Tender Blades of Grass

I would like to do whatever it is that presses the essence from the hour.

Mary Oliver

One of many wonderful things about living in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming, as I did for several years, is the close proximity to Yellowstone National Park. Though I rarely went there in the summertime, preferring not to compete with the crowds and endure the long lines to enter the park, locals often visit right after the roads are free of snow in May but before the workers and tourists have arrived and again in the fall. It is absolutely the best time to visit the park, though the visitor centers and restaurants are not yet open. 

Obviously I was not visiting the park to buy postcards and eat a hamburger and usually brought lunch with me, so I could sit on a bench in one of the geyser basins as the world sizzled and hissed around me. Most visitors walk through these basins on the boardwalks, as I did, but I also found it a truly meditative practice to simply sit and listen while I ate my sandwich, or to simply sit and listen while doing nothing at all.

On one such visit in early November I had driven to the Norris Geyser Basin. There had been a little snow, but the roads were clear. I was pleased when I parked and found no other vehicles in the large lot. This is a rare experience for the visitor to Yellowstone. The temperature was well below freezing, which likely explained the empty parking lot. It did not invite strolling along the boardwalk, for it was too cold to be still for long. 

Instead I simply walked, maintaining a good pace while bundled in a down jacket with a warm hat and gloves on, keeping my hands in my armpits as I walked to keep them warm. This was a rare experience for me, to visit this place I loved without crowds, without anyone else at all, just wandering among the sizzling pools and the occasional eruption of steam and water from the earth’s depths.

As I walked I suddenly felt an unexpected warmth in a blast of steam which lingered there by the pool in a low spot. There happened to be a bench there, as if inviting me not just to stop and savor but to get warm in the process. I sat down and ate my lunch, taking my time to enjoy the roast beef sandwich, the chips, the candy bar, the steam, the warmth. I took my down jacket off and removed my gloves. I didn’t need the extra layer as the steam surrounded me. I felt the mist on my face. I felt it in my heart. 

I finished my lunch and watched a bison amble up slowly to the other side of the pool. I am always wary around these massive creatures. Every year the Wyoming news would describe tragic events, often fatal, when a foolish tourist would stand close to such a creature, trying to get a selfie, and would end up on the pointy end of those horns, sometimes tossed several feet into the air. Though these events were certainly not amusing, locals would tell “tourist jokes” in the same way some people tell ethnic jokes: tragic, foolish, entirely preventable. 

I thought of simply walking away slowly, but there was magic in that moment, and the bison seemed unconcerned by my presence, as they usually are when one is still and nonthreatening. But to remain there required an even greater degree of stillness, to be totally present with the mist, the bubbling pool, the massive creature who grazed not far from me on tufts of grass growing from the warm ground surrounding the pool.

I do not know how long I was there, perhaps a few minutes, maybe an hour, even a lifetime. This event lingers in my memory whenever I think about extraordinary experiences in my life, as I do often now that I am in my seventies. 

My older readers, and it appears that I have many of them now, will understand this fondness for lingering in the past, bringing out these treasured memories to admire, to cherish, as if fingering a string of pearls. They cannot be forced or created. They are simply gifts. We walk towards them, and they appear, like tender blades of grass on a cold November day.