Double Rainbow!

Make that Sun: 2 / Paul: 1. For reasons unknown to me, my friend the sun betrayed me again today by roasting my head, shoulders, knees, and toes. Perhaps it was teaching me a valuable lesson – higher altitude, if colder, means closer to the sun and less atmosphere to filter its fury. I’ll keep that in mind so that the next time I go hiking without sunscreen, at least I’ll know beforehand that I will be rendered crimson.

Otherwise, today was great. I hiked 12 miles into the beautiful wilderness, took full advantage of “Employee Appreciation Day” (which included 40%-off at all stores – the perfect opportunity for me to snag some deodorant – and a banquet which showcased dinner that was good enough to not be cafeteria food), learned that volunteering at the Backcountry Office might be the coolest job ever, and finished off the day with a double rainbow. All the way across the sky. Yes, today was great. There’s currently a fire blazing in the huge fireplace at Old Faithful Lodge, and the sun is setting directly behind the perpetually-steaming geyser…

…And yet this sunburn is really a bummer.

Oftentimes we focus so intensely on minute tragedies that we forget about the gorgeous 200-foot explosions of boiling water that happen in our lives every 93 minutes. Everybody is a culprit of this – especially those of us whose explosions are particularly dazzling; those for whom extravagance is normal and boring. I find myself falling into this category too frequently, running after all of the “stuff” that life tells us we should run after. It seems that, for many with Parker Brothers inclinations, LIFE is just a game in which the person who accumulates the most stuff comes out as the victor. In the game of LIFE, you don’t get points for watching sunsets or chatting idly with strangers – those things simply get in the way of ultimate victory. But what kind of victory is a daily 9-holes in Naples if that’s the only story you can tell your grandkids? “You should’ve seen the shot I had on the back fairway. Truly a work of art.” I’m slowly realizing that the things that make me truly happy are the things that can’t be put on credit (though you wouldn’t believe that by looking at the bill). What good is a sportscar if you don’t have anybody to ride shotgun? Though this isn’t just about money.

It’s about experiences. I recently read Donald Miller’s A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, in which he wonders what kinds of things he would talk about with God when he got to Heaven. He ultimately decided that the conversation would revolve mostly around his acquisition of a Boy Scout merit badge, for lack of anything better to talk about. Miller raises a good question, and I strongly recommend any of his books to anybody… But I have a revision to make to this scenario. I would rather that my heavenly conversation be a continuation of the one I had been having with God my whole life. One of the greatest benefits of enduring friendship is the ability to look back on mutual experiences and remember once again why you keep these people around. Most of the time you’ll find that the experience was memorable because they were around. It’s funny how simply the presence of certain people can completely change our experience. What might have otherwise been dull and unfulfilling could turn out to be unforgettable. And the great thing about this kind of relationship is that almost every aspect can be translated to human relationships as well.

Perhaps another night I might write more extensively on some of the many subjects that I just rambled about, but right now I’m going to cap off this good day with a goodnight. 

But wait! I have a photo album up!

...and it will be coming soon, because I can't figure out how to link it to the blog. Help with this would be appreciated

But here's a sample from my good day:

Big and Little

My apologies for the lapse yesterday. It was a long and tiring day and, quite frankly, I didn't feel like writing anything. Get over it.

Anyway, the sun found me wide awake when it finally decided to get out of bed. In fact, I had already been up for about an hour and had started on my hike. I scolded the sun for being so lazy, and it grumbled and scolded me for not making it any coffee, then later it took revenge by ruining a bunch of my pictures. I'm not quite sure of my next plan of attack, but I guarantee it will be swift and merciless. But that's besides the point. The point here is hiking. If you look to your right just a tad, I've started a log of all the hikes that I've completed. Three so far, but more will follow. Actually, just today I joined the 100 Mile club, and I vow to reach that goal by the end of the summer...

Well whoop de do.

Yellowstone encompasses 2.2 million acres. Which is more than 3,400 square miles. Which is roughly the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. You could run three consecutive marathons in a straight line without leaving the park. To put it in Ohio perspective, if my house in Troy and my school in Cincinnati were picked up and directly translated on top of Yellowstone, I wouldn't have to worry about paying for two entry fees, because the schoolbus would never leave the park. Within this nation-sized park are more than 1,100 miles of trail. This equates to 42 marathons. Enough road to allow me to walk two-thirds of the way back home to Troy.

