Day 16: Crisis and Connection

Elk

Today we took a break from Yellowstone (after seeing the Canyon) and drove up into the Beartooth Mountains to look at features within the Absaroka volcanics. Some of our stops included: Tower Falls, where we looked at the layering of flows compared to the presence of glacial features, as well as the columnar jointing of the basalts; Mount Washburn, where we discussed the differences between the Yellowstone caldera and the formation of Mount Washburn as a stratovolcano; and near the summit of Mount Washburn where we observed where blocks of the original mountain formations had broken and slid down 5-30 miles along a "shelf" of limestone.

View from an overlook

During a snowball fight at an overlook by the Gardner trailhead along Beartooth Loop, one of the students got stuck up to his chest in a snowbank. After a tense 10-15 minutes the student was freed from his icy trap thanks to the coolheadedness and diligence of the professors and a group of students. Sadly while the student was saved, he lost his camera, and when we returned to search for it, it was nowhere to be found.

Beartooth Pass: Gardner Trailhead

Driving along Beartooth pass I felt an intense range of emotions. Loneliness, content, longing, familiarity, peace, and a kind of subtle elation that I can't quite explain. I have always felt the most at home in mountainous landscapes but these vast, treeless alpine meadows, exsisting as spalshes of green and yellow rolling gently among the jagged and snow-covered mountain peaks touched me somewhere deep within the core of my being. I became lost within myself, no longer aware of the cramped and crowded van that continued to jostle its passengers as we drove or the slight odor that eminated from everybody as we neared the end of our 4th day without showers. It was just my musings and this landscape, worn by multiple glacial events, wind, and water; shaped by time itself. I saw flashes of what my life would be if I lived here: the construction of a fairly large home which would function as a bed and breakfast during the summer months; the extensive greenhouse around back which would provide fresh vegetables and fruits year round; the bitterly cold days of donning a fur lined parka and taking the snowmobile down into town for supplies because the roads were impassable by car; joining a rescue party to search for a skier lost during an avalanche, and spending the evening cuddled on the couch by the fireplace, safe and warm with family and pets as the biting wind howled outside. These and so many others, both happy and sad, danced through my mind. Perhaps in a past life this was my home and part of my soul still resides in this harsh and beautiful place. I shall return here someday, though when and upon what occasion I know not, but I feel with great certainty that this will not be the last time I gaze upon this high altiude haven, so far above the timberline.

Glacial Valley

Alpine flowers

Sunset

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