September's Palette

Black was the sky when the day began its slow crawl towards night. Black was the blanket that twisted and knotted itself around my shivering husk as I slept. Black was the car that I sought refuge in, sleeping inside of to shelter myself from the biting winds of the highlands of Wyoming’s unforgiving wilderness. There was a beautiful calmness in the air; I remember that. Though I slept very little, and my back was as twisted and bent as the blanket was that covered me, I felt little other than calmness and the quietness of the morning. Stepping out of my car only briefly to unfurl my twisted legs, I was met with a harsh gust of wind that woke me up better than any cup of coffee could. The soft blue glow of my watch read 4:26. Good morning. I returned to my car and began driving, leaving behind my little patch of dirt that served as a good and stable home for the night. Black was the abyss of the night that pushed back against my headlights as I drove on. Black was the hauntingly vast sky above, and black was the road that stretched on and on below me. I drove for hours through this empty, starless galaxy. No moon guided me, and no stars flickered above me. Through blackness, I cut and fought forward, and through emptiness, I voyaged on. What was once open flatland soon became a mountainous terrain. The road rose and fell through the mountain ranges, as though I was a lonely black ship on a dark and haunted ocean. I felt as though I was being swallowed up; my car a lump of coal, the world before me a large and lightless fire. I drove on through the night as the glow of my watch showed time marching on and on and on. Good morning, my dear sweet Wyoming. I praise what I have been granted to see: September’s beautiful palette.

Grey was the dawn that enveloped me in mist and frost. Grey was the mountains that I weaved in and through, as though I was a needle dancing through a broken cloth. Grey was the sky above me and the land around me. The sun, who knows when she would come, had not yet arrived but had given me a sample of her light so that I could begin to see the fields that I treaded through. I stopped driving for a moment and pulled off to the side of the road. I was now within the wilderness of Yellowstone; the quiet, ill-traveled, untainted part of the park that gave me a quiet moment with the greyness around me. My breath, the same shade as the exhaust coming from my vessel. Smoke coming from out of my nose and lips. The sunlight wasn’t here yet, it was still somewhere out west, in California, but it would be here soon. For now, however, the greyness was comforting. I sucked in the frosty morning air, filling my lungs with every bit of it. I was drowning in it and I loved it. Lodgepole pines, whitebark pines, Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, Rocky Mountain juniper; I was thoroughly surrounded. When you are a kid and read stories about scouts venturing into the woods to collect badges and learn skills and build character, these are those woods. They must be. Looking around the greyness, the forest, the fields, the rising mountain peaks all looked so official. This was the official wilderness. This was the official forest. This was my official escape from all else. I finally returned to the car again after hearing the howling of some distant creature. Likely with grey fur and an acute skill for navigating these grounds that I feel welcomed by but not knowledgeable of. I leave the grey fields, in search of more colors, more life, more and more and more. What a beautiful dawn I have found, I think to myself; what a special moment I have shared with what things I have seen and cannot see. I praise what I have been granted to see: September’s beautiful palette.

Yellow was the sun! Large and lovely and present with me once again! Yellow was the sun that rose above the mountaintops and splashed onto cliffs facing East. What joy I felt as I traveled along in my car, weaving through winding roads, looking to the sky, watching the sky brighten and grow bluer. The grass that coated the fields of this valley had grown tougher and drier but had not yet died and turned brown and crunchy. The grass then glowed yellow, almost as if the sun was shining down on it and the sun was coming up underneath it as well. Ten billion candles lit my way as I drove on and on. Shadows on the mountain ridges were sharp and theatrical, cutting into the mountains with harshness. My own personal Baroque painting being constructed above me before my eyes. There was not a soul ahead or before me, so when I chose to stop and watch the sun rise up a little higher more, the middle of the road was as good of a place as any to stay and watch the performance. Each inhalation, while still freezing in the lungs, now felt like swallowing fire, consuming little pieces of the sun. I had some of its pieces now. I felt even more fulfilled. Such joy filled my spirit, perhaps like never before. I am not often one to hold hands with joy and elation, but perhaps this morning was the moment that changed that. Through blackness I sailed, through grayness I weaved, and now in this wide-open yellow, I found joy and relief. I found energy and revitalization. Dark thoughts were cast aside, painful memories vaporized. This was healing. This was medicine. Yellowstone; what a perfect masterpiece I was given by this perfect benefactor. I praise what I have been granted to see: September’s beautiful palette.

