But our timing was nothing like we had originally planned it to be.

When we pulled into the hotel parking lot and opened our car doors the wind threw them wide open, and then swept through the car and hurled our map out into the parking lot. We knew immediately that it would be impossible to chase it down, given the speed at which it was traveling. Even still we took a few seconds to discuss whether we were going to do the virtuous thing. We decided we wouldn’t, and headed instead into the hotel.

I only tell you that because if we had chased the map, this next thing wouldn't have happened.

It was eerily still in the hotel – we’d figure out in just a little while that this was because the wind storm had knocked the power out -- but this wasn’t immediately apparent because of all the windows and the natural light that poured into the hallways. We walked the long hall from the parking lot to the front desk, and then, for some reason, instead of approaching the desk to check in, I decided to take a look at the lake.

The wind was so fierce that white caps were kicking up on the surface. It was gorgeous. It was so still in hotel without the hum of electricity that every sound was in high relief. I think it's in large part because of this that, as I was crossing to the windows to see more of the waves, I heard the sound of my father’s voice.

I didn’t hear what he said – I heard just the music of his voice. A single note. Later I learned that he had just said “thanks” to someone who gave him the time. If he had been wearing a watch I would have missed him altogether.

He was standing halfway out the doors to my left when he said it, and paused only briefly before continuing on his way to his pickup, which was still running in the circular drive in front of the hotel.

He’d been traveling to see a client when he found that a tree felled in the wind storm was blocking the road. So he circled through Yellowstone to use the telephone and let his customer know what the hold up was. And now he was about to drive off again.

But I didn’t know any of that yet: I just turned and saw him walking away. So I said: “Dad?”

And he turned with a look of complete bafflement on his face – it probably looked just like mine – and said: “Daughter?”

So then of course there were hugs and laughter and stories and he stayed for a couple of hours and we hung out in the lobby and caught up and hugged and laughed some more.

And the whole time it seemed both extraordinary and absolutely ordinary that this was happening.

And after those couple of hours had passed he said goodbye and drove off, and we checked into our room.