Two weeks ago I went to Bozeman with Tommy, to go to get his windscreen fixed after the elk crash. We went around Target and Wal-Mart waiting for the repairman to change the screen and it amazingly took only 1 hour for him to finish it in the parking lot. We visited some second hand shops, which I was very pleased about when I bought a lot of winter items for around 1-2 dollars each. We went to eat at the Bamboo Garden, a nice Chinese restaurant; the meal before me had been plucked from the table of a king when compared to Xanterra’s food.
Last week I went with 9 Asian friends from the kitchen in a 7 person owned huge white American 4x4 to Osprey Falls, next to Bunsen Peak. The hike was 4.6 miles one way so 9.2 in total; it is my longest so far. To reach the falls we had to go to the bottom of a canyon, which seemed to simply appear from nowhere, as if forming right before our footsteps. It was a steep hike down on a thinly lined trail, making you realise how close to death you could so easily be. One girl actively chose to wear flip flops for this hike, my mind could not begin to fathom why any individual would choose this, but she seemed to cope well on the treacherous path. The falls were pretty, nowhere reaching the size of those at Canyon, but beautiful in their relatively petit volume. Trees had rooted at the curved brink and the dazzling yet water misted sun shone through their silhouetted shapes and outlined a golden crest on the falls edge. We sat and ate on a ledge reaching out to the falls, but then moved below and beside the river with its wet boulders. We watched the water dance around to its decided route and I explored to search out a dead tree in which to snap off a hiking stick; my friend Brian called me Gandalf the whole way back. Others floated their bottles in the likely snow melted river and dipped in their naked pale toes. I was the last in the row to the top, and accordingly the slowest. The sun beamed down on us, the hottest I have experienced here; my breath was quick. We saw some Mule deer on the way up, I didn’t expect to see any animal traverse such a steep slope, but they seemed to enjoy the plants. After we got out of the canyon it was all ease on the flat earth as the breeze brushed away our sun ripened cheeks.
While driving back we visited two other waterfalls - the names I have lost from memory. Although they were not as impressive; we decided that the final one should be titled a trickle and not as it was named, a fall. As we left a great and powerful storm had been rolling in; only miles behind the rain could be seen so dense in the sky, it was as if the clouds were falling in their entirety. As we drove the storm followed and overtook the car, a bold smoky grey, almost black edge stretched across the sky until only from a small crevice between the mountains could the sunset be seen to peep through. Lightning struck all around in abundance, flashing up the landscape white, in all of its vastness. It had not rained for a while, a certain rarity in Yellowstone, and as we drove back I spotted speckled bulbs of orange through the tinted windows. It appeared as a newly sprung town, as some sort of mirage as it lay in the bowl of land below Mt. Washburn. That was until I rolled down my window to see that I was actually looking at a forest fire. I gazed in bewilderment at the magnificent beauty; it was an oval ring from afar that appeared like the golden heat between smoking coals in a wintry fireplace, with the thick black sky as its chimney. I could have stayed all night just to watch it spread and glow.
My friends returned on the following day, yet to see nothing remaining of the fire except for its black ash tracks on a circle of now dead trees. However, I heard from a friend today that there was a fire still ablaze around the area which had started on that same night. I am unsure whether it is the one we saw or if it was a different one as lightning was occurring frequently; we do not hear much news.
No comments:
Post a Comment