No Ice Cream

May 22, 2006

One of the basic guidelines of Journey Travel is the “Archeologist Principal,” named after my neighbor Reid. This principle encourages the traveler not to try to experience too much. Archeologist don’t set out to explore Africa or dig the shore of the Black Sea; they find the one great spot, 50 feet by 72 feet, and spend the rest of their lives scraping away grains of sand down through centuries and millenniums of history. The archeologist finds the story that piece of earth has to tell. The only thing that could get Reid away from that site in Georgia would be senility or revolution.

Journey Travel should try to discover the story of a place. However, the scope of our Journey necessitates a limited application of the Archeologist Principle. We must skip stories to get other stories.

We spent part of a day in Yellowstone, much of it driving. We watched boiling mud pots, bottomless pools of super heated emerald water, colorful mineral deposits pilled on other colorful mineral deposits for millions of years, snow caped mountains reflected in Yellowstone Lake. We stopped and gazed across Lewis Lake, still frozen from one bank to the other. We saw and heard the Dragon’s breath, a hole roaring and spouting steam. We walked to the overlook at Artist Point and watched the spring flow of the Yellowstone River squeeze through a narrow opening in rocks and fall in silver slow motion to the gorge below. We saw elk grazing next to the wooden walkway leading to the hot pools, hundreds of buffalo, and a loan coyote. Despite all that we saw, our trip through Yellowstone was like visiting the ice cream store and tasting a few of the flavors in a little plastic spoon and leaving without choosing.

To some degree, tasting flavors is what this journey must be. Only occasionally can we have a cone. In fact we cannot even taste all the flavors. We must have a new Journey Principal for this type of trip. Call it the “Bachelorette Principal.” She needs to date a fair representation of males, but not all; and she certainly doesn’t have to marry them all.

So we had a couple of dates with Yellowstone. We held hands and kissed the Grand Teton National Park good night. We decided not to go out with Glacier National Park, despite the fact that our friends said we would like him best. There will be other difficult decisions. Love is not easy.