Yellowstone Magic : "Venus on Earth"
Before the war in Iraq started and I got into anti-war protesting in earnest, I used to maintain a site called "The Magic of Yellowstone." There's still a lot of good information on that site. I wanted to share with you an essay I wrote about my experience going back this summer.
Venus on Earth, Part I of ?
by Jim Macdonald
June 10, 2005
Introduction
Yellowstone, more than anything else, is about magic. Magic is
not a supernatural phenomenon. When I speak of magic all I mean
to say is that the reason for something’s happening cannot be
explained simply by referring to the particular causal phenomena
available to us. Illusionists practice something like magic when
they pull rabbits out of hats. We do not understand, after having
seen the hat empty, how a rabbit could have found its way in the
hat. As it turns out, the so-called magic was merely an illusion,
either a slight of hand, or the use of a mirror, or something that
has a causal explanation available to us. Real magic has no
explanation available to us. That is not to say that there is not
a reason, which would be absurd, but it is to say that the reason
is not available to us as beings with finite perception. Magic is
that natural phenomenon for which we can offer no natural
explanation, or at least no commonly natural explanation.
Yellowstone is a place where magic happens repeatedly, or at least
it happens that way in my experience.
In 2005, I returned to the magic land, life being dramatically different
than when I last came in 1998. In 1998, I was on something of an
extended working honeymoon. In 2005, I’ve been in the process of
divorcing that same woman for the past 2 years. I came this year with
another woman, in Genevieve, one I am now deeply in love with, who had
never been to this Wonderland. Perspectives change, fond memories become
bitter, and bitter memories become almost inconsequential by comparison.
Life is a thermal tempest that changes gradually on the exterior but is
volcanic beneath, sometimes even poisonously so. We make pronouncements
about our present because we must, and we must invest ourselves with a
kind of belief in our current reality. We cannot help it, and we should
not apologize for it. Today, I am deeply in love, just as in 1998, I
thought I was beginning the rest of my life with someone else, perhaps
bidding goodbye to Yellowstone for ages to come. But, the fires destroy
our own personal forests, new life comes to spring in its place, and we
do our best to preserve the life we find ourselves in.
I have always relished seeing the metaphor of Yellowstone as the metaphor
of my life. What I hope it conveys is the sheer love, fascination, and
excitement I have with the place. Nowhere else do I feel more alive,
more in love, more at home with myself. Even when I’m dark or angry or
neurotic, as I often am when I’m in Yellowstone, I cherish that as an
inner sanctum of my psyche, a place where all is well even when it isn’t.
This is a love story first and foremost, and that is the essential cause
and result of Yellowstone’s magic. But, what is this magic, and what is
this love, this mythical fiery Venus with trees? And, am I talking about
Yellowstone there, or am I talking about Genevieve, my own beloved
mythical fiery Venus? I think the answer can only come from filling in
the blanks with the actual stories of our Yellowstone experience (what I
once awkwardly dubbed “yellowstoning experience”).
While I do not have time to document an entire trip (though see the
timeline for a skeleton attempt), I hope to share an episode or two,
depending on my inclination.
Here is more from the magical love story.
Why is Yellowstone Venus on Earth?
In 1993, my father came with a friend to pick me up after my first summer
working at the Grant Village General Store. I was only 19 and had no
idea that my life would become linked forever with the Park. I had no
idea about a lot of things, though I had a pretty decent idea of more
than most of us are willing to grant ourselves from our youth. The
reason I say that is because we always fancy ourselves to have a better
grasp on things today, and the now is often a revision of what came
before us. However, if we look back into that past more closely, we will
discover that we were not as lost as we might imagine. Nevertheless,
Yellowstone seemed at the end of that summer to be the end of a special
time. My thoughts often turned into how to make my life back home in
Ohio like Yellowstone, hoping that all it took was a creative imagination
to turn a cornfield into a canyon cave.