This rather depresses me. My 100-mile promise seems like, well, 1/11th as awesome as it did before. In order to really get a feel for Yellowstone over the next 9 weeks, I'll have to hike roughly 126 miles per week, which simply isn't doable without some better socks... Okay fine, I could maybe do it...

But honestly, this place is enormous. Yellowstone evokes a profound feeling of smallness, which is accentuated especially on the lonely trails that weave through the sequestered backcountry, apparently directionless. A Yellowstone hiker is nothing if not humbled, and lying if not terrified. It is on these paths - paths that are perhaps used more frequently by nature's hikers than human hikers - that one is faced with his own frailty. No longer is he able to pretend mastery of "his" domain, but instead is at the mercy of He that governs all domains...

When I reached the turning point of my hike, Mallard Lake, I found a comfortable rock and sat down for a while, trying - and failing - to take it all in. The sun had just barely come up, and the water seemed to be nothing more than a reflection of the land and sky.

I opened my Bible and randomly turned to Psalm 104, which miraculously fit the morning perfectly: "O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your possessions" (Psalm 104:24 NKJV). It was evidence to my ever-creeping suspicion that I wasn't as alone in the wilderness as I thought I was. It hit me that the whole time I had been walking in God's back yard, and I pictured myself stumbling through some bushes to find Him sitting stretched out in a lawn chair, wearing dirty jeans and enjoying His handiwork.

It's impossible to not feel this way in places like this. There is no church or sanctuary on this earth that even comes close to rivaling the holiness of nature itself. But this holiness isn't the same starchy holiness that we typically associate with places of worship. Creation emanates a sense of casual majesty - which does not impose or request that you please keep down the racket, but instead invites you to pull up another lawn chair and have a chat with the Creator.

It seems to me that these instances don't just happen as a result of any kind of goal-setting on our part. If we go out in search of spiritual renewal/discovery/disruption/etc., we might find it, but probably not. How much more aware are we of the things that take us by surprise? I think we're setting ourselves up for failure when we start designating tangible goals for spiritual matters. I think God is more interested in the questions we ask than the questions we answer...

Being several hours ahead of schedule, I took my merry time on the way back from the lake, and ended up taking more pictures than apparently this internet connection can handle uploading (3 hours and counting). I'm in the process of putting together a real-time visual account of the summer thus far, and will be posting the link as soon as (more like if) the pictures make their way into cyberspace. Until then, it looks like I'll be stuck surfing around in an internet that oftentimes seems bigger and more untamed than any wilderness that I'd be willing to hike.

Bear Spray

This evening I come to my computer, brimming with tales of adventure and organic cooking grease. That is to say, you won't be interested in anything I did yesterday. Or today for that matter. Except maybe that I bought fingernail clippers today after identifying them as yet another seemingly trivial, yet immensely important tool that I left at home in Ohio (others include shampoo, a towel, and laundry detergent... I'm currently in the process of re-evaluating my relationship with personal hygiene).

I guess I did buy a can of bear spray last night. It took me about an hour to do so, considering the general store is finding it difficult to keep the shelves stocked after the events of Wednesday morning (If you don't know what I'm talking about, CLICK HERE). But after trekking from one end of the park to the other, I managed to snatch the last one on the rack, with bearly any time to spare. After relaying my pun to the cashier, who gave me a sympathetic chuckle, we got to talking about how it would be in my best interest to actually read the instructions before I go out into the wilderness bearing bear spray. It certainly would be unfortunate to come across an angry Yogi and reach for my can of liquid bear TNT only to discover that it was at the bottom of my backpack, carefully wrapped in 13 inches of child-and-apocalypse-proof plastic. Even worse, we decided, would be the scenario where I point it backwards and create for the bear a marinated entree: Curried Paul. Nevertheless I was comforted by the story of the man who put his unfortunate family in a line and systematically doused each and every one with a healthy dose of the stuff, apparently thinking it was a more potent insect repellant. At least I knew enough to avoid doing that. At least I'm not that unbearably dense...

