John Wise - Photo of the Day from Phoenix Arizona

Going south we require a tracked vehicle, specifically, a Mattrack snowcoach. At the wheel for our afternoon trip to the Norris Geyser Basin is Tyrene one more time. The bumpy drive down is gray and getting colder, only a few bison are spotted in the distance. At Obsidian Cliff the vehicle comes to a stop for us to learn about and see the obsidian embedded in the cliff on our left. About 180,000 years ago a lava flow here quickly cooled, probably buried under a glacier, and formed obsidian. For centuries Native Americans made arrowheads and spear points with this form of volcanic glass, then used them for trade with other tribes with some pieces being found as far away as Oklahoma. Amazing what we can learn here in the park.

Another stop is in order here on the Grand Loop Road traveling south. Five-hundred feet south of Nymph Lake is Frying Pan Spring and fumarole. With the windows down we listen to the escaping gas as it hisses, passing through tiny pebbles and stone forming little bubbles of water boiling out of the earth sounding indeed like a sizzling frying pan. On the other side of the coach are steaming hot water pools over shallow clay and mud craters, with a hint of bacteria growth tinting areas green. How easy it could be to get lost in the intricate patterns and rippling waters, the sounds and smells of even the most insignificant roadside features that many probably pass by without a second thought.

As if on cue the sky begins to part, the sun emerges, blue is the new background that will remain the backdrop for the hour and a half we are afforded to tour the Norris Geyser Basin. With our Yaktrax pulled on to our boots and the temperature comfortable enough to that our outer shells are left in the vehicle, Caroline and I depart company with the group and head towards Porcelain Basin while Tyrene takes the remainder to the Back Basin.

Depending on the average age and condition of the group members, the pace and amount of features seen can be greatly encumbered, and the group is encouraged to stick together, limiting our time to get lost examining in minute detail those bright shiny objects we find ever so interesting. Furthermore, our selfish desire to not listen to the comments or occasionally inane attempts at sulfurous humor urge us to break away on our own. For all of you who feel compelled to equate nearly all you see and do to something you once saw on television, please stop the narration. Those of us who do not participate in that form of entertainment cannot relate nor do you best exemplify your experience when blurting out that you once saw this or that on some random program. Pardon my grump; I'll try to keep my lament contained to this one time.

While Caroline insists I have seen the Norris area looking so beautiful before, to me this was the most spectacular sight on these boardwalks ever. With a mere ninety minutes to cover an area that can easily consume a day, we waste no time and walk two or three more feet to view the same relative area from a slightly different angle. After uttering another series of “oohs” and “aahs” we do the unthinkable and move from our perfect perspective taking up a perch yet another two or three feet from where we just were and would you believe it? Even stronger, more emphasized “OOOHS” and “AAAHS” follow. I wouldn't bet against that an occasional “WOW” fell from our lips.

There are moments when light, shadow, steam, and sparkle are so overwhelming that we stand in awe, admiring how perfect the nature of this scene is as it stands before us. The path has been tamped down; the narrow center of the boardwalk is surrounded by fluffy deep fresh snow. We trudge up the trail towards steam plumes that pull us forward.

Jets of steam are pulsing and rushing from vent holes. Hot Springs and geysers are obscured by billowing clouds rising into the blue skies with lodge pole pine trees in the background delineating the border between geyser basin and the world at large. An orchestra develops from the various earthly wind instruments hissing and bellowing, joined by bubbles of water and gas boiling out of the gravel.

Birds chirp above, flittering between branches while flowing hot water glides over orange, red, brown, green, black, and yellow bacteria mats. At millions of times per second dissolved minerals are building new geyserite deposits, promising us a future we won't recognize even if our memories could recall the minutiae of detail. Clouds glide by as the steam dissipates and the entire scene is built anew, again and again.

