I Love Airplanes

I write to you on a flight from New York to Denver, tens of thousands of feet above the surface of the Earth. The plane I’m in amazes me. It is rotund. Pudgy. Snub-nosed. Its wings are too short. It weighs thousands of tons. Yet it soars through thunderstorms, conquers thousands of miles in mere hours, laughs in the face of gravity's hubris. I can press my nose against the window and be an inch away from sky.

I love takeoff. There’s a moment when I don’t think the plane will make it, at least not this plane, this cumbersome, ugly land whale. Remove the wings — those too-short, too-thin pieces of flimsy plastic and rickety metal — and what we have is a metal sausage with windows. But to my consistent astonishment, takeoff goes smoothly, just as as it has thousands of times before. And we somehow gain altitude, and there’s that brief moment of weightlessness that makes my nine year old brother think something’s gone terribly wrong. And we make a turn, during which the left wing dips so low my brother now thinks two things have now gone terribly wrong. I laugh and tell him to look out the window, to enjoy the view.

We look at the city of New York together, sprawling out beneath us in all its horizonless glory. I love how busy it is, how densely all the buildings fit together, the gridlike patterns and meandering alleyways, the blend of civic planning and organic expansion. I imagine what the land looked like before human habitation, then try to envision a time-lapse between then and now — the first settlers in wooden cabins, the development of the harbor, the construction of the railroads, the rapid industrialization process, the factories and bulldozers, the skyscraper scaffolding. The depth and richness of the city’s history gives me goosebumps.

I feel big. I loom over New York. Its streets are no larger than the veins on the back of my hand. I can hold up my thumb to the window and blot out an entire industrial zone. Yet at the same time, I feel small. The sheer size of the city overwhelms me. Each fleck of light I can see -- and I can see thousands -- represents stories I will never know, relationships I will never understand, experiences I will never have. It's overwhelming, in quiet sort of way.

Soon, the city disappears from view, and we are in a storm cloud. The turbulence does its best to upset our somehow-not-unairworthy craft. Lightning is all around us, the rain hammers down, but it feels more like a mild case of hiccups than the wrath of Mother Nature. Again, I feel awe. When we exit the storm, I look out the window and see a carpet of white clouds beneath us, as if heralding our emergence.

I am so close to the stars.

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

Yellowstone, Pt. 7: In Which I Might Actually Discuss The Beauty Of Nature For Once

Part 6

The mandatory Old Faithful visit is done. It is at this time the trip begins to feel like a checklist, a connect-the-dots-enterprise with as much freedom as an actual connect-the-dots enterprise. There is nothing wrong with that; in fact, I'm not sure how it could be any other way, but for some reason it feels a little artificial to me. Maybe I'm just a terrible tourist.

Some people fall asleep on the car, so The Chemist and The Recycler spontaneously decide to take us to a third waterfall: Gibbon. We get to the waterfall parking place. The view is grand:

Below is a collapsed beaver dam. We saw many beaver dams during the trip. I thought this was really cool.

We sit here for a while. The sound of the water is loud, but not harsh; ceaseless, but not tiresome. For me, listening to it is a profoundly peaceful experience.

Prior to the trip, I'd been earnestly attempting to meditate, and failing miserably. I understood that meditation is about getting rid of the inner monologue endlessly going through my mind, a voice of insecurity and worry and stress. It is hard to eliminate this voice because it's on all the time. It is a default setting.

Listening to the waterfall somehow makes it easy. At first, I contemplate the water perpetually and inevitably crashing into the rocks, compelled by gravity, the monotony of it, the eternalness of it.

It occurs to me that some people live mundane lives: Wake up, go to work, come home, pay the rent, watch TV. Lather, rinse, repeat. Some people get bored because there is nothing to do. Some people go skydiving and set things on fire. Politicians dictate the rise and fall of nations, they go to war, they try to increase their own power, they struggle to please an insatiable constituency. Scientists make astonishing discoveries and try to secure funding. Janitors purify buildings, ward away disease, make our hypocritical indifference towards our own environment tolerable. People fall in love and enact revenge.

