The Norris Geyser basin in Yellowstone is divided into two trails: Porcelain Basin and Back Basin. Porcelain Basin was visible from the parking lot, so that’s where I headed first. Signs again warned that the crusty ground could give way at any moment, so once more I stayed on the boardwalks, circling the acres of open terrain. Blue-green bubbling pools dotted the barren landscape. Most of the pools were only a few yards wide, a fuming network linked by shallow streams meandering through the plateau. Steam drifted up off the pools in ghostly columns. A miniscule geyser frothed for a few seconds, then subsided.
I had almost completed the eerie circuit when I was met by another pair of quadrupeds, a mother and daughter, monitoring the path like park rangers making rounds.
Back Basin hosts a series of geysers, including Steamboat geyser, the largest in the park. It was getting pretty hot from the sun and the heat of the geysers and the lack of breeze. A woman in front of me nearly fainted and had to be helped to a bench. So I decided to stop and rest a bit on a wooden platform next to Echinus geyser.
The celebrated frequency of Old Faithful is unique. Most geysers are unpredictable. But at the time, Echinus eruptions were one of the more regular events. Since my visit, the geyser has reportedly become more unpredictable. But it’s not my fault, I swear.
The pool around a geyser offers clues to the timing of the next eruption, so I leaned over the wooden railing and carefully observed the water around Echinus. The pool was almost full, the first sign of a pending eruption. Then the water started to bubble, another sign. Soon the pool began frothing, like the bubbles a kid makes blowing into his milk through a straw.
A baby spurt erupted from the center of the pool. Then another. Then a gush about a foot high, like a steaming water fountain for a thirsty giant. Then calmness for a second.
It was quiet.
Yeah.
Too quiet.
A column of water thick as a man exploded out of the pool. Like an enormous garden hose turned skyward, the gleaming pillar surged far above our heads, forty feet into the air, then splashed down into the billowing cloud of steam that had swallowed the now invisible pool. A mist blew back over the platform, warm as summer rain.
For two or three spectacular minutes, the geyser spouted and flared like an aqueous Roman candle, and the crowd around me on the platform thrilled to the show. Then Echinus subsided, devolving into an occasional mild percolation. Refreshed by the spectacle and mineral water shower, I departed Norris and headed east across the Yellowstone loop.
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