So, my dad picked me up, and I gave him a tour of the Park, taking the
opportunity to see areas I had scarcely seen myself. One morning, we
drove up to the Norris Geyser Basin, which I had only seen once up to
that that time, and then only for a matter of seconds, from the museum
looking down on the Porcelain Basin. My dad, his friend Steve, and I
walked through this eerie, violent landscape. Loud fumaroles scream, the
land bubbles, and the ground looks like nothing on Earth. It is not only
alive with volcanic activity, but also Norris does not look like this
planet, or for that matter smell like it. I felt surrounded by poison
and by a landscape that was best described as “hellish.” The colors
looked like hell, the sounds sounded like hell, and it certainly smelled
like one expected hell to be. I remember mentioning this quality to my
dad, though noticing one exception. Somehow, in this violent unearthly
landscape, I nevertheless managed to see a large number of trees all
around. So, it seemed to be a kind of “Hell on Earth.” And, yet, it was
so beautiful all the same. That day, I suggested it briefly, and over
time the thought had resonance, that this was actually more like Venus,
the poisonous twin planet of Earth, and also the goddess of love. Yet,
with the trees as undeniable markers of our actual solar location, I’ve
come to know the Norris Geyser Basin as “Venus on Earth.” And, as my
mind is prone to wander through metaphorical forests, I realized more and
more that Norris was but an example of the lush supervolcano that will
some day devour this world in poison and ash 10,000 times stronger than
Mt. St. Helens, that perhaps the name “Venus on Earth” is also a proper
nickname for Yellowstone itself.
Over the years, Norris became an important place for me. In 1994, I
tasted my first kiss under the moonlight and steam. In 1995, I replaced
those memories with Loree on those same boardwalks. Now, I was with
Genevieve, and while I had given up the childish need to rub out past
sour memories and replace them with new ones, I was hopeful all the same
that Norris might provide a new niche for us. What had changed, however,
was the need to use Norris as a romantic stage, though I still had plenty
of desire. Rather, it was more like I was paying an old friend a visit,
and so I wanted to catch up and see what it had to offer on its own
terms. I can’t say that I was always so secure on the trip like this, as
I found myself overwhelmed by memories at West Thumb and Grant Village
almost to the point I was overcome by a brief psychosis (one that
Genevieve was at her wit’s end trying to deal with), but I can say that
at Norris I was at home and secure enough to see it for what it was.
Norris truly solidified itself for me as the example par excellence of
Venus on Earth, and here is a tale from the magical homecoming.
Steamboat Geyser
Old Faithful is the most famous geyser in the world, but I can’t think of
a single person I know who is not in some degree disappointed by it; or
if not disappointed, more wowed by other geysers or thermal pools. Some
geysers erupt more regularly, some erupt higher, some have more
interesting cones, and some are generally more surprising. Steamboat
Geyser, many will be surprised to know, has the world’s largest
eruptions. Water from a major eruption of Steamboat Geyser can explode
300-450 feet, or approximately 3 times the average eruption of Old
Faithful. Yet, Steamboat is a lesser-known geyser in large part because
its eruptions are widely erratic. Major eruptions can occur anywhere
from a few days to decades apart. The last major eruption of Steamboat
had been in October 2003, and the last daytime eruption in October 1991.
During the five years I worked in Yellowstone, 1993-1996, 1998, there had
been no major eruptions of the Geyser.
On our first day in Yellowstone, on May 18, I took Genevieve to see the
Norris Geyser Basin, hoping to see an eruption of nearby Echinus Geyser.
Before you get to Echinus, you get to Steamboat. The geyser looks
violent, but few stop very long to see the strange mixture of off-white
and reddish hues around the geyser. Without a sign mentioning that it is
the world’s largest geyser, signs I doubt most tourists bother to read,
you would have no idea that Steamboat had any special place in geyser
lore. It bubbles and spews out water, sometimes to heights of 6 to 8
feet, but that is thoroughly unremarkable in Yellowstone. Geysers that
don’t seem to have names often erupt to similar heights, and one quickly
gets used to the landscape. Is it fog? Is it steam rising from a recent
rain? Is it a thermal feature? Is it a forest fire? When you see white
vapor in the sky, you constantly have to figure out what it might be.
Thermal activity is constant, the weather often freakish, and forest
fires (especially in late summer) a part of the Park’s life. On May 18,
we saw Steamboat as one among many, a curious footnote of this intense
and less famous thermal landscape.
On May 23, Genevieve and I wanted to be romantic. Earlier that day, I
had missed eruptions of Riverside Geyser, which I have never seen, and
Grand Geyser, the world’s largest predictable geyser, each by half an
hour. Never had I had such bad luck in the geyser regions. At dinner,
we talked about potential evening destinations. An eruption of Grand
would not happen until later that evening, and so that seemed
impractical. We talked about going to the Canyon, but the mood was not
right for heading into the mysteries of the “cave” and the spirituality
required for such a getaway. Love has no numeric limits on the ways it
may be expressed, but it does have logical limits on its scope. You
cannot love two masters, one can rightly say, because the kind of love
talked about is exclusive. How could you love both if both masters ask
you to take contrary action? You will of necessity reject one or both
masters. I have tried, in like vein, to be romantic in the Canyon’s
cave, home of two extremely meaningful spiritual experiences. However,
that was not the kind of love most appropriate for the cave. The goddess
finds more appropriate expression on the boardwalks of places like Norris
and West Thumb, Yellowstone Lake and places like that. Why? Sizzle and
steam. What other answer can I give to such a question? I’m not going
to make out with you on these boardwalks, experiment in remote caves, and
show you what I mean. How can I explain a truth whose expression is so
grounded in particular and unique experiences? Sizzle and steam. Fire
and ice. The moon and the shooting star. The silence and the bugle of
elk. Anyhow, having only been to Norris Geyser Basin only once the
entire trip, Norris it was.
