Sunday was the last day of the season that the roads in the interior of Yellowstone were open, so I made a ritual drive down to Old Faithful and out through West Yellowstone. It seemed like at least half of Gardiner was also doing the same. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to drive through the park with almost no one else there; it’s easy to feel that it isindeed >your< park. Your wilderness. Your solace. The tourists are gone, the elk have vacated the Theatre of the Rut in Mammoth, and the Jimmy Buffet lyrics, “that’s when it always happens, same time every year, I come down and talk to me, when the coast is clear,” ricocheted across the spaces in my head.  There was a very large herd of cow elk and young spikes lounging along the Gardner River, and I had to wonder if those cows were having morning-after regrets, contemplating morning sickness and how they managed to get knocked up yet once again, and wishing someone would bring them an ice pack, some saltine crackers, and a ginger ale.

Besides the absence of massive RVs and cars abandoned in the middle of the road, what was most striking was the absence of color. The few aspens have lost all of their leaves. Some willows are still holding on, but those leaves are a crinkly brown. The grasses are the color of bleached wheat. The sky was several shades of gray. Not until I reached the thermal areas, was there a suggestion of any color besides subtle, but even the cyanobacteria mats have faded from their summer brilliance. It has been warm in Gardiner, so the skim of ice on the small ponds in the Gibbon Meadows took me by surprise.  Above it all, the insistent wind blew in a song of lullaby, of everything poised for sleep. Buttoned up, hunkered down, and waiting for a blanket of snow. Which according to the meteorologists, will be here by Friday.