As far as the eye can see

Bison, and coyotes, and bears! Oh, my!

We saw all kinds of creatures during our vacation. A herd of bison, grazing in a valley. Coyotes trotting across a field at dusk. A young grizzly bear wandering through the woods. Deer grazing in a meadow. Bighorn sheep picking their way across a rocky slope. The glimpse of a wolf moving along a treeline. Herds of elk, a single moose, a black bear cub, a bald eagle in a dead tree. And of course, snakes, slithering along rock warmed by hot springs, absorbing the heat into their own bodies.

At several of the pull-offs, there were people who had high-powered telescopes set up to look at wildlife, and they were quite nice about letting me have a look. We were at the northeastern edge of the park one evening, when we passed a small group of people clustered on a rise, all with binoculars and scopes. I walked over to ask, “What are you all looking at?”

“It’s a bison carcass,” said an older man. “Here, have a look.”

When I looked through the scope, I saw a big dark lump. A dead bison. Then I saw another dark lump, something moving. The second lump lifted its head and looked right at me. A grizzly bear!

“There was a wolf earlier,” the man said grinning.

At another pull-off, a dozen or so people were gathered above a valley that stretched for miles, with a stream winding its way through the bottom. I could see a bunch of elk standing in the stream, clustered together, all facing out, none of them moving. “That’s a defensive posture,” said the nature guide who was scanning the treeline with his telescope. “I’m guessing there’s a wolf about.”

We saw the most wildlife at dusk, of course, sometimes when we were driving along the road and other times when we were hiking along the trails. Signs at the entrance of the park warned us to stay away from the wildlife, but that was almost impossible. It’s hard to ignore a bison when he’s standing on the road a couple feet away from your car. After our first day in the park, I found myself scanning the landscape constantly, whether we were in the car or on a trail, just to see what creatures might be out there.

Along the trail

I don't think I quite ever got used to a landscape that bubbles and boils and churns constantly. On one wooded trail, we passed a man and his son who were walking in the opposite direction. I stopped to chat (I'm very much a lazy hiker who is always ready to take a rest and talk), and he said, "When you come to the pool of water around the bend, just sit down and wait a few minutes."

So when we reached the puddle of water, we sat down on a log near the edge of the pool. Steam was rising from the puddle, and when I touched the water, it was definitely hot. After a few minutes, the water began churning, and sure enough, water bubbled up, shooting four or five feet into the air, sending out a steamy sulphur scent.

Bison encounter

One afternoon, we stopped to walk through an area famous for mudboils. Yes, we saw big pools of mud that was churning and bubbling, much like I’ve always pictured the river of chocolate in Willie Wonka, except the steam smelled like sulphur instead of chocolate. We kept to the sidewalks in that area, since signs warned us that anyone walking through could break through the thin crust and get burned.

Then a bison came through, an angry male bison who was making these strange growling noises. He was followed by another male bison, and they were both moving pretty fast, their hooves sinking into the mud.

These animals are big, up close. They butted heads in a way that didn’t look so friendly.

There were a handful of tourists walking about on the boardwalks. Everyone froze and just stared at the animals. We’d been warned not to step off the boardwalks, so there was no place to go. One of the bison stepped over the boardwalk and then into the mud, maybe ten feet away from me. The other followed.

A park ranger came through, with a walkie talkie. “Try to get back to the parking lot,” he said. “Back behind the cars.”

Once the bison had moved off the boardwalk, we all moved cautiously towards the parking lot. I could hear the clicking of cameras and excited whispers in Japanese, German, and English. From a safer spot, behind the line of cars, we watched as the bison churned up the mud.

“Too much testosterone,” the park ranger said. “The rut has started.”

I wondered what would happen if either bison got too close to the boiling mud. But it didn’t happen. One of the bison decided to climb up the hill, brushing the edge of the boardwalk as he went, and the other followed. Then they both disappeared from our view.

The rainbow connection

Where Boiling River Meets Local River

A local teenager in a town just north of National Park Atop Active Volcano told us about a swimming spot that was popular with her friends. “It’s got warm spots because it’s where Boiling River comes in.”

“We need to go there,” I said right away. After looking at all the geysers and hot springs and gorgeous pools of steaming water, I was eager to bathe in one. My husband pulled out the map, and she showed us where to go.

“The best time to go is in the evening,” she said. “Just be careful after 9 pm. That’s when the cops come and throw you out.”