Throughout all of this, the waterfall at Yellowstone is flowing. It does the same thing every second, oblivious to the romance and sorrow around it. It does not love or hate; it simply is. There is nothing else. The water itself is meditating, or at least I consider it to be, and that helps me clear my own mind.

We climb back up after a while. I do not know how long; I lost track of time down there. We drive to the hot springs so we can check off one more attraction, during which time The Chemist finds Alvin. Alvin does not look happy. Then again, Alvin's facial features have not changed ever since he was birthed in geologic chemistries I will never understand, up until someone gave him the gift of sight by gluing googly eyes on him.

As we drive, a bison comes up to the minivan:

The Sojourner informs us that bison live in the Americas, whereas buffalo live in Africa. CU Boulder has been getting it wrong. My silent, conspiratorial gasp goes unnoticed.

I am aimlessly clicking the camera at this time, which annoys The Chemist. I continue, mostly due to inertia.

In the primordial soups of being stuck in a small metal box together, proteins sythesize themselves into writhing meme-jokes compelled with all the force of the biological imperative. The Chemist, who is driving at this juncture, says the following:

"If I were playing GTA 5 right now, I'd jump this van off the cliff, do a 360, crash, take my gun out, and start shooting people and bison."

This is when I learn that in GTA, if you are in a vehicle, you take no fall damage.

Around the same time of this quote, The Sojourner asks:

"What's our ETA?"

Can you feel it? Can you see the amino acids lining up into chains, coalescing into self-modifying cells, coming alive? Can you hear the joke writing itself?

From then on, we constantly ask the driver (whoever it is) "What's our GTA?" and The Chemist comes up with increasingly violent, illegal, and physics-violating activies he would be doing if he were playing GTA instead of being in communion with three other breathing human beings.

The animal-spotting contiunes, and we manage to grab some great bear pictures:

Let's assume for the moment that Buddhism is true, and we reincarnate when we die. This bear right here has more swagger than I will ever have in every lifetime I will ever live. I mean, just look at him or her. You are looking at the definition of cool.

Check the hot springs off our list:

That is not smoke on the water. It is just steam.

See an elk on the way out:

White butt, tight strut.

Forested cliffs surround the hot springs, tall and austere. I think back to junior year of high school, when we read some Henry David Thoreau writing regarding the transcendence of nature. It occurs to me that, back then, I had no idea what Thoreau was talking about. In Yellowstone, however, I can see the awe-inspiring scenes that inspired his writing firsthand. The feeling makes me want to write some poetry myself. I compose a verse or two in my head, then scrap it. This place is too good for my words.


Next time: Ranger danger!


Part 8

Yellowstone, Pt. 6: Old Faithful, or: True Art, A Lack Of Defiance, And Redacted Images

Part 5

We wake up the next morning to a breakfast of eggs and precooked bacon. The plan is to go see Old Faithful and the various other geysers/hot springs around Yellowstone.

The drive to the geyser area takes a little under an hour, during which time Alvin negotiations between The Chemist and me crescendo. The situation is tense. I know if I find Alvin, The Chemist will not be receiving him. The Chemist knows the same thing.

We get to Old Faithful, where I take one of the best pictures of the entire trip:

When you look at Bright Spot, you gaze into the face of God. When you gaze at this sign, it's hard not to like it.

Look at that warning sign. I don't know if I've ever seen something that so perfectly captures the ephemeral nature of human life, the terrifying eternity that awaits us all, the dangers of going off the prebuilt path. This picture is tragedy. This picture is the naivete of childhood and the grief of losing a child. This picture is the unabated, callous wrath of Mother Earth and the apathy of a stranger. This picture is art.

Prior to the trip, someone told The Chemist to hike up a hill and watch Old Faithful from there. We decide to do this, judging from the lack of crowd that we will have time to look around at the surrounding hot springs and geysers before Old Faithful erupts.

One particular geyser, called the Beehive, unpredictably erupts somewhere between ten hours and five days following its previous eruption. Old Faithful far overshadows Beehive with her regularity and size. I take many pictures of the geothermal phenomena, most of which look the same.  They are all ceaselessly churning and steaming and giving off sulphurous fumes. Here is a sample:

Going swimming in this is not recommended, because it is way too small. You could barely tread water in this thing.

