At the end of the crossroad, I turned down the southeastern side of the figure eight, avoiding the scary canyonlands. In a broad field by the lazy Yellowstone River, a large herd of buffalo posed in prehistoric effigy. I snuck up behind a stand of trees to get a better look. Through the tree in front of me, I saw something unusual: a flower about the size of a silver dollar. A black flower. A glossy black flower.
The flower stared at me.
The flower blinked.
The flower snorted.
The flower had black horns about six inches long and was moving in my direction, attached to a two thousand pound bison. I decided I had seen enough of flowers and ran (as fast as I could, trust me) to my car. On the website for Yellowstone, you can see a video of a bison effortlessly tossing a man into a tree. It looks like the same bison at the same tree. Just his little game I guess: Toss the Tourist.
I continued south to my next destination: Yellowstone Lake and the Lake lodge, built in the 1890s and extensively renovated in only 1903. As I sauntered through the hotel lobby, the aura of lost elegance haunted the whitewashed structure, as if a ghostly resort from the 1920s had risen on the lakeshore; the spirit of Gatsby would have felt right at home. Out the rear doors of a portico, I strolled over the lawn down to the shoreline.
An ocean on a mountaintop, Yellowstone Lake engulfed the horizon. Covering one hundred and thirty-six square miles and with an average depth of one hundred and forty feet, Yellowstone Lake is the largest high altitude lake in the US. Away on the eastern side, fifteen miles or more distant, snowy peaks poked their heads out of the hazy distance like prairie dogs out of a burrow. I sat on a rock by the lake, munched some peanut butter crackers, and tried to put the last two days into perspective.
So many times in Yellowstone, I felt as though my senses were deranged, seeing things that should not be: the river flowing backward; shrub-munching elks; wolf games; the lake on the mountain-top. The earth was unsteady, experience a hindrance, not a guide. I wasn’t sure how much more disconcerting grandeur I could appreciate. So, to savor rather than dilute the experience, I decided to leave Yellowstone, and even I-90, behind.
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