The Great Rock Hop

The Mather Peak Adventure Part II

So begins the second installment of my adventure from Circle Park to the top of Mather Peak in the Big Horn Mountains.

Boulder fields forever

  After that night scrambling amongst the boulders in the dark, and pitching tent at 10,500 feet next to Lake Angeline, I finally crawled into my sleeping bag. Here, my grip on sleep was tenuous at best.

  The icy wind swooped over the mountains, rattling the tent fabric, making the floor undulate up and down. Even in the sleeping bag, I was so cold that I ended up doing plyometric exercises for warmth. I curled into a fetus and waited for sleep to come.

  Sleep came, but it left around 1 a.m.. A particularly strong gust hit the side of the tent and woke me up with a full bladder.

 I staggered out for a windy piss in the cold, then dove back into my shelter.

  What dreams would come involved me staggering around on top of mountains and interviewing Buffalo politicians for some news assignment that I didn’t understand. I woke up again at 4 a.m. and then at 6.

  This time, I could pick up a faint glow coming through the walls of my tent. I looked outside in my imagination, picturing the spectacular first rays of morning striking the snow on the peaks above, the glacier too, descending the stairway from heaven until at last I was in the light and in the warmth.

  It wasn’t particularly warm in the world though. A scene of uncommon beauty may have been unfolding outside, but all my animal instincts told me I should stay put, curled snug within the snug cocoon of heat. Nor was the sound of the wind against my walls particularly inviting.

  Oh hell! I didn’t come out here to be comfortable. I flung myself from the tent and looked at the world around.

  Deep pink-orange light flooded the ledges on the other side of the lake and the glacier. The waters were still dark, a deep blue like the ocean. The wind had stirred up small whitecaps, even though there couldn’t have been more than half a mile’s worth of fetch.       

  Any gripes that I could have with the discomforts of the previous night, seemed petty now.

  People could wait a lifetime to see this. It was just an obscure lake on the map, another day in the Big Horns.

Tent pitched alongside Lake Angeline

  There was plenty of challenge ahead though and not much time 

for complacency. Two weeks ago, I had left for the summit of Cloud Peak at 4:45 a.m.. It was about an hour and a half later than that, and arguably I had an even harder hike in front of me.  I went to the lakeshore and gathered up some water for my oatmeal. A hot meal would fortify me against this chill.
Unfortunately, my lighter had other plans. It was completely shot.  

  Yesterday it had worked beautifully lighting the stove for pasta. Now I was eating cold oatmeal yet again. Some things never change.

  The summit of Mather Peak is 12,348 feet, leaving me about 2,000 feet of gain to cover in about three and a half miles. No biggie right?

  What I was going to find out was that those miles were going to be a lot more taxing than the average trail hike Not only would I be navigating by compass, I would also have to contend with boulders everywhere.

  Admittedly, I love rock hopping, and get a thrill out of bounding from one to another. It’s great exercise too.

  Coming from back east though, this part of the hike is usually the icing on the cake. Big boulder fields tend to lie above tree-line, so on a 5,000-foot New Hampshire mountain, that means that you will get about a half mile of pure rock scrambling.

  This hike however, I was starting at 10,500 feet, already well above tree line and in the place where winter ice breaks the exposed bedrock into crazy piles of rocks that range in size from softball to SUV. To cross this lawless realm, would require me to spend the next hours, hopping from point to point, putting my feet in weird angles and scrambling up and down boulders.

  In this kind of funky situation, a hiking pole is an indispensable resource, allowing me to pivot, catch myself from slipping and keep my forward momentum.

 

   I left camp and started up the first ridge, moving fast to get some warmth up. The lake fell away and I got up closer to the glacier.

  The fingers of ice plunged down off the edges of the cliffs and nestled in immense grooves in the rock.  Layer upon layer of snow had accumulated here over centuries, maybe millennia, and compressed down into the pack. Leaning in the grooves they had carved from the rocks, the glaciers looked like skyscrapers of ice, leaning against the mountain.