After seeing a sign telling tourists not to throw coins, rocks, or other objects into a boiling pool, The Sojourner suggests we throw coins, rocks, or other objects into a boiling pool. We do not, each for different reasons. The Recycler deeply respects park rangers and does not want to anger them. In fact, The Recycler wants to be a park ranger when he grows up. The Sojourner understands the underlying chemistry behind these steam vents and the negative consequences of disrupting said chemistry. The Chemist is too afraid. As for me, my excuses total to zero. But that's something my excuses and my regrets have in common.

While we are looking at hot water, I am thinking about the live supervolcano beneath us. It is an awesome thought, by which I mean it induces awe. The volcano could erupt at any time, killing thousands of people, annihilating billions of dollars of infrastructure, and blotting out the sky with ash. Such a catastrophe might bring about a second Ice Age, an Ice Age I wouldn't get to see, being dead and all. That's fine. I've seen the Ice Age movie. Plus, if "Died in supervolcano eruption" is to be my cause of death, I have no complaints. Shoutout to all the Romans who lived in Pompeii. I've got Yellowstone here -- she says, "Vesuvius ain't got nothin' on me."*

I look around at the carefully positioned walkways, the hotel, and the other tourists, and wonder what this place looked like hundreds of years ago. I wonder how mystified I would have been if I had stumbled on this place, where water is boiling, in 1442. I wonder what explanation I would have come up with. I think about science overcoming myth.

I also think about profit overcoming the environment. I do not like the state-sponsored commercialism all around me, but it is what brought me here. The paths and hotel corrupt the scene, but without them I would not be able to enjoy it. This juxtaposition between artificial and natural will recur.

The hike is strenuous, but doable. We make it to the top without Old Faithful going off behind us. The view is fantastic. I take the following picture at the top:

After admiring the hotel's architecture, I wait with a camera. Old Faithful erupts a couple minutes later. I video it. We hike back down for lunch.

We drop inside the hotel, to look at the architecture some more. I take a picture of the large clock inside:

A paragon of timekeeping.

Back out, and our lunch has taken long enough for us to watch Old Faithful erupt again, this time much closer. While we wait, the Beehive goes off:

I am lucky to have this picture, given the rarity of the occassion.

Here is a picture of the crowd around Old Faithful:

The crowd is much, much, much larger midsummer.

I withhold actual ground-level Old Faithful images. Go there and see it yourself. I hear real life has very high definition.


Part 7





*Sorry, Pompeiians. Your tragic story lives on in my heart. The readers, though, all they want is an effigy to crucify.

Yellowstone, Pt. 5: White Water, Dogmatism, And Percy Bysshe Shelly

Part 4

On the drive over to see our first Yellowstone attraction, The Chemist discovers Alvin is missing. I immediately lambast him for his negligence and boldly claim Alvin as mine if I find him. The Chemist may tell you I threatened to keep Alvin as a slave, but in that hypothetical circumstance I would exercise my Constitutional right to plead the Fifth Amendment. Molly is tucked into my coat pocket, away from all harm. She'll be safe from all the flares, although I know she doesn't care.

There is a scenic viewpoint right where we park, and a hiking trail nearby. We take the picture below and go hike. The Chemist leaves his plastic water bottle at the trail's entrance with the intention of re-getting it when we make it back out. Temporary litterer.

We discuss whitewater rafting and decide this place is too easy to be the children's introductory course, so it must be where they store the rafts before they get you started. We never make it to the observation point in the picture because we suck at tourism, unlike Macau, a place where tourism comprises over 50% of its GDP.

Notably, I was using my sister's camera, which was extremely fancy, but also conferred an inescapable touristy look as it swung below my neck. An appropriate look, but a distasteful one.

The trail goes up right next to the river:

We throw a stick into the river so we can watch it get sucked into the white water. There is a video of this, but it's a terrible video for many reasons. The stick is nearly invisible, it gets stuck before it can make it to the end, and the basic premise isn't even entertaining. That's why instead of posting the video below, I've posted a picture of a bridge. If you really want to see the video, let me know and I'll help you waste some precious seconds of your valuable time.

The constant sound of running water has a deep, calming effect on me. More on this in a future part.

