Yellowstone, Pt. 9: Some Photos

UPDATE: I recently learned that The Chemist got some kind of recycling job, so he is now a recycler in real life. In the story, he will continue being The Chemist. This update had the sole purpose of making everything less clear and more confusing.

Part 8

After waking up, The Chemist goes to start a fire so we can cook breakfast. Some campers come over and complain about the smell of our self-lighting charcoal, which is apparently oppressive. We apologize and use wood instead.

One shoe is visible in this picture. Whom does it belong to? You will never know.

The Chemist and I are still refusing to purchase firewood, so we use more of the stuff we collected. It's passable, but just barely. C- overall.

I decide to take pictures of the elk and bison right in our campground. During this time, The Recycler, The Chemist, and The Sojourner are all sitting around the fire, talking idly.

When I come back, they inform me that a nearby camper approached them and said, "Really nice Bible study you guys are having," then left.

Here is some stuff I left out of the narrative, because I didn't think it would be important: There are no Bibles in our campsite. No one was discussing anything regarding religion. In fact, all four of us are atheists. This other camper apparently thought three people sitting around a campfire early in the morning meant a Bible study was happening. In fact, she was happy at the amount of Jesus he saw in each of us. She saw us a beacon against sin in the wilderness, the same way I see Bright Spot.

Even worse: We had discussed doing a podcast together called "Four Atheists Read The Scripture" (FARTS, a name I came up with), in which we would read the Bible and discuss it secularly. (Mmm, secularly.) I guess this could be a "Bible study" in the loosest sense, although I imagine it's far from what that camper expected.

I suggest to get a Bible app on our phones and actually have a Bible study, and invite the camper to join us. This plan does not work because I have no service, and the other three are unwilling. I sigh. None of them ever want to do anything fun.

The plan for today is to visit Grand Teton National Park, which is something fun. We all jump in the van.

We first visit a lake, where there is a giant log:

The lake is teeming with insects. They are everywhere, swarming, not unCruiseAmericalike.

The Chemist wants to push the log in the water, just like when we threw that stick in the water back in Part 5. This time, we are older and wiser, and do not attempt it.

The lake has a view of some Tetons, their peaks obscured by fog.

The nearest path is called Lakeshore Trail, and we hike on it for a while.

Another of my favorite pictures from this trip.

I could go on about the serenity and beauty of nature, the austerity, the grandeur, the purity; I could use thick, juicy words like this to try and plant some piece of my experience into your mind -- but it reminds me of the difference between reading Henry David Thoreau, and experiencing the scenes he wrote about. The difference is immense. Even if I could find the best words, and even if I could put them in the right order, you will still not feel what I felt hiking around that place. The only way to get the most out of this blog post is to go see the scenes yourself.

After a good half-day of hiking around, The Sojourner and The Chemist become nervous about bears, so we turn around and head back home.



We drive home from the Grand Tetons and debate whether we should visit one more attraction. In the end, The Sojourner stays back at camp while the three of us move on to Dragon's Mouth Spring and the surrounding mud pools, fumaroles, and hot springs. They are the same as always: Churning, boiling, frothing and steaming over. It is surprising how such an extraordinary geothermal phenomenon has become mundane. I meditate again, this time to the sound of bubbles.

Before we head back to camp, we decide to spend some time sitting and talking by the vast Yellowstone lake. The surrounding forest frames the wide expanse of the lake and far-off mountains. It is before sunset when we sit down, and we talk until the moon is shining in full force. For me, this moment is when the trip feels less like a checklist, and more like authenticity. We talk about things and make some dumb videos. There is no haste to move on to the next sight to see. It is simply a moment shared between friends in the wilderness. I consider the extreme commercialization of Yellowstone. It seems like everything railroads you onto a consumerist, tourist type path. It's not surprising, but this is the moment I feel separated from it all.

