Page 179 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL MAGAZINE FALL 2023 DISCOVERING TURKEY

these hot spots is Norris Geyser Basin, con-
sidered the park’s most active thermal area.
Steamboat, regarded as the world’s tallest
geyser, lives here, but we never saw it. Maybe
that was because Steamboat is more fickle
than Old Faithful, gushing when it prefers
rather than when we prefer. But more likely it
was because the steam rising from the basin’s
ponds and fumaroles wrapped us in a world of
fog and ice. Sometimes we could not see be-
yond our reach. The park has installed walk-
ways, like boardwalks, above the hot springs,
because you can’t possibly walk there or you’d
be severely burned. Four feet of snow lay atop
these boardwalks, so we were stepping at the
level of the handrails, with snow-laden pines
on either side of us.
When the wind picked up and snow lashed
our faces, we felt as if we had stepped into a
malevolent snow globe that was simultane-
ously enchanting and threatening. We stopped
and waited for the vapor to lift, and then con-
tinued down the trail to an array of steaming
ponds where air and ground merged in a bil-
lowing cloud of mist and snow. Separating
earth from air through this blur was impossi-
ble.
At this point there were only three of us on
the trail — our guide, Kathie and me. It was so
cold I could barely see through my camera’s
viewfinder to click the shutter, but I could
never describe what I was seeing so I had to
photograph it. The haze parted and peeking
through this curtain of fog, about 100 feet
away, was a small herd of bison huddled on
the side of the pond for warmth and the possi-
bility of something edible in the melted earth.
As fog wafted in and out, the bison disap-
peared and reappeared. It was ethereal, even
mystical. This, I realized, was the moment I
had come all this way for. Leaving it was hard.

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