The alpine scenery became more pronounced as we approached Dubois, Wyoming. The small, quaint mountain town was an eastern gateway into the wild forests and tall peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Coming down from Togwotee Pass, large masses of flowers covered the slopes and scattered patches of snow hid in the shadows, even at the beginning of August. Poking around the bends, the glorious mass of the Tetons pierced the blue sky. As the land leveled in the upper reaches of the valley of the Snake River, we pulled into a small National Forest campground and put our $10 in an envelope. Profuse blooms of tall, dark pink fireweed surrounded camp. It was still early evening—our earliest camp yet. I had time to walk a bit up the dirt road past aspen meadows and collect a large bouquet of wild flowers and an armful of firewood. Later, at sunset the dark clouds that scudded about the mountains finally dropped their rain. And that was the only rain of the two and a half week trip.
Our bouquet lasted a couple of days. But there were more wild flowers to bask in. Our horses took us up through verdant aspen meadows above Yellowstone where extravagant spikes of pastel mountain hollyhocks shot up six feet in the air beside the stalks of fireweed and the Indian paintbursh was a particularly rich shade of red. The horses moved through the mountain world and we sat there at ease, nearly gliding through the calm, perfect temperature and fleeting beauty of a verdant alpine summer.
The next day we traveled on our own power through the mountains. After traveling through the crowded, multi-lane West Yellowstone entrance into the park, we parked at the Biscuit Basin Boardwalk for a two and a half mile loop walk up to Mystic Falls and down past an overlook to Old Faithful, a couple of miles away. I was working Bella up gradually to bigger walks as she got older. The sloping, seventy-foot falls were lovely. We ate lunch below them, close to a hot spring. And then we walked up and up to complete our loop. Bella was a questioning a little that uphill hike through the sparse lodegepole forest and slowed a bit. Though as we would our way down through the cliffs and expansive views (times I usually like to dawdle, considering that icing on the cake) she sped up and urged me on. At the overlook that gave us views across the Geyser Basin, we saw Old Faithful begin to erupt. It was a cool perspective to see the big geyser shoot up from our bird’s eye view. After finishing up our walk across the boardwalk, past the beautiful aquamarine depths of the hot pools and gurgling mud pots, we soaked our feet in the Firehole river while the hot springs steamed all around. Sound, long sleeps seemed to be the norm on this trip. I think the outdoors and the carefree nature of our travels induced our wonderful rests. I read Christopher Paul Curtis’ Bud, Not Buddy to Bella most nights. I usually managed a chapter in my novel, Willa Cather’s splendid evocation of nature and culture in 1800’s New Mexico, Death Comes for the Archbishop or a quick jot in my journal before I too nodded off on my new, thick inflating camping mat. Bella wanted to trade, but I kept it under my older body; she got it when I was out of the tent and she was in it getting her extra sleep as children need. Sleeping fairly comfortably heightens the pleasure of camping.
Over the thousands of miles of road that followed older roads, we listened to narrated books on CDs too. Bella urged us continue the story when I paused it to discuss a point in my teacherly way. I told stories too—a version of Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The White Heron” with a young protagonist who must choose between beauty and money in the woods of Maine. And then many hours passed with my daughter’s happy little girl voice singing softly songs of her own composition. Sometimes I would ask her if she wanted to hear something, but she said, “No daddy, I just want to daydream.” She was content in her ordered, roomy space in the back seat of my Honda CrV with souvenirs of our trip—a picture of Old Faithful, a book of flowers, a special rock.
The route’s names lend historical thickness to the places we travel: Lewis & Clark, with Clark’s dated 1806 signature on a rock outcropping (Pompey’s Pillar) on the Yellowstone River; The Oregon trail and the vast valley surrounded by imposing, high, blue mountains; The Nez Perce Trail and the peaceful valley where Chief Joseph’s small band was finally stopped in their long wandering for freedom and beauty.
Following Roads
I know these highways follow older ways
We sign them now with numbers, give them names
Of travelers gone and heroes past
Kokepelli, Coranado, The Lincoln Highway,
Highline, Great River Road, Route 66
Ways the wagons went, wooden, spoked wheel
Wagon trails followed Indian paths that followed
The paths of glacier carved Earth
The way water went and still goes, flowing down
Following the sun and seasons, vast herds, killed
The slow mammoth gorged on, final extermination
Down through deserts, mountains, plains
Panama’s isthmus to jungles and the end
Of the world, Tierra del Fuego, the last, cold sea.
And I too roll, self-contained, playboy with toys, library, kitchen, orchestra
Going to fast, I stop, unsecure bike, switch to manual
Rolling propulsion in order to see more clearly, to feel
The unfurling of the land layer by ancient layer. That
Particular rust-red of Indian Paintbrush, an individual rock
Curled with a million years of sea and delta deposition
A scene slowed to stoppage, identification, immersion, oneness
This “beyond mundane” transfiguration the road brings
When the road ends, you are in mountains and you will walk
On earth, solid paths, scattered stones. I have tried them, my friend
They are sound but shifting, alluring trails curving ‘round earth’s surface.
I know you Road, like my guide, like my lover, my path
My passenger – a stack of maps in a bag
Saying: trace another line upon my contours
Alone in the distant, blank space of no village, or
In the fully swarming city where roads converge like
The concentric connection of a spider web, many-stranded
Fast woven, always buzzing, well-trodden, party-talk café dance hall sway.