It got me to thinking about what I would do if attacked by a bear. Of course I would first try to calmly reason with it, explaining that I'm quite gristly and really wouldn't be worth the effort. I learned from Ranger Greg (the man when it comes to bears) that grizzly bears are the second smartest mammals native to North America, so even though Ranger Greg may be biased, I don't see why a peaceful settlement can't be reached - even if I have to trade my pic-a-nic basket for my wellbeing. Bears drive a hard bargain. Yet there are those bears who find cordial negotiation sessions to be boring, and would much rather get on with their business of eating me. This is when I exercise my right to bear arms against the bear (and his arms...which could cause me harm). I whip out the bear spray - which I have carefully excavated from 13 inches of child-and-apocalypse-proof plastic, and have placed in its holster on my left hip - and I let teddy know exactly which one of us has to resort to using weapons to defend himself. If this doesn't work, and the bear is desperately attracted to my raspbearry scented deodorant [Note: it is at this point that I have exhausted my bear puns], I'd like to think that I stand my ground, grab my buck knife, and meet my assailant. A grizzly scene ensues. [Note: Damn...] I actually found myself replaying this scene over and over in my head: I dodge his swipe, roll, and plunge my knife deep into his neck, mortally wounding him; and in the process I accumulate injuries that aren't quite fatal, but will produce a number of manly and interesting scars... But eventually I had to face the honest fact that, if I did ever come face-to-face with a malicious bear, I would be emptying the contents of the anti-bear canister, then running the hell away.

This was a humbling revelation, but I suppose it's better I came to it then rather than the moment when I'm looking at the back of Baloo's gaping throat.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I didn't really do much of anything yesterday and today. Perhaps, though, it's when we aren't doing much that we end up making the best use of our time... Just something to bear in mind.

Ho! Land!

Thursday, for the first time in my life, I stepped foot in our nation’s oldest and second largest national park. It was a small footprint - relatively microscopic - but it was the first step towards what I’m sure will be the most memorable summer I’ve yet had.

I’ve been assigned to the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, working at a short-order joint aptly named The Geyser Grill. It’s not a glamorous occupation, and in fact it's a job that I had vowed to avoid for my entire life at any cost... But I suppose given the circumstances, I can peacefully shut up and let yet another occupational vow quietly perish. On the bright side, just think about how awesome our apartment burgers will be next year now that I know how not to make them!

Yesterday I got something of a ‘grasp’ on my immediate surroundings by taking a 4-hour hike around the geothermal features near Old Faithful, starting with a trail called Overlook Pass, and ending with a circuit through the geyser basin. As you may know, the entirety of Yellowstone is essentially a giant freaking volcano - a "supervolcano" in sciencey speak. They say it last erupted about 640,000 years ago, and don't worry because they don't expect it to erupt again for at least another 15,000 years. I'll have to admit, they're doing a pretty good job at not letting on to the fact that they have literally no idea what the heck is going on. They don't. Nobody does... I mean, sure, they can speculate, but when it comes down to it, Old Mother Yellowstone is just gonna get bored one day and blow up the entire western hemisphere. "So why? Why, Paul, are you living on top of a dormant supervolcano?" The answer is simple, really. If and when she goes ballistic, I will be incinerated immediately, whereas everyone else in North America will choke to death slowly on 2,500 times more ash than Mount Saint Helens spat out... But anyway, moving away from the morbid and depressing... I say all that to say this: there are geysers where I live. Notably this one. Old Faithful.

 There are also pools of water - called hotsprings - that are literally just boiling puddles. And they're gorgeous. Sidestepping the boring (interesting?) science, they become colored like this because of bacteria that live in them in such force that, in terms of diversity, they rival tropical rainforests.

Cool, eh? ... Anyway, I'm walking and trying to avoid falling in and boiling my skin off at the same time, which occupied roughly 95% of my brainpower - enough to effectively render me completely oblivious to this, which, in true Yellowstone form, had crept up in the blink of an eye:

Armed only with a University of Cincinnati Rowing jacket... I kept walking towards it. I actually completed the trail (my camera died tragically at the end before I could snap a darn good picture), before it started raining too hard. But I still had to trek the mile back to the lodge, and about halfway back, all hail broke loose. "Aw, hail," I exclaimed bitterly before chuckling at my own cleverness. Yeah, a hailstorm. It was actually pretty sweet because it piled up a lot like snow... Really painful snow that really shouldn't be caught on the tips of tongues. There were drifts of it on the sides of the path, and I wondered if Israelite manna hurt this much.

