Dear Friends and Family?

How do you leave heaven?

Yes, I am asking again; I got a bit bleary-eyed while reminiscing about Lake Solitude in the last post, so making this one helps me gather my thoughts and regather my composure. I don’t have much narrative structure for the last couple photos and memories I have of being in Wyoming with Purnima, so I’ll probably just throw them up at random while I monologue for a while. And hey! It’s in the “About” page of this website, you can’t complain about my writing style 🙂 If you have complaints, write them on the back of a 20-dollar gift card to Kabob Palace in Crystal City and slip it into my back pocket the next time you see me, that’ll really teach me to write better 😉

Evan literally what the FUCK are you talking about. Who gave me this blog and why did they let me keep it.

Anyways,

Intermixed with our hikes in Grand Teton National Park, Purnima and me took a break day at one point and drove up into Yellowstone to see some more of the Geysers. Purnima had never been before and I was happy to go back and see some more bubble pits and skeletonization hazards.

I mean, not all of them are skeletonization hazards. Some are deceptively placid and pretty:

Hey! Woah! Sir! Didn’t you read the sign?! You need to get back on the boardwalk immediately! Cornelius J. Crow you get right back on this gangplank or I am turning you in to the park rangers!

Oh yeah yuck it up now, now that you’re back on safe ground. But you almost turned into a damn metaphor back there! You be careful next time or you’ll really eat- *I am unceremoniously fired by my editor*

Purnima’s favorite feature was the Grand Prismatic Spring:

If any of you, or frankly anyone else in the world, read as in-depth in to the “Guardians of Ga’Hoole” series as I did when I was a kid: this is the color scheme I imagined the Ember of Hoole having. Also, text me, let’s hang out some time 💙.

We also saw Old Faithful:

Diligently, patiently waiting.

Hup up up! Wait a second, she’s startin’ up!

Oh Lord oh GEEZ Martha! Martha run and get the kids from the station wagon she’s blowin’ off that steam right now!

Good Lord what a sight! Ah geez kids doesn’t that just beat the pants off of Wequiock Falls? Just wait until the school year starts when you can tell all your friends you saw THE Old Faithful this summer!

Yeah I’m not gonna lie I really enjoyed the people-watching more than the geyser itself. I mean don’t get me wrong, Old Faithful was great! Very big, very impressive. But I’ve seen it before and well, the charm just ain’t there for me like it is for other middle Americans.

All in all, we had a great time though 🙂

Firehole River.

Here is a lesser-known oddity in Yellowstone National Park: Isa Lake:

It doesn’t seem like much, but Isa Lake is actually unique on the entire North American continent: it is the only lake that straddles the continental divide. For real! They have a sign there to prove it and everything:

Like many aspects of nature, the continental divide is often portrayed as a stricture so definite it may as well be the 11th commandment. No river shalt cross the continental divide! And we draw it on our globes and classroom maps with the abject permanence of a black sharpie marker. But in fact, there are a handful of locations in North America where the thick black line gets dotted in instead, and you get water sources like Isa Lake that actually drain to both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans simultaneously. For real!

Here is the end of the lake that drains towards the Pacific Ocean via the Lewis, Snake, and Columbia Rivers.

And here is the opposite end, which drains towards the Atlantic via the Firehole, Madison, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers. How neat! All in all, it was a really swell day 🙂

But we were thoroughly gassed when we got home. It was raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock too, so rather than start a real fire, Purnima and I decided to make smores over my rocket stove.

Purnima, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for coming out to Teton and spending so many days with me. Over and over again, the absolute best part of this trip has been sharing these lovely experiences with people I care about, and I am very grateful for your friendship. Thank you fam 💙

Okay enough schmaltz 😉 Here’s a photo of a herd of buffalo, which, immediately after we took it, two bison in the front started humping:

The ciiiiircle of liiiiiiife!!!!

I shyly put my camera away when I saw it, because it was highly NSFW. Ask Purnima if you want to see video and color commentary of the encounter.

On what I think was our last night in Teton, I was awoken by a powerful thunderstorm and drove out to watch it from an overlook of Jackson Lake:

These are some mediocre stills I pulled from a video I took of the storm.

Ah Teton, you’re beautiful at any time, in any weather.

So really, how do you leave heaven, of your own volition?

I’ve thought about it much. I don’t have much of an answer.

I am two months apart from my travels now, but they don’t feel like just memories to me. When I play back the sights and the smells and the sounds of these places in my mind, I am transported to them as if jettisoned there by a lightning strike. I smell that funky, peppery, stink of the mornings in Lassen National Forest. I taste the salt on the air as it blows in past the Point Montara Lighthouse. I feel the winds by Lake Solitude sweep me off my feet and welcome me home in the world, over and over and over again. These aren’t memories; they are lived experiences that I am graced to carry with me forever and ever.

I guess that’s how you leave heaven;

You take it with you.

Stay well everyone,

Evan 💙