The hike is pleasantly long. We quietly admire the serenity all around us until the trail hits the main road, at which point we turn back and head back to camp. The time is around 7pm.

The Chemist is eager to start a campfire and sip beverages of a very specific type around the fire. For firemaking supplies, we have self-lighting charcoal and the firewood collected earlier. The firewood is soaked through from the earlier rain/hail, but we remember how you only live once, so we put everything we have into the firepit and go for broke:

We are utterly broke at this point. We had to sell off the shoe in the picture just to have the gas money to make it back home. None of this is true. 

The charcoal catches just fine. The firewood fails to catch in spite of prolonged coaxings. It gets burnt but does not burn, an annoying non-paradox. Evidently, the secrets of combustion are unknown to such inexperienced campers. The Recycler suggests to simply buy firewood, which is close by. The Chemist and I categorically reject such a bourgeoise solution. We prefer to build our mighty fire on the mighty back of the mighty worker, like how a Mighty Duck might use a Mighty Mite and his mighty might to vacuum a mighty mite off the back of a Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger. Might makes right.

Besides, we will have plenty of time to buy firewood when we are dead from hypothermia. Firewood goes to Valhalla, and we have warrior spirits.

Dinner is hotdogs and bratwusts, which involves certain esoteric mathematical methodologies to ensure fair division, methodologies colloquially referred to as "division", complicated by the fact that The Sojouner only wants dogs and no brats, complicated slightly more by the fact that the abbreviation for "bratwurst" is the first half of "bratwurst", while the abbreviation of "hotdog" is the first half of "dogma". English makes no sense. We eventually get the math right and move on with our lives.

The Chemist wants to play the card game Mao, which I've blogged about before. Mao, unlike my opinions on Jay Z, stratifies people into two distinct groups: Lovers, and haters. (I think Jay Z is just okay.) The Chemist falls in the former category. The Recycler falls into the latter category, which wrecked the experience. We stop after one round. Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal Mao wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level night stretches far away.

I did bring a few board/card games, but none of them are playable in the dim light and awkward tent space. Outside is not an option because the wooden table is on a slope and, much like our firewood, permanently wet. As such, we go to sleep early. More time for visiting attractions the next day.

Part 6

Yellowstone, Pt. 4: Google Is God, Tent Incompetence, And Semipermeable Materials

Part 3

4 parts into a series entitled "Yellowstone", and no Yellowstone. You've waited long enough.

We drive into the south entrance of Yellowstone, passing through Grand Teton National Park and paying a $25 entrance fee. This pair of national parks is heavily commercialized, so we buy groceries before getting to the campsite. I can't imagine Teddy Roosevelt predicting the sentence "We buy groceries at the national park" would ever be used, but some of us wanted eggs to go with our precooked bacon.

The grocery store is also where we find out there is a bear named Three Ninety Nine. This name was funny at first, but now it reminds me of the vicelike anthropocentrism and commercialism endemic to our Yellowstone experience. I wish Three Ninety Nine had a different name. Less wallet-and-consumer-friendly-start-savin', more top-of-the-food-chain-magnificent-hunter-and-scavenger.

Even after getting into the park, it is a long drive to the campsite. We are camping at Bridge Bay, near Yellowstone Lake. We pass other, smaller lakes along the way. Each successive lake is the largest body of water The Chemist has ever seen. That drive broke one record several times for him.

We are driving along when, out of nowhere, Google Maps predicts an extremely high-density traffic zone. When we get to the zone, we see a large group of people pulled over, so many the parking lot is overfull. It blows my mind that Google Maps had the ability to sense and inform us of traffic like this. In fact, Google Maps did not incorrectly predict anything for the whole trip. The Sojourner is unimpressed, missing his sense of wonder just as he is missing a gem bug. Coincidence? I think not!

The people are pulled over because there are bears in the distance. They (the people, not the bears) sport binoculars and cameras with comically long telescoping lenses. We debate over whether we should stop, and end up deciding not to. The parking area is already overflowing, and setting up our tent is the first priority.

We pass more people gawking at distant animals (mostly bison), which will eventually turn out to be hilarious, because bison are everywhere. We had two bison and an elk right in our campsite. We could've gone up and touched them if we'd wanted to. But here are these crowds of shiny-eyed tourists jumping at the chance to catch sight of a tiny black dot five miles away.

