Two Octobers ago, I paused on the bank of the Gardner River and wondered just exactly why I would choose to be standing there in a swimsuit in twelve-degree air. We’d been there before–at least, my husband, two older kids, and I had. At that particular stretch of the...
A long, long time ago—forty years last month—my parents took my little brother and me to Yellowstone. If you’ve read around here long, you know my life has never been the same. (Thank you, Mom and Dad.) One of the sights I most remember from that first visit is...
We walked out of the bustling hotel lobby into the stillness of a crisp mountain morning. It was the end of September, well into the annual elk rut. Gone was the previous evening’s circus of bull-horn-brandishing rangers trying to keep space between territorial bulls...
Between the morning’s family-friendly hike around Trout Lake and the afternoon’s challenge trek to Sepulchre’s summit, we traveled through Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley. We knew this place well. At least, we knew it when it wore the colors of fall. But this was May, and...
It was one of the first hikes we took together, my husband and I. It wasn’t long—only a few miles, but one long stretch was steep. The descent wasn’t bad, and the destination—a steel suspension bridge spanning a canyon in the middle of the wilderness—was worth the...