Yellowstone, Pt. 8: Drone Strikes, Ranger Danger, And Bearbox Hypotheticals

Part 7

Whilst driving around, we notice an abundance of vehicles bearing the Cruise America logo. They are everywhere, swarming, overbearing in their sheer numbers. As we pass Cruise America after Cruise America, I begin to think of them not as individual vehicles each containing unique human beings, but as a homogeneous hivemind, a collective group of mindless drones all tasked to  ACCOMPLISH TOURISM. At first, "tourism" and "unthinking mob" seem incompatible to me. Then, I actually think about a group of tourists.

If a fleet of Cruise Americas coagulates into an attack, I will call it a "drone strike". It is much easier to dehumanize and label groups than individuals. In this case, the Cruise Americas have not been condemned by their action or their intent; merely their quantity. If a Cruise America makes some kind of driving error, it seems more egregious than a non-Cruise America error. Human nature and tribalism at work.

Earlier, while pulling into our campsite, The Chemist is "pretty sure" he ran over a slip of paper. We think the paper is some random litter the wind carried to us. This is not true.

When we exit the van and try to start cooking dinner, we discover our grill is missing. It was sitting on the picnic table when we left, and it's not there anymore. We check the bear-proof boxes (explicably called "bearboxes") scattered around the campsite, which are apparently difficult to open even by the dexterity of the human hand, check the van, tent. Nothing. We conclude the grill has been stolen.

To make matters worse, one of us goes to use the restroom and find that someone has pooped on the floor. It smells terrible -- Even now, I can softly close my eyes and recollect the odor. Doesn't look too bad though, if I'm being dishonest.

A park ranger approaches our campsite. She informs us we left our grill, a bear-attracting machine, out in the open. So, she took the initiative to stow it in a bearbox. It is the closest bearbox we didn't check. This is basic camping stuff, you guys. You don't leave bear-attracting stuff out in the open, ever, for any reason. I mean, come on, it's even in the little leaflet we gave you when you drove in on Day 1. How did you not put your grill away? You morons. This is what the ranger says, only in much nicer terms. She concludes by telling us to enjoy the animals right in our backyard.

We hang our heads. It wasn't supposed to be like this. We were supposed to be smart, self-aware, responsible campers. Instead, we endangered the campsite and forced the park ranger to waste her valuable time giving us a talkin'-to, when she could have been doing other things, such as conserving, or protecting, or using the restroom. Literally anything would have been more useful, if we had only remembered to put our grill away. But our laxity has cost her precious minutes of her time alive on this green Earth, and as death inexorably approaches her, we will know we joined hands with the Grim Reaper, and sent her into His cold embrace that much faster.

She did her job and defended the campsite against hungry bears. We did not do our job and made entering the campsite more appealing to those same bears.

As it turns out, the piece of paper The Chemist saw earlier was a park ranger note telling us not to leave grills out in the open. Apparently she left the note without securing it (e.g. by putting a rock on it), so it blew away at the first gust of wind. Oops.

Throughout dinner, we construct various hypothetical scenarios. In one scenario, the park ranger comes up to our tent and starts scattering bear bait around it, then complains, "Ugh, you can't keep letting me do this, you guys. Bear are attracted to bear bait left out in the open." In another scenario, she hides away all our stuff in a bearbox, going what is known as "a little too far." In another, she destroys our grill and goes off to hide in a bearbox herself, then jumpscares us when we try to find our grill. In another, she seals us all in bearboxes permanently, going what is known as "way too far." In another, she puts on a bear costume and paws our tent in the middle of the night, making bear noises all the while, to make good and sure we learned our lesson. In another, she takes off her human costume to reveal that she was actually Three Ninety Nine, a bear, the whole time.

Eventually, none of these scenarios came true, and none of them will ever happen. They were merely distractions to offset the reality of our own blunder. Some men are born mediocre. Some achieve mediocrity. Some have mediocrity thrust upon them.

We go to bed early that night, which The Recycler says makes him feel like a "scrub camper", because most of the other campers are still awake. Others think it's wrong to deny their upper eyelids from joining their lower eyelids in sweet embrace. Others win out in the end.

Next time: A Bible study and the Grand Tetons.

Part 9