“It sounds like you are speaking from experience,” I said. She blushed.

That evening we followed her directions carefully, parking by the side of the road and walking along a river that came winding down between hills covered in golden grasses. Half a mile upstream, we saw about a dozen people sitting in the river. Puffs of steam rose from the river bank where a boiling hot stream went tumbling into the cold river. Just below that convergence, the bathers were lined up, in the warm spots that could be found along that current.

I watched the local folks to see how they negotiated the stream of boiling water. They stepped around it carefully, entering the cold part of the river and walking over the stones until they found a warm spot, then lowering their bodies into the water. Then they mostly lolled about, bodies stretched out in the warmth, talking maybe, or just sitting with their eyes closed, not moving out of their chosen spots. Three teenage girls, lying in the water, were searching for little rocks in the streambed and building cairns on a flat boulder, all the while giggling and whispering to each other. The teenage boy sitting in the water near them was trying hard to ignore them.

I stripped off my outer clothes, piling them on top of the ridiculously white hotel towels that marked us as tourists. (Yes, I wore a bathing suit -- I didn't want to horrify the local teenagers.) The river was shallow, not even up to my waist, but wading through was the craziest sensation. If I stepped towards the far bank, my feet were cold. If I moved toward the near bank, the water was scalding hot. When finally the water temperature felt just right, I sat down in the water. Another bather looked over at me. “You can move the rocks around,” he said. “That’s what everyone does.”

The bottom of the stream was made of rocks that were roughly the size of a 5-pound bag of sugar. I noticed other bathers shifting the rocks, which changed the currents and made comfortable sitting spots. Two kids had even created something shaped like a hot tub, an oval of stones. My husband and I began shoving the rocks around us into position until we were both comfortable. He leaned back until his head could rest against me.

I looked up at the smooth golden hills and at the river which flowed on and around and past me. To my left, I could see low cliffs, edged with puffs of steam from the hot water that came tumbling over the rock. If I reached my left hand out, my fingertips were almost burning. If I reached my right hand out, I could touch the flow of icy cold water moving by in the center of the river. As dusk fell, the air temperature grew a little cooler, and the warm water felt even better. The gurgling of the river covered the quiet conversations of the bathers.

We stayed the first stars began appearing in the sky.

Edged with white

This pool of steaming water was prettier than any hot tub I've ever seen.

Hard to resist

My husband kept touching the water in all the pools we saw, just to feel how hot it was. I kept lying down on the boardwalks to take photos.

Caldera

I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The landscape was bursting with great clouds of steam. We kept seeing pools of boiling water, sometimes clear and blue, sometimes streaked with orange. Streams of hot water shot into the sky and came falling down in a sizzling rain that smelled like sulphur.

I could feel the adrenaline in my blood rising. I’m not the kind of person who stays inside a building when the fire alarm is going off.

Boardwalks were set up near the most active geysers, and tourists walked about, taking photos and eating ice cream cones and chatting happily, as if oblivious to the active volcano churning below them. It seemed crazy really.

“This is where they got their set designs for Star Trek,” I said to my husband as we gazed at strange rock formations and oddly-shaped pools cut into sizzling grey rock.

We came around a curve and saw spirals of steam rising from a meadow, as if a bunch of fires were smoldering. “Another village has been plundered,” my husband said in an ominous voice.

The thermal area was a fascinating, surreal landscape of boiling mud, scalding pools, and dragon-like steam. I kept taking photos, but I couldn’t relax. That night I had anxiety dreams.

I kept trying to imagine living in the landscape hundreds of years ago, before the national park had been established and the parking lots built. I could see how the pools of boiling water could come in handy for cooking. Even now, I was tempted to toss a handful of pasta into the nearest geyser because it would make for such a cool picnic. I don’t know if I could have settled down near a landscape that kept churning and spitting and sending such violent signals. But still, I'd like to go back some day. 

Elk antlers

On our vacation, we drove through towns where the people seemed obsessed with making arches out of elk antlers. One arch was more than 75 feet across, built from more than 3,000 antlers. Most of the arches didn’t hold up anything or connect two walls or act as a boundary. They were purely decorative.

The elk, one sign told us, shed their antlers every year. So no elk were actually killed for the construction of the arches. That fact did make me feel better as we drove through the town, but it still didn’t explain why all the arches were built. They didn't seem to serve any purpose. I guess if you live in an area of the country where herds of elk keep losing their antlers, you run out of things to do with the darn things.