Where the wild things are...

I stood at the bottom of the ridge and looked up. Through the sagebrush hillside I could make out a dark shape, then two. .. I looked into my binoculars, pointing it towards where all the outstretched fingers around me indicated. With bated breath, we saw her walk into the clear- a grizzly bear in all her otherworldly magnificence, scaling the nearby hillside looking for a way down into the valley floor. And even more, she was accompanied by a cub! The frigid wind whipped around my ears, sending shivers down my spine. I could walk to her. She could walk to me. And nothing separated us. The sheer madness of the wild is breathtaking.

It is so foreign to me, me who works in an office, me who gets around in a car, me who eats frozen dinners with a staunch regularity.

And yet, somehow, I made my way to Hayden Valley, deep within Yellowstone Park. Josh and I were there at dusk and the animals, in this Garden of Eden, filled the spaces. And this, in fact, was not the only grizzly we saw. We had, in fact, seen three grizzlies total. And five black bears, one not more than 50 ft away; two bald eagles soaring through the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, the Upper Falls roaring in the background; three moose in the Grand Tetons (one of which was very young); a wolf springing through a gap in the woods and then it was gone; many many bison (two of which liked to hang out right by our cabin and pooh everywhere); and many many many elk.

We also saw countless geyers and other thermal hotspots. Turns out Yellowstone has a great caldera in it, formed by a massice volcanic eruption many many moons ago. I knew of Old Faithful, but in reality, there are geyers and fumaroles and paint/mud pots and hot springs everywhere through the park. It is not uncommon to drive through the park and see steam coming from out of the woods and to know that it is a hot spot.