Beasts. Creatures. Giants. Brown was the living beings I encountered as I ventured on. Grazing in the grass, but close enough to smell their gruff and hides, I fought to keep composure at the sight of these hundreds of bison all around me. Above the dirt, below the sun these monsters roamed, around my car and along the road. Weighing roughly one ton each, when they circled around my car, the only thing I could do is sit and wait for them to pass. I sat in my car and beheld these brutes. Big huffs of breath blasted hot air at me, as though they were toying with me. Humid, sticky heat. Frost and mud cracked and crusted over their faces, coating their brown fur in the elements. Brown was the dirt that they kicked up as they charged one another; skirmishes at daybreak. Warfare under the morning sun. There is no better for these animals than beasts. I sat there and stared into the eye of one of these living things, and I no longer felt entirely alone. Since the moment I had awoken, I had not seen a single other living being. No car, bird, or bug caught my eye, and now I was at arm’s length from a monster. Big, heaving lungs. Horns that could impale me before breakfast. Hooves that could stamp me until my blood dried. And yet, I was met only with its breathing. Silence, otherwise. With a creature this close, this is all I should have been able to hear. Perhaps its mighty roar, perhaps the scraping of its hooves in preparation to kill. But I could hear the rustling of the trees; the wind slicing through the grass. The brown beast of this road granted me the ability to hear the sounds around me, and only contributed its own mighty, gruffy breath. Then it left, walked away, and I was again met with an open valley road ahead of me, with only brown trees directly ahead. Brown was the color of the Giant. A bison. A being. An organism, just as I am. And a beautiful being it was, with brown fur that shone brightly at the grass it grazed. I praise what I have been granted to see: September’s beautiful palette.

White was the color of the rock of my destination. White was the color of foam and spray of the river as it crashed into rapids and split through stones. My hope was to reach the end of the long road and arrive at the Boiling River, a natural hot spring of boiling water that fell into an icy river. When situated just right between the two currents, one could feel a perfect equilibrium. Amongst the raging white of the current and the soft pale rocks that circled the hot spring, one could feel at peace and grounded in nature. As my pilgrimage was complete, I was met with harsh, blood-red signs that screamed CLOSED at me. Finally, interaction with the human species, indirect as it may be. This plastic sign reminded me that I was not alone in these parts, no matter how much I wished to be. Saddened by the lack of success of my long travels, I ventured southward now, knowing that this land had more in its grasp for me to see. As I moved further now, snow accumulated along the road, coating grassy patches with pure white blankets. I reached a town, nothing special about it, and certainly nothing to write home about. But it was human, and I missed that. I stopped here for a moment, and looked considerably at a large white church, with a towering cross erected at the top. Perfected created, the building. Blinding white. Looking at the freshly fallen snow was a dimmer sight than the brightness of the church walls. I was looking at the sun. I moved on. My journey to the white river and the pale rocks and the balance of the water I would enter into was unsuccessful, and a blinding white church was no proper consolation, so onward I drove. To Old Faithful was where I hoped to reach. White slabs of rock, millions of years old, with a giant hole bored right into it. Like clockwork, every day, as certain as the sunrise, a giant spout of water shoots out from this hole, a hundred feet into the air, scraping the sky with the spray of a naturally pressurized, geothermal bomb. Old as it was, never was it not Faithful, and never will it fail to launch. What began as a solo trek through these beautiful Wyoming Mountains devolved into a mess of traffic of white and pale. Suburban vacationers, white SUVs, sunburned heads, and crying babies stuff in a traffic jam. I parked a mile from the visitor center, knowing that if I tried to inch any closer the flow of traffic would sweep me up from my car and wouldn’t let me down until I agreed to a white picket fence, a fraudulent timeshare in Miami, and whatever white stereotypes are left over after that. I walked closer to the geyser, knowing that I was about to witness the closest thing to a miracle I could ever see. Geothermal energy churning and bubbling and pressurizing hundreds of feet below me, and every forty-five minutes it routinely spits out just a sample of that energy into the open air. And I get to see it! Humans being, as little as we are, get to witness the white, foamy, boiling hot miracle. Miles from that blinding white church was where I knew I would see God’s truest work. I sat on a small bench near the geyser, counting down the minutes before it would erupt once more. Whiteness surrounded me. Complaints and petty arguments and pleas to leave this stupid place and go somewhere more fun. Red baseball caps and sweaty faces, griping and bickering that felt as routine as the geyser itself. Luckily, the bickering stopped once the old geyser was Faithful once more, but the end of this miraculous performance was only met with white complaints of dissatisfaction around me. That was it? We waited this long for that? That was so boring. Let’s just go, I promise I’ll buy you something to make up for this. It made me sad. It made me worry about where people will ever be able to find new miracles if true miracles right in front of them are disrespected. Why would God ever wish to dance for us if all we did was throw stones at him? I wanted to cry. As I walked back to my car, I tried to convince myself that it was because of how beautiful Old Faithful was, and not how the people around me felt about it. But there’s no use lying. Nevertheless, I praise what I have been granted to see: September’s beautiful palette.