Terrence McKenna once said, “The further you go, the bigger it gets”, here at Yellowstone that idea could be explored by close examination of the thermophile bacteria mats. From above, a splotch of gooey, bumpy, slimy looking stuff, but down close, down on your hands and knees as you hang precariously over the edge of the boardwalk, as you risk planting your face in acidic hot water for a closer look at just what is this bacterial mat stuff anyway, you see an entire universe of possibility. How many layers of this fibrous tendril like thread structure are there below what I can see? Will the broken geyserite pebbles that alter the flow of water, even changing the color of the bacteria that lies in its shadow, be the building blocks of something yet to be seen with its own astounding characteristics? The filaments flutter and dance, waving from side to side like so many fish swimming up stream as we lose ourselves in trance to the spectacle. You see, ninety minutes for one who is curious is barely enough time to examine even a small patch of magic that exists on these geyser basins.

And that is just what we see in thirty-seconds in one spot. Move ten feet up the boardwalk and the shifting shadows, sounds, and smells create a near entirely new experience. We long to linger, we dream of a day when we can return to Yellowstone and spend unmeasured time with each location that demands our attention. The main tourist season when we are allowed our own car to whisk us from location to location, it will then once again be our choice how long we will tolerate the ever present throngs of crowding, often loud fellow visitors, but during the winter we are delivered by and scooped up by the immutable schedule of the snowcoach. But we are alone. The human rock concert of screams singing to the beat of feet running over boardwalks erases the subtle sounds we proffer greedily standing here in the crystal cold blue of our perfect day at Norris. I say perfect day because we cannot allow our short hour and a half to be a limitation – we are in an infinite moment, our eyes transfixed on the immensity of the universe of Yellowstone growing larger in our ever expanding imagination.

Recognition that the weather and availability of sunshine is not as predictable as this geyser basin that will continue hissing, sputtering, and boiling away, we break the fall into hypnotic state and move again. We exit beauty and find majesty. A collection of perfection is growing while we mush over trail to amazement found in dazzlement at how snow collects and covers fence, bush, and tree.

The wind shifts the steam; clouds fill a new corner of forest and sky. I fight the impulse to photograph so much that if I were to snap more photos, I would probably be better served to simply shoot video. I have heard more than one nostalgic grumble from an old timer who stops short of sneering at the wasteful amateurishness of those who have picked up digital photography and our ever growing capacity to shoot a thousand photos a day. And while I often think of Ansel Adams waiting for that special moment before exposing his expensive large format film to light that was to become a classic in landscape photography, I am of a different generation, here for my own memories, and cannot help myself in trying to recognize a thousand special moments a day.

By the time we are half way through the Porcelain Basin I feel like I've shot a thousand photos already. Time is starting to chase us as I began the climb up the hill, Caroline would have to be prodded from her hunched over position on the boardwalk still mesmerized by the mottled surfaces of bacteria mats that according to her can only be truly appreciated when one is but inches above the water on the precipice of the edge. I wait on the trail as she indulges herself. Anyway, I'm content to catch my breath and gaze out over this spectacular scenery.

With a half hour left before we must rejoin our group, the trail leads us to Steamboat Geyser. The wheels of our mind try to convince us we can speed march the Back Basin but the magnetic world of possibility tricks us into watching Steamboat with an idea that it's not impossible this geyser can actually erupt during the very moments we are standing here.

No matter that it hasn't erupted since 2005. Luck might be on our side! I'm still almost certain that it could have erupted and I am sure it will yet happen, but not while we were to be the witnesses who would have the good fortune to experience the worlds highest geyser do what it does so infrequently. Our guide Tyrene had mentioned on our drive to the Basin that she missed Steamboat’s last eruption by a quarter of an hour. With a mere ten minutes left we debate running downhill to see just one more geyser, Echinus Geyser is almost right there, its just down.....

We stop to take our photo. This hasn't occurred very often on this visit. Our eyes and minds so transfixed by our environment we scarcely find time to recognize one another. From previous visits to Yellowstone we are well aware of how fleeting our time in the park feels when just days before we couldn't see the end of our trip and before we know it, we are driving away for what could very well be our last ever visit to this corner of Wyoming in America's wild lands.

