For me, Yellowstone National Park is like no other place on earth. It is where Nancy walked into my life. It is where Nancy and I lived for two full summers during the early years of our relationship. It is the place where our children developed their love for nature. The park is where Nancy and I learned to hike and backpack. We learned, as we explored its countless trails, about flowers and trees and the interrelatedness of an ecosystem. And, most important, Yellowstone is not only where we fell in love with the outdoors and where we came to love solitude but also where we fell deeply in love.
In many ways, we grew up in Yellowstone. As Nancy and I became the people that we are today, so too did we grow and evolve. We grew together. First, as a young man and woman, then as a fledgling couple, and then, not so many years later, as husband and wife. For these reasons, Nancy and I decided to celebrate the five-year anniversary of her cancer-free recovery in the familiar, intensely meaningful, and comfortable surroundings of the park. We wanted to return to our roots. Our homecoming was a natural and very personal way for us to return to where our lives together began so many years ago.
Even today, I remember our triumphant return as if it were only yesterday. All I have to do is close my eyes and wave after wave of images, sights and sounds, and corresponding emotions take me back in time. Like the rhythmic and relentless beating of a drum, I am almost overwhelmed by the vividness and immediacy of these memories. I close my eyes and instantly I can once again see Nancy reading every word on the front and back covers of the familiar maps, edges worn from repeated unfolding and refolding, before carefully opening the map of Yellowstone fully on her lap.
“Same old map, Winnie,” she declares. “Nothing’s changed.”
“What’s your fancy?” I inquire while dropping my right arm from the steering wheel and brushing Nancy’s left cheek with the back of my hand. A quick glance reveals a crescendo of sentiment across Nancy’s face.
“I want our first stop to be Black Sand Basin.”
Black Sand Basin, a name derived from the coarse, black gravel covering much of the area that had its origin in Obsidian volcanic glass, is a small part of the massive Upper Geyser Basin best known for the Old Faithful Geyser. Located on the opposite side of the major road leading into the Old Faithful Geyser Basin Area, it is usually not crowded with people like most geyser basins. Even better, the parking lot is most often empty.
About fifteen years into our thirty-year-plus marriage, Nancy declared the basin her favorite area in the park. At the time, it was close to our living quarters and a great place to take the kids when they were young. Not only did it contain a wide range of thermal features, it had benches for relaxing in relative privacy. As an added benefit, the scenery and atmosphere encourages reflection and contemplation. For Nancy, it has always been a hidden jewel.
After parking the car and proceeding on the boardwalk along Iron Spring Creek, we feel the wind in our faces and smell the not-unexpected sulfur odor of a geyser basin. “Funny,” Nancy says as she grabs my hand, “I can remember being repulsed by that fragrance the first year. Now it smells almost good to me.”
I look at Nancy and sense the enveloping warmth of her presence. She glows from head to toe.
“This is so amazing, Winnie. I thought of this moment so often when I was in the hospital. It was dreamlike then. I doubted I would return.”
I am stunned by Nancy’s admission. (But I am not prepared to admit that there were pain-filled days and sleepless nights when I thought we would not return together either.)
“Look!” she points out. “Right on cue.”
Cliff Geyser, on the opposite edge of the creek, begins erupting as it does every few minutes all day long. After a strong eruption, about twenty feet high, the spray, like the sulfur smell, drifts our way in a mist that cools our faces. Nancy places a wet sulfuric kiss on my cheek and squeezes my hand.
As we stroll further, we observe dense steam rising from Sunset Lake. A massive thermal feature about sixty yards long and fifty yards wide, the lake’s light-blue color is ringed with yellow and orange from the algae growing along its edges. During most of our prior visits, all we could see was the steam. Not today, because the same strong gust of wind that almost blew my Mountain Trails Foundation baseball cap off my head carries the steam away from the lake’s surface, revealing the whole lake. Nancy revels at our good fortune with the giggle that I so dearly love, and then she tugs on my hand to let me know it is time to go.
At twenty-eight feet by fifty-five feet, Opalescent Pool is long and skinny. It is cooler than Black Sand Basin because its water is the runoff from the adjacent Spouter Geyser. Its opaque, medium-blue center is surrounded by deep brown on its periphery, revealing the bacteria that grow at the cooler temperature. What makes Opalescent Pool so extraordinary isn’t the pool itself but rather the trees in and around it. When the pool first formed, the hot chemicals in the water killed the lodgepole pines. Over time, the repeated rising and falling water from the geyser that feeds the pool deposited white silica to the depth of several feet at the base of each of the trees. In case I had forgotten, Nancy reminds me, “I just love those bobby sock–looking trees.”
Our next stop is Rainbow Pool, appropriately named because the entire rounded perimeter flashes and flaunts the colors of a bright rainbow. At one hundred feet across, its sky-blue middle is as clear as glass, and when I look into its depth, I can’t see the bottom. The gentle surface bubbles remind me that it is a very warm pool and to not get too close to the boardwalk’s threshold. Nancy squeezes my hand again and murmurs, “Isn’t it incredibly beautiful?” I know how she feels. And before we move on, she whispers in my ear, “It is soooo good to be back.”
At the end of the boardwalk is a bench overlooking the dark-green pool designated by the park service as Emerald Pool. Though only a bit larger than a backyard swimming pool, it is one of the park’s most well-known hot springs because its brilliant green color is different from the other pools in Yellowstone that sport varying shades of blue in their hearts. The green of Emerald Pool is even more distinctive because it is ringed by pale blue and bright orange.
Nancy and I sit on the bench at the edge of Emerald Pool, and after a minute, she lightly rests her head on my shoulder. In the distance, a red-tailed hawk circles high above the trees on the fringe of the thermal area. I sit silently and am totally fulfilled. Finally we are far, far away from the frightening nightmare of Nancy’s illness.
Before I can ask Nancy about where we should go next, she lifts her head and engages me with eyes as blue as Rainbow Pool. She pulls off her left shoe and slips off her sock like she did in January over five years ago. Extending her leg beyond the ground-level boardwalk, she ever so lightly touches her big toe to a lonely clump of grass that somehow has managed to survive even though it is completely surrounded by the black sands only a few feet away from the blistering pool. Nancy puts an index finger to her lips cautioning me not to speak.
No worries, my love, I reflect silently.
You made it through, you survived, and you are well.
Together we have made it back home.