Blind to the situation at Norris, with nothing more than a place to go on
our hearts and minds, we headed toward Norris in the late afternoon. We
passed by several animal jams, one of which turned out to be a sighting
of a wolf, but we stopped for none of it. Maybe, I had a premonition.
Genevieve is convinced that I did, but I don’t generally have
premonitions, and I don’t think that was it. Premonitions may involve a
kind of magic, but dumb luck is sometimes even more fun. As we
approached the Geyser Basin, a huge cloud of steam appeared off to our
left.
“Something’s going off. I don’t know what, but it looks big.”
We drove into the parking lot of the geyser basin, the steam cloud was
dominating. I thought to myself, “Could that be Steamboat?” We got out
of the car, and it rained mist onto us. The ground rumbled beneath us,
as though the whole thing could be torn apart. “Was this Steamboat? Is
that the right direction for Steamboat?” Excited, we both began running
hurriedly toward the geyser. Tourists seemed unconcerned and unaware of
the situation, and that seemed to suggest that maybe nothing was going
on. On the other hand, there sure were an unusual number of cars in the
parking lot.
We ran and walked quickly.
Then, there was Steamboat, pumping steam out of its vent ferociously, now
at an inclined angle that extended hundreds of feet almost parallel to
the earth. Not normally one to ask a lot of questions, I asked a woman
nearby, “Is this a major eruption of Steamboat?” She said, “Yes. At
2:30 today, Steamboat had a major eruption. It’s now in steam phase.”
Steam phase? Who the heck cared? It was exciting and monumental, the
rain in the parking lot half a mile away was like a baptism of sulphur.
What luck? Steamboat? And, we just happened on it? We had seen a
mountain lion, the first anyone I had ever known had ever seen in
Yellowstone, several days before, but Steamboat Geyser? It never erupts;
it never erupts in daytime, and certainly it was not going to erupt on my
weeklong vacation when I just happened to be passing by. Yet, that’s not
magical. That is just highly improbable. What was magic was the feeling
that overcame me. What was this rumbling, this sight, this strange
landscape, an almost nothing in the photographs I took, doing inside me
and others who were around? We were amazed. It continued to shake us
up. We looked at each other and knew giddily that this was something we
were all sharing, all were blessed to share, in a beloved and mysterious
land.
The tourists…they mostly just walked by…
A park service videographer showed up and started filming
Steamboat and nearby Cistern Pool, which feeds the geyser.
Cistern Pool eventually loses all its water during a major
eruption of Steamboat. It had already lost some when Genevieve
and I finally saw it.
I ran all the way back to the car, which was still getting rained
on, to get my camcorder. The rangers said that the cars risked
having their paint jobs ruined. I ran back dancing and happy in a
way I hadn’t been on a trip that was almost entirely happy. Soon,
employees from the Old Faithful area started showing up. They all
understood; they got it. The euphoria captured us all, and this
grand event was ours to share. We didn’t know each other, but
there we found ourselves talking. I even met a former work
colleague from my days in Grant Village. Oh, what joy! This was
the experience, where land brought people to look at the land,
which brought these people together? How did this steam, this
violence, this poisonous air, this rumbling bring such peace and
joy.
We came for romance, but the love that evening was a different
sort…the love of community and earth, of natural spectacle with an
apparently unnatural effect on us. This was amazing. Genevieve
and I found our moments of romance walking through the Porcelain
Basin, though the area that originally inspired me to call this
area “Venus on Earth,” but Venus is not merely a lonely goddess,
incapable of knowing the fullness of love, the staggering insanity
of its power. That was what was exciting, how integrated love
seemed to be on this hellish landscape. Hell had been tempered by
life, by trees, by us, by algae, and by the magical power of art
and aesthetics.
This evening ended early. It wasn’t my past, where nights on the
boardwalk went on until 4am, where the steam and sizzle were
simply in the backdrop of the intense connection between two
people. This was much more complicated, much more interwoven,
much more dazzling, and yet subtle. Steamboat Geyser’s major
eruption was something special to behold. It gave new meaning to
my beloved “Venus on Earth.”
posted by Jim Macdonald @ 5:11 AM
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