Blue was the still, infinite pool before me. Blue as an iris. I found myself on a small hiking trail near Yellowstone Lake. Located in the middle of the area, one could allow themselves to get lost out in this wilderness, since moving in any direction around the massive lake would bring them back to some kind of road. The trail moved around a series of flat, motionless geothermal pools. Seventy, eighty, ninety feet deep but only a few short yards in diameter, the pools reflected the sun and sky to create perfect blue waters. Oval-shaped, I felt as though I was looking into a gigantic eye. Face-to-face contact with the land itself. Distraught and discouraged as I was only an hour before, I felt a deeper comfort in my veins now, as I looked down in these waters. Through poor weather and nasty conditions, they never wavered. Through forest fires and natural disasters, it is said that these pools stand strong where they lay. Boiling, bubbling, sparkling with deep earthly energy, these pools were alive without life in them. Large bubbles of water felt like slow blinks of this massive eye, staring directly at me. I felt like I was looking at the bison again. Nature itself, what a beautiful friend we have in it. Blue were these waters, and blue was my heart before this great comfort was restored within me. Blue were these infinite depths that could consume me and hide me away. Each passing moment restored in me a greater love for this blue. For all I was concerned, this blue water was all that I had ever known. Hypnosis. Beautiful, seductive hypnosis. The blinking pools bubbling up, making noise like music in my lonely ears. I was in a trance. When I stepped away, broke eye contact, gave myself a moment of composure, I felt different. It was like I had looked down into the core of the earth, and saw in and out and through and across the entire planet in this one blue pool. I walked away and went back to my car. Maybe I shouldn’t have left. Maybe that pool had everything I ever needed. Or maybe I was just losing my head a little. But the blue was a wonder to behold, nonetheless. Striking blue eyes, Yellowstone’s own irises. I praise what I have been granted to see: September’s beautiful palette.

Gold was the light that blanketed over the entire world. The sun was now finishing its own pilgrimage. The day was crawling closer and closer towards its daily death and nothing could be done to prevent it. But the sun is kind, and gracious, and before dying in her final hours, grants us a few small moments of pure, liquid gold across the sky. Gold was the sky! Gold was the haze that shimmered over the fields of wheat and barley that grew high above the muddy ground. I drove away from Yellowstone now, and in my exit, was introduced and taken directly through Grand Teton. Sharp, jagged, violent mountain ranges. Steep and narrow passages between them. Rivers cut through the cliffs in the distances, shining like the sun itself as they exploded in gold. This was my final resting place before the long journey ahead. Away from the road I simply stood. Surrounded by tall grass, looking into the distance at these enticing mountains. These mountains could take everything away from me if they wanted to, and I would only beg for their company in return. In the gold, I stood, trying to consume all that I could before the golden sun dipped too far below the peaks and this honey-colored light would be gone, maybe forever. This day has been so long, I thought, but what I wouldn’t give to make this one moment last an eternity though. It was a moment that I could never truly describe the way that it deserves to be spoken about. I stood there, yes, and looked upon the mountains. This much is factual, and there is not much to say about that. But for how long I stood there, how long I stared at these golden mountains, I could not say. For one moment I felt as though the golden light would never leave, and the next moment it was already gone, the sky in the opposite direction already transforming into a darkening purple and blue. When did that happen? Perhaps I was already hypnotized. Perhaps this land had already had its hold on me this whole time, and I was only tricking myself into thinking I was already captured by this land. But even if I was prisoner to this earth, would I even care to struggle? Or would it be a blessing like none other? I mean, if I was a hostage to this Wyoming earth, perhaps I would never miss another liquid gold sky ever again. I had to drive away, however, and even if that was the last I’ll ever see it, I praise what I have been granted to see: September’s beautiful palette.

Silver was the moon. Silver was the sky. Silver was the glow of the road as it reflected moonlight into my vessel as I drove into the night. Off to unknown lands; that’s where I was going now. Yellowstone, though a perfect partner, I had to abandon that day, for there was far more to see. I had heard that Utah was a rocky wilderness that promised adventure. I read a word that guaranteed Colorado would embrace every vagabond and traveler with the warmth of mountain peaks and glistening rivers providing water to strong Aspen trees. I felt enticed and ready to see these distant lands, and this is why I chose to drive away from Yellowstone. Adventure in front of me had to be of a greater priority than the lands I became acquainted with behind me. Forward I must move, for this is the way. Lingering will only hypnotize me deeper, and will form a compromise to stay somewhere too long, with the guarantee that I will be trapped there forever. Therefore, forever I must move, with as much certainty as the world itself that turns beneath me. Silver was the moon that shone clearly above me, providing enough light to see the distant peaks of a new mountain range in front of me. Something new was coming, and October’s own palette was right around the corner.