Seriously, they were just right there. Here are two who happened to be in the same place we camped.

We get to the campsite and claim our reservation, choking on exhaust fumes the RV in front of us is emitting. The park worker at the booth warns us that bears are present and they can smell anything -- food, cosmetics, food wrappers, grills, boxes -- anything. I wonder why bears aren't already in the campsite, rummaging through supplies and trying to get into vehicles. Even I can smell the campfires and exhaust fumes. You'd think Three Ninety Nine would know about this place by now.

At the campsite, we split into two groups. The Chemist and The Sojourner go to the nearby forest to collect firewood, while The Recycler and I put up the tent. There is not a good tent location, as most of the ground is either sloped or very muddy. We lay down two tarps and start setting up the tent on a muddy patch. The time is a little after noon.

It starts to precipitate lightly. We have to hurry, or we will be caught tentless in the rain. Due to misunderstandings and fails, the process does not go as smoothly as possible. One fail has us putting a fiberglass pole in the wrong spot, causing the material to overbend and splinter. No worries though, we correct our mistake and it appears as though the splintered pole will be fine. That's what we tell ourselves anyway, because the rain is coming down heavily now, actually, ouch, it's coming down really heavily, and then we realize it's hailing.

Luckily, The Sojourner and The Chemist are back from their firewood expedition. We have four people to put the tent up and toss in supplies in a hailing, pressure-high situation. Fails continue. The top of the tent is just mesh; there is a cover that goes over the top of it. We fail to align the cover properly the first time, so we have to rotate it -- hang on, did we put it on upside down? Whatever, there's no time.

The temperature gets colder and we hit full-on panic mode, frantically putting in stakes that fail to find purchase in the more-water-than-dirt ground, realizing we have no time to figure out how to push out the tent windows, guessing what we will need: Sleeping bags? Toilet paper? Board games? We throw all of these and more into the tent haphazardly, muddying pillows, boots squish-squashing in the severe mud around us, making the interior of the tent filthy. Alvin is lost somewhere in the chaos.

This is he.

.
Eventually, we manage to stabilize and get all the supplies we think we need into the tentlike thing we put up. The thing is currently sporting a splintered pole (holding steady... for now), a possibly upside down roof, and is smaller than usual because we failed to put the windows out. We huddle around, look at each other, and relish in the victory we've achieved. We made it. We showed how human-made equipment can block out nature, even when that equipment is assembled terribly.

Our mission of completely separating ourselves from nature on a camping trip is not 100% successful. It is so cold we can see our breath -- not wisps and vapors; full-on dragonbreath-steamengine-cigarsmoke style condensation. We have some superabsorbent towels, which we inevitably call ShamWows, we use to clean the tent floor. The ShamWows are highly effective and allow us to lay down, layer by layer, blankets, mats, then sleeping bags. That's six layers separating our bare skin from the cold, muddy ground: Tarp, tent floor, blanket, mat, sleeping bag, clothes. Six seems like a small number when you count it up like that. But it is enough.

The Recycler came equipped with a full raingear ensemble, or the worst Ironman suit ever: Heavy waterproof pants, heavy coat with hood, gloves, and waterproof shoes. The rest of us did not come so prepared. As such, The Recycler is the conduit between us and the outside world. Fetching supplies, fixing the tent, etc., these responsibilities all fall on his shoulders.

The Recycler looked better than what this guy tried to do, at least.

We sit back a little, consolidate. It is warm and comfortable in the sleeping bags. Someone says the tent might be semi-permeable, because they can feel water on the inside. I don't think this is the case, because (a) It took us a long time to set up, so the rooftop mesh was exposed to the rain for a long time, but, much more importantly, (b) Whoever designs a semi-permeable tent is the dumbest designer ever. That's like if I designed an unbounceable basketball, or transparent tinted windows.

After less than half an hour, the hail stops and we are ready to go see our first attraction. The Chemist has a checklist of items to view, and among them are the two waterfalls in Yellowstone.

Will we find adventure and excitement? Will we drown in the river? Will The Chemist ever recover Alvin? Find out next time.

Part 5