  On the other side of the ridge, a particularly terrifying glacier dropped straight down at the corner of two rocky cliffs. About 20 feet of it jutted out in an icy platform over the Seven Brothers Lakes to the east. Those with a low sense of self-preservation could walk or crawl out to the edge and look straight down perhaps 50 stories or more of drop.

  Fortunately, I could stay well clear of these icy segments. The rocks kept me plenty busy.

  I had an internal goal to reach the summit by 11, imagining that it would leave enough leeway for me to get back to my car in Circle Park by dark.

  I ended up getting to the main peak around 11:30 and then killing some more time getting over to a sister summit. As long as I navigated a more efficient route on the way back, I figured I should be okay.

  As I hopped from one boulder to another, and scrambled up and down others, it was a tricky business keeping a straight line. Nor was it really worth the effort. It was far better to give in to the topographic whimsy of the landscape, to try to find the twisted path that worked the best over the senseless jumble of broken rock.

  This is part of what makes rock-hopping fun to me. You are always in a puzzle, but there are an infinite number of correct places to put your feet down, no need to get bogged down in the boredom of knowing exactly which way to go.

  It was as much a mental exercise as a physical one. Over time, the game slowly morphed from a fun pastime into knee-jarring tedium. Scrambling at the high altitude cut my energy a bit. Compounding it all, there was the fact that many large, seemingly stable rocks had a tendency to slide, tilt dangerously or else fall away completely, dumping the hapless hiker along with them. 

  Ere I reached the summit, my ankles had suffered the abuse of many a treacherous stone.

  The top of Mather Peak was marked, appropriately enough, by a pile of rocks. Someone had left a steel strongbox next to it and I wrenched it open to find a logbook. A few hikers from previous years had left entries on the soft pages, though there was no record of any other 2012 ascent. Whether this is because nobody else has been up there this year, or the more likely answer, that no one bothered opening that box recently, I can’t tell you.  

  I added my own name and sealed it back up again.

The view was indeed spectacular: miles of mountain lakes and glaciers, sprawled out under the azure sky. To the north I saw Bomber Mountain rising in a steep-sided bulk of cliffs and ridges. Beyond that stood Cloud Peak, my second most recent ascent in this range. About 15 miles to the south, I saw the green slopes of the Meadowlark Ski Resort.

Cloud Peak in the distance, with Bomber Mountain in the foreground

 I had two liters worth of water starting out. Hiking in the dry, thin air I was going to need a refill. I scraped some snow off of one of the glaciers and put it into one of the half full bottles. It wasn’t much, and the snow, which looked so pure and white from a distance was actually quite dirty.

  The ice was melting steadily under the sun, but there was no way to get to the water, because it immediately trickled beneath the rocks. I could hear streams of it rushing beneath my boots, completely out of reach. After some work, I moved a couple of rocks and put one of my bottles under the trickle, letting it fill.

  Getting back to the tent was a tough and I took an inevitable tumble when the rocks shifted underfoot. It was getting toward 3 p.m. when I spied the tent far below from my vantage point on the ridge.

  As I began the descent, a stone went loose under my boot, dropped me, and flung me around violently into a boulder. Since I was wearing my camera on a strap, it caught the brunt of my inertia, transferring the kinetic energy to a small area of my ribcage.

When I got my wind back, I spent it out in a string of profanity.

  My camera is more resilient than I am apparently; it seemed none the worse the wear, happily clicking pictures for me for the rest of the trip. My ribs, of course, hurt like a mother. The rest of the day, I got to feel a jot of pain every time I took a deep breath.

Back at the tent, I refilled my water bottles and took the tent down. I still had miles to go to get to the car, and I preferred to cover them before nightfall.

  I steered around the tall ridge on the way to Willow Lake. All the time, I was playing the opposite of the Hot Lava game we learn as kids. At all costs, I tried to stick to places where there was dirt or shrubs. I was burnt out on the rock hopping. As the trees filled in again, there were only slightly fewer boulders, and more dead trees to hop and thickets to cut through.

  The sun was low in the sky by the time that I got to Willow Lake. 

  What a relief it was to get back on trails, free of the responsibility to choose my own path. Tired as I was, I managed to jog  the flat sections of trail and avoid the dark.