Follow the road to where the earth of spring leaks green, to where
The rains have stopped and carpets of yellow dandelion scream growth
You are free then, mobile, self-contained. Outside for days, wondering
Briefly, is it Monday or Thursday? Your skin tans to match the buff sandstone.
What of the variety of wood that grows upon the land? Staring into a camp fire
A primal compulsion to gaze. Comparing the scent of Norway pine to Utah juniper
The coals of cottonwood to those of mesquite. Perhaps it’s the scent of pinyon
Lures me back, the red crevice canyon of mother earth, the dry silence of dawn?
Others have gone these paths to where the Vulcan veins of Earth spill her
Blood into pools of soothing heat-lithium, sulfur and sage, salt cedar crawls
Up the canyon. Black and White pictures show bathers. The Indians sold the
Site for some consideration. Buildings built for the tourists that never arrive
The soothing waters continue to flow for years-O how deep run your veins
Mother? How long will you heal? Will the American road really go on forever?
I don’t know how long I’ll be free, but the road reveals a beauty fuller than I can tell
I follow its length, mile after big American mile down the spine of the world
Green and grey, filled with places of public domain, wildness where
Still, abandoned campfire rings await the mesmerizing, dancing flame in the starry night.
Having gone as far west as we could, we needed to return. Interstates say “speed on me.” Other routes wind through the land. Oregon’s US 20 begins by winding through the bucolic groves of the coastal range where the overhanging green of leafy trees create tunnels of verdure. Then up, up through the bare peaks of the Cascades where ancient groves of douglas fir grow thick and cathedral-like. Then out onto the spare, starkly beautiful high desert and the occasional oasis, like that rest stop outside Burns in the lands the Paiute called home, where a fountain shot sweet, cool water into the sky and the sun might set in a streaky orange glow that infuses you with peaceful beauty. 
Eventually the Rocky Mountains begin again in the heart of what is now Idaho, hot springs sprout from the stone and cascade into rock pools. I sat in a rock pool below steaming cascades at the Bonneville Hot Springs, a short walk from our camp, as the sun rose and the full moon set and it was good. Later in the morning we went down and found another pool with a delicious mix of hot and cold river water while the sun shone on us.
The valley of the Salmon River is a long and winding one, full of mountains and few people. It was a long, beautiful drive to Bozeman. The Big Hole Valley is classic western Montana: Immense, sparsely treed and peopled valley with a big, trout-filled river running through it (but not an Interstate). Where the slopes go up, the pines fill in the mountainsides until tree line, when the peaks and the cirques and snow and wildness pile up and your presence is put in prospective of smallness yet connected in that big space, a human in the wild.
It was late, we had friends in Bozeman, so we went to sleep there. Friends in nice places, visit them and there will be more happiness.
Another sunny day and we were under way. For me there is a feeling of deflation coming out of the mountains onto the plains. The cool gives way to the heat, the heights give way to the plains, but the big woods of oak savannah appear, green and watery. William Clark, of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, signed his name and dated it 1805 on an upthrust of rock named Pompey’s Pillar, after Sacajawa’s son and the Roman emperor. The Yellowstone River rolls by and a beautiful National Monument building welcomes you to this historic river front area just off of Interstate 90. Yes, we finally succumbed to the speedy, gas-sucking, cruise control Interstate to ease our way back. But even the Interstate holds treasures. We ate lunch at the monument and were lunched on in turn by mosquitoes. One of illustrated stories and excerpts from Clark’s Journal tells of being so inundated and attacked by mosquitoes that he couldn’t even hold a gun up straight to hunt. The populations of animals on the land east of the Rockies onto the Great Plains before white Europeans invaded and killed them in the mid-1800s were said to resemble and even surpass the great herds of the Serengeti in Africa. Grizzly and elk roamed east to the Dakotas and buffalo herds numbered in the millions.
Kids reaching the end of a trip think about getting back. I think of reasons to hesitate. But sometimes there is nothing to do but give in, chill to some electronic beats and cover some ground late into the night. When the moon is full and the night sky is clear on the empty prairie, the miles roll by easily on the little-used Interstate. The nighttime views are immense, otherworldly, and peaceful.
Bella and I took a long dinner break at a McDonalds in Dickenson, North Dakota. There was WiFi and video games at the newly remodeled restaurant with bistro seating. Mickey Ds has some strange pull on kids. I’d been on this return trip from the west five months ago as I returned from a ski vacation in Big Sky with my brother and nieces. The nieces too felt this desire to get back and make a dinner stop at McDonalds. I’d driven past the last one in Montana and the next town didn’t have one. I felt the wrath as we settled for a Subway (a local hamburger joint was out of the question). To make up for it, I clamped down and drove through the winter full moon night so the girls could sleep in their own beds and avoid their snoring Uncle.
After a couple of couple hour snooze stops at some fine tax-supported rest stops, we were driving into the dawn of green oaks. We missed Minneapolis rush hour and pulled in twelve hours before my daughter turned nine. The freedom of the road was done and the list of things to do in the real world started scrolling by; but not before a nice nap as my daughter watched the Disney channel and got her TV fix that she didn’t seem to miss in the natural world of the wild west.
