by Natalie Ogbourne | Aug 25, 2016 | Yellowstone Stories
On the eve of our son’s return to college when the kids were snarly and I was weepy, my husband looked at us and said, “Transitions are always tough.” They are. I know. But I forget. With his words barely out into the air between us, I remembered...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Jun 25, 2016 | Yellowstone Stories
Eight years ago, two months after we landed in a new place, spring unfolded like the twelve days of Christmas, each morning bestowing blossoms of a new color. Crocus peeked over the winter’s covering of melting snow. Creeping phlox draped over the rock wall and tidy...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Apr 15, 2016 | Yellowstone Stories
We sprinted up the switchbacked trail, pausing occasionally to measure how far we’d come, to rest our already used-up legs, to fill our lungs with as much oxygen as the mountain air would give. In previous years, I would have decided that it wasn’t worth...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Mar 18, 2016 | Yellowstone Stories
The springtime landscape in rural Iowa wears a mosaic of ever-deepening swaths of green broken by plots of freshly turned fields and charred black ditches. Growing up, I saw the burns and wondered why people, including my farmer-grandparents, endured the stress of...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Feb 12, 2016 | Yellowstone Stories
Sometimes, when we head west, we land for a few days at a cabin. In a meadow in Custer National Forest, it’s far enough from civilization that the siren song of phone, internet, and television falls silent, replaced by the gentler sounds of wind in the trees and...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Jan 26, 2016 | Yellowstone Stories
The twelve-passenger van made its way down Yellowstone’s snow-covered road not on traditional tires, but on treads meant to traverse the groomed roadway. Gone were the crowds and the fly fishermen of fall, replaced by seas of white broken by swaths of evergreen and...