The old, trusty Mazda waited in the parking lot, ready to convey me across the miles of road back to Gillette.

  As for my rib, it still hurts, even a week later while I write these words. I sneezed the other day and it felt like taking a hammer to the chest. I don’t believe it is anything more than bruised however and I haven’t stopped running or anything crazy like that.

Back at Lake Angeline later in the day

Points of Light

Looking back over Willow Lake on the way to Lake Angeline 

This is the first installment in my adventure to the summit of Mather Peak in the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming

  Through the pre-evening dimness and far, far below, the city of Buffalo twinkles like a lonesome outpost amidst the miles of semi-desert plains.

  Are you having a nice Saturday night down there?

  I see your lights clustered together, drawn to one another much as the lights in the darkening sky are part of their own galactic cliques. 

  And you twinkle in those rows of orange halogen street lamps, lighting the way to bars and whatever other amusements the evening has to offer.

  Do not mistake these words for condescension. I like your town plenty. You’ve got some pretty good beer on tap and some nice bluegrass musicians that I wish we had where I live 70 miles east of you in Gillette.

  But on this stony ridge thousands of feet above you, I can see how small you really are compared to the darkness that surrounds — the dim grazing land, the strange buttes, the latticework of canyons. The darkness stretches up to these proud mountains that had exulted in the last rays of the sinking sun as they put you in their shadow.

  Now I see that you are not entirely alone down there. Amidst the empty plain, I can make out the blip of a radio tower, the odd natural gas rig or a ranch. A pair of headlights crawls out from your outskirts, climbing the Powder River Pass toward Tensleep and Worland on the western side

  For myself, I have a cheap LED flashlight that I bought earlier in the day, but I won’t turn it on until I absolutely need it. The orange glow in the west still affords me enough illumination to pick my way around the loose boulders. A glance at my compass indicates that I am still heading in more or less the same trajectory that I had set for myself when I left Willow Lake two hours ago. The way that I have been winding around the boulders, and through the trees earlier, it wouldn’t surprise me if I were off by a few degrees. As for the distance I have left to travel, your guess is as good as mine. It couldn’t have been more than three miles on the map, but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s been slow going over these boulders.

  And even though I have my flashlight, even though I’m heading for Lake Angeline, which is pretty big and should be hard to miss, the fact that it is getting dark now is starting to worry me just a bit.

  Maybe I should have stayed at Willow Lake after all. The sun was still up when I cooked dinner there, and that’s when I decided that I would rather push on then camp there for the night.

  Obviously, I reasoned, what I really wanted to do was hike up another 1,000 feet and get to Lake Angeline so that I could climb the distant Mather Peak the next day.

  The distance I would need to cover  hadn’t seemed so long when I was looking at it on the map. Now the darkness is closing in, and I find myself looking for a place to lay up for the night. My eye scans the boulders for a patch of meadow, at least a flat rock where I could pitch the tent. 

  I put these thoughts aside. First, let me get to the top of this ridge and maybe I’ll be able to see the lake. In 15 more minutes of scrambling I’m at the top.

Here's how I cooked up some tasty pasta at Willow Lake

  There it is! Way beneath my feet in the valley, maybe 500 feet down that steep, rocky slope. I can see the wind pushing waves across the dark waters.

  An almost-vertical glacier plunges down from the mountains to the western shore. Where there are glaciers, boulders invariably follow, meaning that it will be tough finding a spot to pitch tent — if there is anywhere to pitch a tent. I’ll be damned if I can tell by looking down at the dark landscape from up here.

  It will take at least another half an hour for me to reach the water and then I will have to find a tent-spot by flashlight.

   I guess I kind of fucked up with this whole navigation thing. If I had paid more attention to the topo lines, I would have known to hike the distance in a big L shape instead of a straight line. That way I could have steered around the ridge. That way I wouldn’t have needed to climb way the hell up here, and then climb way the hell back down there.

  The first stars have come out now. Like the lights of Buffalo, they are far away. Comparing those distances is just a matter of scale really.

