K Nilsen - The Yellowstone Traps

Wiping ice rime from his mustache, Wesley offered, “I’m always amazed at how this place changes. We’ve got open water. It should be frozen solid everywhere three feet thick.”

Liz pondered the configuration of the great gap in the ice, saying nothing, her hands busy with the probes.

Wesley grimaced, unable to mask a wistful mood. He continued stroking his trim moustache to relieve festering anxiety. “I’ve never seen the place like this, Ms. Embree. I don’t like the feel of it.”

“A veteran like you, Wes?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Ask away.”

“Do you remember the eruption at Mount St. Helens?”

“In terms of what?”

“It fooled everybody, you know.”

“It did, indeed.”

“The best minds in the business were studying that peak months and months before the 1980 eruption.. And what did the mountain do? It absolutely stunned all of us in the geological community. Everyone expected an eruption, of course. No doubt about that. But nobody expected that huge lateral blast. It made us all look like kids with our thumbs in our mouths.”

Liz scrutinized the man’s face, wrinkled into an expression of unease.

“What are you telling me, Wes?”

“I don’t know, Ms. Embree. I hitched my wagon to this place half a lifetime ago. I’ve gotten used to it, the way it behaves, its idiosyncrasies, quirks, you know. It was so familiar. But she’s not familiar anymore. Like Mount St. Helens, you see? I really don’t know what to expect.”

The team moved off to the west to set more instruments, the sun low on the winter horizon. By early afternoon, they passed the small hump of Dot Island, slipped through the narrows at Pumice Point and were into West Thumb, a long finger of water that swept west of the main body of the lake. A dozen probes in place, they pulled off the lake just to the north of the tiny hamlet of West Thumb with its little cluster of thermal features and picked up the snow-covered loop road to Old Faithful, seventeen miles distant. With the probes now resting in the lake, the sleds were lighter and they could make better time. To reach the headquarters back at Mammoth, they still needed to cover more than sixty miles.

On the flats surrounding the site of the famous Old Faithful geyser, the sun settled into the tops of the lodgepole pine. Long black needle shadows fanned out over the snows, creating a stroboscopic effect as the riders motored along. The scientists glided into the Upper Geyser Basin and found the access into the visitors’ center complex built to showcase Old Faithful geyser. The team stopped before the Old Yellowstone Inn, a soaring log-construction hotel. Liz was enchanted with the monumental 700-foot-long building and its soaring seven-story height. No log structure on earth could match its girth.

Wesley didn’t pause a moment to eyeball the familiar hotel. He launched himself from the motorized sled and hurried into the environment on foot.

“Doesn’t look right, Ms. Embree,” he called over his shoulder.

“What? What’s not right?” she shot back, squinting into needles of light.

“This old spout shoots a lot of water, freezes this time of year before it reaches the ground. There’s usually an awful lot of ice and sleet-like deposits downwind, depending on the weather. You get glazing in the trees, ice buildup on everything. There’s little of it. It’s certainly been cold enough long enough. I’m surprised Parks or the snowmobilers haven’t reported this.”

“You think the geyser has gone cold, Wes?” Liz asked as she caught up with the big fellow lumbering toward the geyser cone.

“Could be. I’d hate to think she’s shut down. Damn, that’s a public relations disaster in the making if that’s what’s going on.”

Wesley trudged to the maw of the geyser, a mound of siliceous sinter deposits built up over many centuries. Thin threads of water vapor rose from the wide throat of the thermal marvel. Little ice crust buildup surrounded the opening and there were few signs of the customary snow and ice load well downwind of the thermal giant.

“Looks like Old Faithful’s changed her old habits. My goodness, this doesn’t look good for ol’ Wyoming,” Wesley grumbled.

Liz stood beside the older gentleman at the mouth of Old Faithful and peered into the throat of the thermal beast. There was nothing before her to signify the grandeur of the park’s geothermal treasure.

“The plumbing must be choked shut, Wesley. The quakes of the last few weeks may have pinched off the plumbing system.”

“That’s entirely likely, Ms. Embree. Parks isn’t going to like this. No sir, they won’t like this one bit.”

Wesley knelt down and placed a hand to the geyser’s dense geyser rim deposits. He slowly arched his head around and cast a glance at his companion.

“What kind of a world is it going to be without an Old Faithful in it?”

In the dressing room of the Independency community bath, Abel stripped his clothing off, picked up a bath scraper fashioned after a 2,000-year-old Roman model and used for removing daily grime, and went to the main pool to sit up to his neck and relax in the warm public waters. With the half-light of dawn slipping through the windows, he nodded to his neighbors, sank into the pool, and closed his eyes.

The face of the woman from Kansas City floated through his frontal lobes. She was entering the last week of her second session already, and he found himself seeking her out and talking with her at every opportunity. He was, he could now admit to himself, physically attracted to her, and she did not seem to be put off by his attentiveness.

Abel heaved a sigh. All around him were the bricks and mortar of counter-culture success. Independency was thriving, but he built relationships with women like one builds a house of cards. Despite his outward charm there was also a glare of intensity about him. Most women could not adapt to his nonstop pace, so they drifted out of his life.

How, he pondered, might he actually find common ground with the woman from KCMO? With the unpleasant reality of recent relationship failures silting over his thoughts, Abel ducked beneath the surface of the water and stayed down until his oxygen gave out. He squeezed excess water from his hair, looked up and caught a glimpse of someone approaching. Crossing the terra cotta tile from his right was a female wrapped in a towel. Instinctively, in an instant, he scanned her form, looking for those primordial evolutionary cues signifying age, health, reproductive potential—all of it. The woman dropped down a step beside him, pulled the towel aside, and submerged. When she surfaced, the institute attendee turned to him and smiled. “You’re an early riser.”

Abel could only manage a mumbled greeting. “Good morning.”

Now what? He was awkward suddenly, a fifties teenager on a first date. Winnie sensed his loss of candor. She sought to remedy that.

“I thought I’d try the coed bath this morning. The women’s bath is wonderful, but most of the women in there are institute guests. I thought I’d come in here and see how the great unwashed Independencians come clean.”

Abel laughed heartily, the vocalization echoing the length of the flooded chamber. It relieved his tension, so he settled back to chat.

“Your first experience in coed bathing, Winnie?”

“No, not really. In my senior year in high school, a friend of mine threw a wild party after graduation. We drank some beer, got into the pool, and the kids challenged each other to go in the skinny. So we did. How about you? I mean, other than here.”

Abel smiled and shook his head at a fond memory. “I landed a summer job at a college one year. There was a jumble of boulders nearby called Rock Pool in the Gale River. It was, I found out, a time-honored skinny-dipping hole. When I got there for the first time there were already two-dozen people on the rocks with their dogs. They were sunning themselves like turtles. It was wonderful. In some ways it even changed my way of thinking.”