Meditations On America: The Nature Of Water, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming – Forbes

Entrance to the Porcelain Basin, Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park.

Part of the maybe the principal magic of the road is unexpected discovery. For as long as I can remember, Id known about Old Faithful Geyser, Yellowstone National Parks star attraction, through childhood encyclopedias and painted wooden puzzles of the states, but it was only decades later, after arriving in Yellowstone for the first time, that I learned of the Norris Geyser Basin. It stole my heart.

30 miles away but still well within this, Americas first, national park, Norriss collection of geysers, hot springs, steam vents, fumaroles and multicolored mudpots mystifies. For one, nobody could tell me the basins size because, they said, its always evolving; new thermal features continually appear while others go dormant. You could try to define it, but what would be the point?

You can say that miles of wooden walkways encourage exploring and offer a getaway from crowds. On my visit, hot ponds and billows of steam humidified the searing sun of late June.

Raised wooden walkways keep visitors at a safe distance, at Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone ... [+] National Park.

At Porcelain Basin, the flashier of Norriss two sides, you can stand on an overlook and survey your domain like royalty, before heading downhill to explore its rainbow of colored pools.

Norris other side, Back Basin, is many times larger, subtler and more of an effort. The landscape looks lunar, assuming the moon had hills and sustenance for bison and elk, killdeer and dragonflies. Barren, sand-colored flats are punctuated by sky-blue pools, gnarled tree trunks laid low by gases emanating from the earths core, and lodgepole pines that somehow manage to prosper.

The Back Basins biggest draw is a geyser called Steamboat. The worlds tallest, it spouts over 300 feet, but if Old Faithful is named for its regular eruptions, Steamboat has no such discipline; it might erupt every few hours, or not for 50 days. Either you wait around and you catch it maybe or you dont and you dont.

At Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone National Park, geyser fans sit on folding chairs, shielded from ... [+] the summer sun by umbrellas.

On an observation platform, a jovial group of folks who looked like regulars watched Steamboats every sputter from folding chairs under umbrellas, casually joking with each other while waiting for the geysers next big performance. Other visitors (read: me) oohed and ahhed over its frequent, smaller outbursts, but, a ranger assured me, the big one is really big.

A loop trail continued around Back Basin, and I stopped at a solitary spot by a pool called Crystal Lake. On a tree-covered bench, I sat to relax, reflect and discover how much you can observe or ignore if you put your mind to it.

Emerald Spring, Back Basin of Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park.

From my left, I heard but chose not to see parents with their two sons, young Andrew, asking why the pools were blocked off by logs (steaming waters and dangerous gases, the parents explained), and younger Adam, being told not to dawdle.

...As I practiced breathing the steamy air in...

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...And out...

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several times, eventually entering a state where conversation, sound and sensation the heat, the geysers intermittent hiss, the occasional woosh of steam vents, the gentle trickle of water through hot-spring-fed streams all became ambient noise. A fly, I assume, landed near my nose, but rather than swipe it away, I remained still until it left of its own accord.

One sound I did allow in: the occasional galumph of water struggling to bubble up from some subterranean cavity, a sound recalling water gurgling down the drain of some gargantuan bathtub.

But then it hit me: Normally, the job of water is to flow away. We cleanse, we drink, we water, we row, we watch it flow, and we might come in contact with a molecule of that water for a nanosecond; a bit longer if we ingest it. But in the end, water moves, inexorably, through the ground, through rivers and to oceans and, just maybe, back to the sky to begin another cycle.

Geysers, though, are anomalies, even heroes, among the waters. They fight mightily to flow not back into the earth but out of it, as if to say that discovering new territory, even if for a mere seconds out of eternity, is worth it.

As I stood up from that spot and reemerged into the sunlight, signs instructed stay on walk. My brain knew that this was for, safety, of the visitors and the ecosystem, but my soul told me that there was a deeper, if probably untended, message about continuing the adventure.

In the lunar landscape of the Back Basin, a sign warn of dangers from boiling waters and noxious ... [+] gases at Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park.

This is part of an occasional series of meditations on places Ive visited across the United States.Click here to read the first one, and I hope youll come back for more.

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Meditations On America: The Nature Of Water, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming - Forbes