  And for whatever small progress I’ve made, this may be about as close as I will get to those far-flung worlds above. Get too close and there will be no turning back.

Even as I think this, the city lights disappear behind the ridge and I begin the descent into the glacier-carved bowl.

  “Ow! Goddamnit!”

   I just twisted my ankle on a boulder. It must be time to turn that light on. I’ll need it to get down without killing myself.

  I unclip the light from my pack and swing the beam through the dark to scramble Gollum-like after it.   

  The illumination is only bright enough to show me one part of the jumbled chaos at a time. There’s enough light for me to guess where I should plant my foot, but to make the next step, I must swing the light away again; and so I move forward only by surrendering the path behind me back to the mystery.

The last light of the day cuts over Darton Peak. I had originally planned to climb Darton and possibly Bighorn Peak, but ultimately decided to go for Mather, which is a farther-flung summit.

  At last I have reached bottom.

  It takes a while, but eventually I find a patch of grass that is free of boulders. It’s a little tilted, but it’s good enough to sleep on. I disembowel my backpack and start to snap the tent-poles together to make my shelter. It is already cold, probably down in the forties. A chill breeze blows down off the glacier as I fumble with the different components.

  These stars…you may never have seen stars like the ones I see as I stand here 10,500 feet up in the dry Wyoming air. They overwhelm everything, filling up the bowl where I gaze gape-mouthed upward. Here is the Big Dipper for you, offered in high def tonight. Then there’s the Milky Way, which spans the heavens like a lattice of shining dust.

  Against the tapestry overhead, my limited mind is as the flashlight beam bouncing among the boulders — able to perceive small parts of it but never close to comprehending the whole. But I try anyway, vainly trying to expand my consciousness out into the infinite recesses of the universe above.

  It is like tossing a sugar cube into the ocean. One dissolves utterly; the other is utterly unchanged.

It occurs to me that for most nights in my life I will be in some kind of town or city, lucky to make out the brightest celestial bodies, while halogen bulbs and neon signs are everywhere to see. Yet just a century ago, this cosmic panoply I see now had held rein over every clear night on earth. Wouldn’t it have changed human perspective to see that kind of display nightly, when no one needed to make a special trip into remote places to see it?

  I can’t help but think of the Isaac Asimov story “Nightfall” in which a civilized planet with multiple suns never experiences darkness. But then a rare total eclipse reveals the stars and it plunges their society into chaos.

  No doubt Asimov was on to something when he wrote about the power that stars have on the human psyche.

  My take on the matter is slightly more optimistic. A starry sky like this one is a vaccination against myopia. Those of us who take the far-off stare into the heavenly spheres step outside the dull trappings of everyday existence. I would rather lose my mind to the stars then shut it up within the narrow walls of sober institutions.

  It pleases me to climb mountains and see far. So it pleases me to see these farthest, celestial realms. They are better understood today than when we first stepped out of caves to gape at them; but they remain largely unwritten – a blank page for the imagination’s possibility.

  It is ironic that science has made leaps and bounds in broadening our intellectual understanding of the cosmic realm, yet at the same time, we are cut away from that primal experience of being in it, of looking directly across the passages of space to the worlds beyond. We are more likely to see the workings of this universe as a telescope image or a computer model on the LCD screen; a brief diversion from our otherwise bland workaday lives.

  And even if these lives shrink and seem meaningless compared to the far-out reaches of the universe, I say it’s far more depressing to go through life with eyes cast down, intentionally ignorant to the fact that we are but one pixel on that vast canvas.

  Being one motif in the baffling image, we can look at the other parts and try to see where we fit into the grand puzzle, thus we learn something of our own shape.

  Alone again, above the city, nearer to the stars, my mind is forced to consider itself as one entity. I am distanced temporarily from the connections to people and other responsibilities that I use to define myself on other days; in their place I have space forever.

  At least it’s that way until I find myself standing in a patch of light.

  I blink in surprise. Everything including the tent and the boulders behind me is completely lit up.

Not angels or aliens that I can tell. It’s someone else camping out here on the other side of the lake. They must have seen me getting the tent set up.

