Yellowstone National Park sits in the caldera of an active supervolcano, which last erupted 640,000 years ago. Minor blasts occur once in a while, but the next most recent kill-everyone-in-Wyoming-sized eruptions were 1.2 and 2.1 million years ago. If you can calculate averages and harbor any fear of dying, you might not want to visit our first national park any time soon.
I’m not afraid to die, but I am afraid to die in a dumb way. Death by lava would be fine, but death by bison? No thank you.
Some of the tourists here practically invite death by bison. You can always tell a city kid—we’re the ones encouraging our children to get closer to the wild animals: “Do it for the Gram, Gabriel!” There’s no healthy fear of nature in a New Yorker.
I went to high school with a kid named Viktor Jonglers, who filmed the school plays before he graduated and I took over that role. Since he never dropped a camera off a balcony into the audience, I guess he was the better cameraman, but in the middle of Hurricane Sandy, Viktor and his girlfriend took their Chihuahua for a walk down Ocean Parkway. A gale-force wind ripped from the roots one of the massive sycamores that line that street, and the tree crushed all three of them—Viktor, his girlfriend, the Chihuahua. They died instantly.
Don’t walk your dog in a hurricane. Don’t take a selfie with a bison. You might think these are obvious precautions, and yet, here we are. Last year an article appeared in LiveScience entitled “More Injuries from Bison at Yellowstone: Are Selfies to Blame?” I hope so, I thought before I opened it. I sure fucking hope so.
Waiting for Old Faithful to erupt, I was one more face in a horde of dweebs in Hawaiian shirts, socks and flip flops, watching a meager plume of smoke for the better part of an hour. Suddenly there was a gurgle of water—what we all hoped would be the teaser to a tremendous discharge—but it flopped out and left us waiting once more.
After this disappointment, a bison stepped forth from the trees that separate the geyser from its parking lot. The bull, easily a ton, sauntered right into the center of the crowd. Two tourists from Florida edged forward for a selfie, but fled when the bison let loose a liquid stream of shit, which spattered across the ground for a good full minute. Most of us doubled over laughing, while a few Christian families tried to shield the eyes of their children. “Can’t you stop him?” a mother asked a park ranger, while I and a couple kindred spirits snapped as many photos as we could.
At the instant the bison finished, the geyser erupted—Old Faithful, roaring against the sky in all its geothermal glory, surging with the primordial power of the volcano whose pressure it releases slowly and regularly, a cyst of the earth lanced again and again to postpone its catastrophic detonation.
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This is the third post in a cross-country road trip series. To start from the beginning, click here!
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