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This side of the mountains, the clouds thinned and the sun peeked out. We came to an intersection where Route 16 crosses the Yellowstone River at Fishing Bridge. A little farther on, we made a left turn at Lake Junction. And we stopped behind a line of cars. Across the road, relaxing in a field was a bison, shaggy and brown. He took no notice of us, but continued to dine on the grass as we took pictures. From there, we followed the road twenty-one miles around the northwestern rim of Yellowstone Lake, heading for Old Faithful. We made a right at West Thumb Junction and headed the last seventeen miles, crossing the Continental Divide twice. We arrived at the Old Faithful area five minutes before the next eruption. It was cloudy here, but the weather broke for fifteen minutes as Old Faithful erupted in a spray of steam; first an unsure spurt, then an assertive leap into the sky. Five minutes later, it was just another thermal hill again, laconically steaming and holding its temper for the next seventy-five minutes. The clouds slowly thickened and began to pelt the crowd with rain. My wife and I ran for the Old Faithful Inn. The Old Faithful Inn was built around 1909. Steps, walls, atrium, portico; almost the entire inn, except for the great stone hearth and chimney, is made of logs. The main building is four stories high, the wings are two stories high. Reservations must be made months in advance, but we lingered at the reservations desk in the vain hope that there may have been cancellations. One man was complaining that there was only one chair in his room, and demanded another. A desk clerk with Job-like patience kept repeating, "Yes, sir; I know. This is the kind of room you agreed to last January. Some rooms don't even have bathrooms." The man didn't seem to get the hint. We bought some flavored cappuccino on the second floor atrium, and people-watched. One man treated his wife and pre-adolescent daughter to cappuccino and was playing cards with them. He kept up a running commentary of non-sequiturs; it seemed to be a touching attempt to let his family know how special they were to him. Outside again, the rain had slowed to a weak drizzle, and we headed back to our van and began the two-hour trip back to Cody. Even in the rain the scenery was lush and beautiful. We had to slow down again through Sylvan Pass, and I had a nervous moment when a big-wheeled behemoth of an earthmover passed on my left going in the other direction. On my right was a sheer cliff, and he didn't give me much room, but we made it. Passing through Wapiti Valley again the weather was dry, and we played hide-and-seek with the Shoshone once more as we curved this way and that along Route 16. It was almost dark as we entered Cody, and we stopped for supper at a Mexican restaurant. As we parked, a station wagon with three teenagers in the back took off as the traffic light turned green. "Yeeeeah-hoo!" they squealed as gravel shot out from underneath them. There was something quiet and lonely and wild about the town; an immediacy that was both mischievous and desperate at the same time. The next morning, Thursday, was overcast. We had decided to check out of our Cody hotel and had made reservations at a motel in Gardiner Montana, a town right outside the north entrance to Yellowstone. On our way out of Cody we spent the early afternoon touring the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. The Center is made up of the Plains Indian Museum, the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Cody Firearms Museum, and the Whitney Gallery of Western Art. There is also the Harold McCracken Research Library and, while we were there, a special exhibition called "Seasons of the Buffalo". All the exhibits were fascinating, including a restored stagecoach, but the most compelling was the Whitney Gallery of Western Art. The exhibit went chronologically, starting in the early 1800's with George Catlin's oils of Native American chiefs. My wife wondered why they had been painted with white skin, and my guess was that the colors had faded over the years. In a panorama of rich landscapes by Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, and action tableaus by Frederick Remington, Charles M. Russell, N.C. Wyeth and W.H.D. Koerner, the story of the white people's invasion of the west unfolded before us. (I was pleasantly surprised that Koerner had spent his last years painting in Loch Arbor, New Jersey, a town several miles south of where we live.) On the second floor was an exhibition of modern Western art. There was a section devoted to women artists, including a colorful, pulpish rendering of a cowgirl roping the long horned hood ornament on a pink Cadillac convertible. Another color oil in this section, fantastically photo-realistic to the nth degree, featured with his thumbs hooked in his belt, a close-up of a cowboy's jeaned crotch. A symbolic cubist picture by a Native American artist seemed to convey his confusion of treading a fine line between two cultures. At the end of the hall, a young Sioux Indian stared off into space, his arms folded. It was an oil by James Bama, whom I knew from his photo-realistic paintings that graced the covers of the Doc Savage novels I had read as a teenager. It was a very simple picture of young Sioux, braids covered in fur and an eagle feather in his hair, standing stiffly against a wall where the paint is peeling off, eczema-like. A faded message can be seen in the paint as one's eyes focus: "NO PARKING. VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED AWAY." The face seems to change expression the more one stares at it. It seems to be on the verge of tears and then fades into befuddlement, then to a lonely look of isolation. One can almost see the breathing chest rise and fall. An hour and a half
after we left the center, we were back in Yellowstone, on our way to West
Thumb geyser basin. The sky had cleared by then, and the foliage was as
lush and as green as wet velvet. As we passed through an open meadow with
a stream snaking through it, cars were pulled over on both sides of the
road as a herd of bison was crossing the road in an off-handed sort of
way. My wife hopped out of the van to take some pictures and was closing
in on a wooly buffalo chewing on some tall grass. He looked up with an
annoyed air about him and sauntered toward her as she continued to focus
and shoot. I tried to call to her without upsetting the bull, but she
was too engrossed. Didn't she realize her predicament? Then I realized
that, looking through a camera, objects appear farther away than they
really are. A passing motorist got her attention. She laughed. She had
no choice but to edge over to my side of the van and climb in over me.
The bull frowned and went back to his meal. |