Wishes to The Yellowstone

The Yellowstone River has been our guide for the last four days. Its raging water, a nerve inducing sound on day one, is now a comforting hum behind the shuffling rocks and scattered conversations. Chaotic rapids form at the valley’s sharp turns, but still the river flows in a single direction, keeping us on path like a trusted, older friend.

We reach a wooden bridge on the last day of our hike that marks our ascent from the valley; it’s where we’ll bid farewell to the park and the river. I’m skeptical about the ancient looking bridge, but smile with a deep gratitude when it welcomes my heavy, wet boots. This is a milestone moment in what has been a beautifully challenging trip. I lean over the wooden railing and peer at the captivating river a final time. A charcoal gray boulder peeks out from below the surface to hint at its impressive size. The Yellowstone graces the surface of the rock with repetitive, perfectly timed, and delicate splashes. 

I’m mesmerized, carried away with the river into Yellowstones of the past and future, millions of years in either direction. The river’s melodic splashes are seemingly insignificant today, but multiplied by millions of years, bring boulders to pebbles and carve valleys out of mountains. The sturdy boulder I’m fixated on is being shaped into the sand of the distant future. How lucky am I to be a witness? To be just as much a part of this place as the droplets of river water against the rocks? I’m here for a split second with less than microscopic impact. Absorbed by a roaring river of droplets though, I consume cliffs and reshape mountains like The Yellowstone before me. 

A satisfying overwhelm makes me consider the people I love the most, how together we’re coalesced into something more than meager drops. I comb through pebble piles beside the bridge looking for a few that seem to represent them. One by one, I hold the pebbles to my chest, make a wish for each of my loves, and release them into the river below. I watch their slow fall, the brief directional shifts they succumb to in the wind, and their final moment of air before being submerged under water. Into The Yellowstone they go, the pebbles and the wishes they carry, to be eroded into grains of sand, washed and watched over by the river for millennia. 

Switchbacks up the side of a multicolored mountain lead us to our van. The trip is over; bittersweet! I contemplate how the last four days are a major accomplishment for me, how this adventure and I are tiny and distinctive like the momentary splashes of water on that gray rock, and an all consuming river simultaneously, reshaping boulders into pebbles for tomorrow’s wishes.  

Previous
Previous

Then and Now at Eucalyptus Park

Next
Next

Thoughts from the Courtyard