An elk cow reaches for red leaves on a fall evening in Yellowstone National Park.
Tag: Yellowstone National Park
Pine Dine
A black bear eats seeds from a pine cone high atop a pine tree on the Mount Washburn Trail in Yellowstone National Park.
Hands of the Earth
The planet is blue but its fingers green, cradling the brown earth and bringing water, bringing life.
Nursing
I was walking up to see the geothermal features in the Artists’ Paintpots region of Yellowstone and was surprised to see this elk and her calf near the trail. The calf started nursing and the mother, despite looking at me in this picture, was rather non-plussed by my presence. No one else was around so it was just a quiet little shared moment between the three of us.
Holes in the Earth
We finally got some much needed rain and I wanted to take a picture to celebrate it, but we also got high winds so I couldn’t take any macro pictures like last time. But when I took Ellie up to the dog park I saw this hole that had started to fill with water and it reminded me of another hole in the earth I like photographing, one from Yellowstone National Park (shown below). That one is one of the many geothermal features in the area and is filled with water from below, not above.
There are a few of these holes in the dog park, and since Ellie likes to run beside me in the park, I have to navigate around the holes so that neither one of us steps in one and twists an ankle (she watches me more than the way ahead, trusting me not to lead her astray). The parks folks fill them in occasionally but some dogs like to dig, so new holes always appear. They’ve been spreading sand at this end of the park the past few years and it’s a big help during the winter when rain is not hard to come by, as the sand drains well and it gives Ellie and I a safe area to run in. In the old days she’d still want to run out into the grass, but only one of us has a body built for running in such muddy circumstances, and these days even she isn’t quite as steady on her feet as age begins to take its toll.
I never imagined the dog park would remind me of my beloved Yellowstone so today’s visit made me smile almost as much as the goofball dog who waited patiently for me to take the picture, and of course expected a treat as her reward.
At the End of the Trail
I became intrigued with the Subaru Outback while in graduate school so when we moved to Oregon and were ready to replace my wife’s car, it was our first choice. It was my wife’s daily driver for fourteen years and I took it on all my hiking trips, near and far. It was always a welcome sight when I arrived back at the end of the trail, in this case the Storm Point Trail in Yellowstone.
Late in its life it got hit a few times, once by someone who ran a red light and twice by people who inexplicably plowed into the back of it. I suppose one sign of how much we loved it is not just that we drove it for so long, and not just that we replaced it with another Subaru, but that we replaced my Honda with a Subaru too.
We bought this model when it first came out and fell in love with the color, which had literally just arrived at the dealer (they hadn’t even had time to take the protective wrapping off). Apparently a lot of other people loved the color too so we ended up seeing them everywhere, including a few nearby in our neighborhood. There are still enough on the road that I frequently get a nice reminder of our dependable little wagon that I took to so many of my favorite places.
Dust Cloud
When I took Ellie to the dog park this evening she plopped over on her back in the green grass and wiggled happily. She does this frequently and it always reminds me of this bison bull that I met along the Storm Point Trail in Yellowstone. Here he shakes off a cloud of dirt after bathing in a wallow.
Pride
A quick edit of an old picture to mark a historic day in my country. This was my first visit to Storm Point in Yellowstone and the trail lived up to its name. A brief but violent thunderstorm rolled through before yielding to the sun and an intense rainbow.
Revenge of the Marshmallows
When I saw this scene in Mammoth Hot Springs, I thought perhaps that marshmallows were at long last taking their revenge for all the times they had been placed on a branch and roasted over a roaring fire.
Mammoth Hot Springs
I photographed this little section of Mammoth Hot Springs on my first visit to the area in 2004. I’ve gone back to this spot on each trip since but its appearance has changed over the years and it’s never looked as good as it did on that first trip.
Boolie 