Looking up a thorny tree

Another day to take off! I am excited. Preps, research, packing and last minute shopping are all going pretty well, except for the fact that the Lonely Planet Guide Book I ordered on Amazon hasn't shown up as yet. Given the sheer size of Yellowstone, and the infinite choices of trails and sights that it offers, a detailed study of the LPGB on the 2 hr flight to Denver would have been really helpful. The nps website is a labyrinth and I have been lost a number of times exploring its many, many links. However, a question/post on The Thorn Tree website has elicited some solid responses from someone called zeldasdad. Learnt that bears love cheese.

In the meantime, there's Tom Cahill's "Lost in my own Backyard" to devour and digest. Also found some interesting quick-fix, no-fuss, minimal-mess dinner options @ http://www.bestcamprecipes.com/ . I am so tired of dining on bread and Bush's baked beans on camping trips. The 30 F lows are a little worrisome. I know the cold will dampen my enthusiasm for camp-fire culinary experiments. Maybe the synthetic, performance uppers I got from Academy Sports will do the trick.

Latest Aquisitions: A pair of 12/25 Bushnell binoculars to watch bisons, elk and grey wolves, biodegradable soap, compass with built-in LED torch, camp-pillows (great invention), a set of copper-bottomed, stainless steel camp cooking set with a Made in India label.

Things left to do: organize a first-aid kit and music CDs.

I do hope the Lonely Planet Book arrives today.

Useful links:

http://www.americansouthwest.net/wyoming/yellowstone/hiking-map.html

http://www.nps.gov/archive/yell/interactivemap/index.htm

Pet Obsessions

I leap from one obsession to another, like a hiker jumping on rocks in a stream. I started the year with Weightwatchers where I lost 13.5 lbs in 3 months and learnt pilates. Next came the poetry phase, followed by the Eckhart Tolle phase where I devoured 5 or 6 new age spirituality books and then came the hiking phase in which we went to Zion National Park and hiked the Angel's Landing trail. After that it was writing, then blogging. The house hunt and our forthcoming hiking trip to Yellowstone are the most recent ones. I just need something for my hungry mind to chew on; otherwise I fret and fume and eventually get depressed. This pattern came to light last night when I was miserable at having to suspend the house hunt for a week and Sid slyly suggested I research Yellowstone day-hikes instead as an interim obsession.

This spot of epiphany throws my life into perspective. Painfully drawn out, listless summer vacations, the unbearable tedium of repetetive school work, one dimensional people, dull jobs, boring projects that I can sleep walk my way through without requiring any active engagement on my part...all screaming out for release! Give me juice, give me meat! Otherwise, my insatiable intellect will cannibilistically gnaw on itself and give me ulcers. I count my blessings. Inspite of bungling and fumbling my way through, I have landed up in a life where I have the resources to indulge my pet obsessions. A Zen Master would prescribe reining in the wild horses. Comtemplate the rock in the stream, instead of leaping over it - calm and still in the frothing turbulence.

Petals on a wet, black bough

In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound

THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Poetry that lands in a deep echoing thud in the pit of my belly and resonates through the veins of my mind in its rawest primeval form.
Makes me want to flop down on the last step of my experiments in writing, face in my hands, wondering if its even worth going on.

Two for the Road

The friends who put the idea of visiting Yellowstone into our heads have backed out of the trip leaving just us - two for the road. With unprecedented efficiency we have dealt with the mundane. Air Tickets to Idaho Falls, campsite at Canyon Junction and a compact car reservation at Thrifty. Check, Check, Check. Now we have four weeks of anticipation to deal with. REI beckons..

We are also trying out different kinds of energy bars to graduate beyond Clif. Chocolate Raspberry and Blueberry Yoghurt Sunrise from Luna, Mango and Coconut Soyjoy and a box of assorted Quaker's Chewys. Must restart my exercise regime.

The Old Faithful - Redux

Bozeman, MT, Jackson Hole, WY, Salt Lake City, UT and Idaho Falls, ID. The names conjure up picture postcards, abandoned barns, men on Harleys and a long, lonely, windswept stretch of highway leading to the mythical splendor of Yellowstone National Park. Beyond the snowcapped mountains, lie billowing meadows of slender wheatgrass. Blue and purple wildflowers dance among them, their eager faces turned to the temperate Taiga sun. Far away, from the woods of aspen and birch, a lone greywolf eyes the elks and bisons grazing beside a gurgling stream. Ponds of scalding mud spew columns of steam into the blue of sky. This, they have been doing much before we learnt to measure time with watches. Have I been there before? Maybe in another life, I have.

I wonder, will I be able to rest there knowing that my ear is pressed against the gentle heaving of Vulcan's bare chest, with white, hot lava oozing out of subterranean pores, somewhere down below? Will the sleeping caldera rumble underneath our puny little Coleman tent, laughing at our feeble refuge, a trembling construct of metal and plastic? How will it raise its precocious little head against the unforgiving Goddess who bid us all to prostrate ourselves before her on the damp earth without appearing to be defiant? I don't know what draws me back, time after time. It must be the insatiable craving to be free of all things permanent that underlies all forms of wanderlust. From the moonscapes of New Mexico, abandoned beaches of Texas, verdant hills of Arkansas and rugged canyonlands of Utah, we have been forever thirsting for this heady opiate. Now we are getting ready to go back again. Going back for four days in the sun when our biggest achievement will be to build a fire. No seeking validation from uncaring humans, no counting worldly possessions, no competing. Away from the frustrations, disillusionment and constant clamoring of yuppiedom, we will trade the comforts of modern life for an existence much, much more primitive. I find it totally ironical that simultaneously, we are also scheming and plotting to buy ourselves a house.

PS Congrats to Abhinav Bindra for doing us proud and for taking us, where a billion others failed reach. I watched Team China flaring and vaulting their way to the Men's Team Gymnastics Gold last night and thought to myself, all our 'shining' is just empty talk, we still have lightyears to go.