Add: Ignore the date, but this’ll give you an idea of our route. Red is what we did, blue what we should have. Tack was camp on Saturday night. Maps are useful…
It’s solar-ly autumn around here, and the wind yesterday felt like winter. Yellowstone’s autumn is different than most places.
Was the KMC really just three months ago?
On the drive back yesterday I was listening to The Thistle and Shamrock, and in the course of introducing a (very nice) fiddle tune, the hostess discussed the broad emotive range of said instrument, how it was capable of everything from making one want to get up and dance to much more complex, nuanced (darker) emotions. Which got me thinking; why is joy so often skipped over as simple? I think it’s a cultural piece, a cop out, and that joy and elation and happiness are the most variegated of feelings. And perhaps the hardest to communicate well. The hardest to communicate with satisfaction.
This weekend’s backpacking trip would be a convenient example. We got lost (because I planned for us to hike off the map). We followed boggy bison trails. We camped in the rain in a bear management area. We found ourselves, we bushwacked over a pass and down the other side. We found the trail. We got to Saturday night’s camp site a little before 1300 Sunday. We saw big elk. We saw big bison. We heard wolves howling in tune with wind shrieking through the tops of many dead trees. I saw a fresh wolf track right in the center of a fresh bison patty. I said “Whoa!” when I came back towards the fire from getting water Sunday and saw a big male bison walking through camp, about 50 feet from Chris. My pants got soaked and dried out many times, and my shoes did so partially several times and completely once.
We enjoyed being in a corner of the world were the imprint of human’s was very slight, and the imprint of other mammals was large and distinct. Many times over the weekend I could smell wildlife, at large. I’ve only been to places so wild a few other times, and only once before (in Alaska) in a place so wet and filled up with big life.
We saw a lot of bear tracks and crap (of both species), but not one bear.
We did see wolf heads, from the road, waaaay off in the distance.
We hiked around 30 miles Saturday, 26ish Sunday, and 9 (plus 28 miles hitchhiked) Monday. The plan did not go as planned, but I don’t think anyone minded. I do now know that consecutive days in excess of 25 miles demands more diligent foot conditioning.
Chris has electronic records, and we’ll have to wait for him on that one.
Can’t sum it up, other than to say it was one of the best trips (of a so far very, very full) this year. You just had to be there.
Joy is complicated and overlooked, because our culture is so often cowardly (all the people who refused to give us eye-contact while we tried to hitch!), and joy is Kantian-ly, yold school, sublime.
Sublime.
Bedrock & Paradox 
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