Timeless: The Yellow Stone National Park

My husband and I are on our third "bucket list" trip, a tradition borne three years ago when we agreed to travel to a place we haven't been, and time this trip around our anniversary.  We love to travel, so the "bucket list trip" won't detract from all that "other travel" .  Except that it will be very intentional:  to a special place we haven't been.   This year, that special place is the Yellow Stone Park and the Grand Tetons. Yellow Stone

This place makes special sound a bit ordinary.  Magnificent, magical, awesome, unbelievable may be more fitting descriptions.  The park sits on a volcano, one that erupted last some hundreds of thousands of years ago.  Mother Nature is at her prime here.  As you enter the park, you will notice the amazing density of the pine forestation.  But it doesn't feel tight - just full.  From a distance you see what I thought were patches of fog.  Well, surprise, surprise! It's actually smoke coming out of geysers -- and there are geysers everywhere-- small, big narrow, wide.  They bubble, spout, erupt boiling water -- at their will. You'll then notice pastures where you'll spot bison or elk grazing peacefully and  through fields of wild flowers. -- yellows, whites, purples, pinks.  Then there are the water falls, cascading down the mountains against the contrast of the time-settled canyons and   " yellow mountains" , emptying on to pristine rivers and lakes, where trout abound.   In 1988, a fire engulfed the park and destroyed almost a third.  We saw a documentary that looked back at this time, the skepticism held then about how the park could be restored, and a look at a year after the fire, and then ten years later.   Now, 25 years later, I wouldn't have known the difference.  The park and some of its life-forms have changed, but none- the-less emerged with new life, new direction, new possibilities.  The film offered  that, perhaps, the human mind's perspective of time is so limited, we worry about what may not happen in our lifetime. That, in time, Mother Nature recovers, rebuilds, renews in ways we cannot even begin to imagine.   It is a worthy lesson to take on this, our 37th anniversary. 37 years feels like a lifetime, and we have encountered, and overcome - life challenges we didn't even know existed. But we have somehow prevailed.  For better or for worse, to have and to hold.  And many generations past ours, I can only hope that our future grandchildren and theirs will tell stories about how we did this, and hopefully find strength and inspiration in how we, despite our frailties, recovered, rebuilt and renewed over time.