Beginning our short trek away from the Back Basin feels like leaving the park for we are leaving the Norris Geyser Basin with the knowledge these are the final minutes here. Any and all impressions we are going to carry with us of this particular winter sojourn are being captured and stored. Those areas not seen will remain unseen as time will not allow even a glimpse into those corners we could not visit.

Our path leads us out of this wintery wonderland of steam and delight. Just around the corner we will return to civilization albeit not one that in any way is similar to the one writ large in the metropolis we are going to find ourselves once again in five days. The civilization we are about to find ourselves reintegrating with momentarily is the society of schedules, complaints, and motorized vehicles. For a brief time we escaped the trappings of mass shared reality and were afforded the luxury of communion with a bigger world around us, free of the noise we encumber our life with.

Just one minute more to glimpse the light gleaming over the untouched, sparkling, soft snow. This affect of witnessing a sight so beautiful that maybe only the passing of decades of experience and being inundated with artifice can eyes begin to appreciate the subtle beauty no object of man's creation can hope to imitate. While said before, it bears saying again; we stand in awe and humble ourselves before thine greatness. Here in Yellowstone one finds god in nature and the nature of god.

Rumble and bump, groan and hiss, the snowcoach awakes from its slumber to carry us back. We sit in stunned silence still gawking at the munificence nature has on parade as our windows offer us a view of what we are now only allowed to see in passing. All too fast snow covered trees come into view and are gone just as quickly. On our left, here comes a lake, there it goes too. The sun is sinking ever lower in the sky, while we race to find our way out of the trees to a clearing for a panoramic view of the landscape bathed in all the glorious colors of sunset.

Swan Lake Flat is only hundreds of feet in front of our slow moving snow taxi with the light and colors of sunset moving faster than we are. In a minute or two we passengers rave in unison with a chorus of expressed manna, each afforded a thousand beautiful sunsets in one. By the time our vehicle rolls to a stop a band of luminous hot orange glow is all that remains of what seconds before was a symphony of light reaching a crescendo pitch that danced upon the clouds and behind the mountains. Our mind’s eye will never be the same; we have seen a sunset that all other sunsets will now have to compare.

Had you rested with a brief nap, it would have stolen you of this experience. It would be forever lost for it lasted but seconds. The sky was just as quickly divided between various shades of blue with an onslaught of approaching gray. And with the last flicker of sunlight, twilight laid in to grip land, animal, and human alike in its encroaching cold. Welcoming the warmth of body and engine that would hug us for the remaining few miles we return to the final leg of our drive in the metallic cocoon birthed by Mother Chevy.

One last look, one last glance at the poorly illuminated land of Swan Lake Flat. Even in the poor light just before night overtakes day, the emotions wrought by Yellowstone tug at the desire for more. Sad but grateful, a day over but one of extraordinary charm, it will be but a few more minutes before we touch down at the hotel and collect the parachute of experience that delivered us safe and rewarded to where our day began.

Thinking that somehow the day was over, that the wow factor was being diminished as routine and darkness shrouds out exploration, that line of thinking proved wrong. Following dinner and a hot tub under a starry clear sky, Caroline and I made ourselves cozy in the Map Room here at Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel just as Park Ranger and Interpretive Historian Carissa Black was beginning a talk about the Wilderness. Her program was far more interesting than I had first anticipated leaving us with serious food for thought about how our role as visitors affects wilderness and just what is wilderness anyway. After the talk we snagged her attention to discuss some of her points and she recommended I read “Confessions of a Barbarian” by Edward Abbey, “Searching for Yellowstone” by Paul Schullery, and “Wilderness and the American Mind” by Professor Roderick Nash. The first two I now own, the third I am awaiting confirmation from the Ranger if that is in fact the correct title. And the very best bit of information given us was actually directed to Caroline, “There is no age restriction for qualifying to become a Junior Ranger”!