Eventually I made it back to the dining hall, where I was arrested by a man who must have seen straight through my bandana-wearing, tough-guy exterior and identified the drenched, helpless puppy dog that I really was. He invited me to sit with him, and reluctantly I did. He noted my Cincinnati jacket and asked where I was from, then pretended to know where Troy was. He spoke quickly and tirelessly, but seemed genuinely interested in the seven words I managed to squeeze in. He patted me on the shoulder a lot... It was something of an awkward encounter, but it made me realize that every single person living and working here in Yellowstone, without excuse, has a screw or two loose. It made me wonder why I had come here. To make some money while becoming one with nature? That's what I've been telling myself, and perhaps it's true. If it is true, then I'm just as crazy as the talking guy - probably crazier... But I think the real reason I came to Yellowstone is that I just wanted to escape. I wanted to break away from what was expected, and I wanted to do something seriously abnormal. I guess you could say that the reason I came here was to "find myself"; and as unbearably cheesy as that sounds, I think I'll stick with it. There's something special about going to a new place where literally nobody knows - or cares - who you are, because they end up telling you who you are. The challenge, then, is to align the person who you know to be yourself with the person the social mirror is showing you... Perhaps this is a struggle we all face throughout our lives, regardless of surroundings.

After talking for a while with my new friend (I'll call him that), we parted ways and I retired for the evening, praying that my roommate wasn't already asleep. Were my roommate already asleep, I would be doomed to listen to his thunderous snoring for at least an hour before I forced myself to sleep. Luckily he was asleep.

iBlog

In thinking of ways to make good on my promise to tell everyone I know about how I'm managing to avoid being eaten by bears, my creativity couldn't muster anything more than this blog. That's right, I'm now keeping a web log. I, like 156 million other individuals, feel that my thoughts are more interesting than the average Joe's, and have decided that it's time the world listen up to what I have to say! I even spent a good part of my evening making sure that my blog page looks better than other inferior blog pages - no doubt the product of the inferior dedication and brainpower of my fellow bloggers. Look out, internet. There's a new kid on the block, and he's got a BigWheel.

Of course, I'm full of more hot air than about 149 million of those other guys, who may or may not be taking this as seriously as I'm going to pretend to be. So here's the deal: I will report on the various random thoughts that race through my head (oftentimes at such speed that I really have no idea as to their composition, but am just left with a general impression of blurred color and dusty eyes), and you will read. It's quite simple, really. I write; you read; and I don't come find you and read it out loud to you. As a man blessed with the speaking skills of an oyster, I beg you: this is the only way I can effectively communicate.

On that note, I'd like to explain just what the heck is going on here...

As you may or may not know, I'm spending this summer in Yellowstone National Park. They even offered to pay me a little bit - provided, of course, I actually go to work and do my duty. Yes, a summer job in Yellowstone. I wish I could say that the application process was rigorous; including many strenuous physical challenges, an IQ test, a beauty pageant, and a talent show. I wish I could say that, of millions of highly qualified and handsome applicants, I was chosen first. But in actuality, all they really wanted to know was if my lungs processed oxygen and if I could spell my name correctly. (Seriously, the application was almost that easy, and I'd recommend that anyone give it a try: http://www.yellowstonejobs.com/) But who am I to complain? I got the job, and I didn't even have to embarrass myself by performing strenuous physical challenges, an IQ test, a beauty pageant, and a talent show. All of this happened towards the end of last year, so you can imagine how much hair I was tearing out in anticipation for the school year to come to a close. Finally, though, it did, and interestingly it did so in the presence of more hair than perhaps I have ever known. But that's a different story entirely, and if you're really interested I will reluctantly share it with you. Anyway, I arrived in Bozeman, Montana on Wednesday, walked around town, found my life's calling, stayed in a motel for serial killers, and took a Thursday morning bus into Yellowstone having absolutely no idea what was in store for me... And that's where we are now.

The purpose for this blog, then, is simply for me to record my thoughts and experiences as I think and experience them. It's a way to let everyone back home (Mom) know how I'm getting along without them. Also, selfishly, it is a personal memoir - which will no doubt suck - that I hope to be able to look back on and remember just how retarded I was in my youth.

So take it however you choose. Read it, disregard it, fall in love with it, fall in love with me (ladies), print it out and burn it, satirize it, discuss it, forget it. Whatever. It's up to you, because my thoughts are now public domain... But hey, I guess that's why iBlog.