  “Hey!” I call out.

  “Hey.”

  “How you doing tonight?”

  No reply.

  Okay, I guess I can live with that. The light goes out. It was super bright. Did they bring a set of headlights up here or what?

  I’m slightly unnerved, but at least I know I have a can of bear spray if they are planning to go all Blair Witch on me.

  Studies have shown that as few as one third of the people you’ll meet in the wilderness are psychotic axe-murderers, so I’ll probably be OK.

  Now that the other light is gone, I use my own to finish putting up the tent.

When I finish the work, I take a minute to lie on the grass nearby and gaze upon the firmament. The beauty and mystery of it moves me, but I am also getting kind of cold out here. Once I get inside the tent, that will be it for the view. It will be lost behind the rain fly that I have put over the tent to deflect night’s winds.

  Starlight is very pretty, but unless you happen to be handy with a sextant it’s not very practical. Unlike our good old Sol, it won’t even you warm.

  Warmth was gone from the sky now, but I had it in my sleeping bag. And there was my universe, slightly larger than a nutshell. Here I could cower from the infinite from behind walls of nylon and close myself off for the sake of comfort.

Looking down to Lake Angeline

From Acadia to Yellowstone: 12 months of National Parks, Forests and Monuments

Author assing around in White Mountains last year

“I can’t believe that was a year ago,” I said a year ago.

I was in New Hampshire with my two friends named Ben, one from my hometown, the other from my college.

The previous August, Ben from College, Max from College and Tom of “Tom’s On The Move” fame, had left for a month-long journey in Peru.  If you scroll back far enough through the hallowed pages of this blog, you will find my riveting accounts of that adventure — from our wanderings in the dry deserts around Nazca , through Machu Picchu and the shits, until at last I scaled the glacier to the summit of Yannapaccha. 

A year later, the two Bens and I were getting to go on a slightly less ambitious adventure in the White Mountains, along the barren 5,000 ft ridge from Mt.  Lafayette to Lincoln and then Little Haystack.

The mountains weren’t quite as big as Peru’s but they have a stunning New England beauty that is all their own. As we hiked through the pines and up into the barren alpine zones, we talked about what kinds of adventures we could have next.  Peru was just so damn awesome, what could we do to top that?

It’s debatable whether I’ve topped anything over the last 12 months, but I’ve also been pretty busy.  In that time, I’ve seen more National Parks and Monuments than I have in all the previous years of my life.

If for no purpose beyond my own callow validation, I’ve included listed some pictures and descriptions of my visits to these awesome places. Feel free to stop reading now. The page view counter has already registered your visit and I can feel good about myself regardless.

The White Mountain National Forest-New Hampshire, Maine

The Bens looking out over the Lafayette ridge in the White Mountains

I’ve done more hiking here than anywhere else and I still think it’s beautiful. Westerners may scoff at a range who’s highest prominence is just over 6,000 feet. Yeah, laugh all you want. Try climbing Mt. Washington in winter when it gets to 20 below and hurricane force winds are blowing ice into your face. 4,000 feet.

The ridge along Lafayette wasn't quite so intense when I hiked it last, but it made for a nice summer trip with plenty of hundred mile views across the New Hampshire landscape.

Acadia National Park-Maine

Waiting for the sunrise on Cadillac Mountain

A fine place to see the sunrise come up before the rest of the country does. Max, Josh and I climbed up Cadillac Mountain in the early morning hours, managed to avoid tripping or falling down anything, and watched the sun rise out of the ocean. The carriage roads around the island afforded some spectacular running. None other than Mr. Nelson Rockefeller had built them and they are reminiscent of the paths through Central Park — only they weave around mountains. 

Rockefeller also deserves some credit for buying up the land for Grand Teton National Park (included a little further down).

One day I went kayaking and got to see some of the local attractions like the Cranberry Isles and The Thunder Hole.

  

Sand Dunes National Lake Shore-Indiana

I can’t say that I really got a chance to experience this place, since I was simply driving through. I made a point of pulling off the highway though, even though it was pouring rain. I got drove down to the beach, got out and skipped a rock across lake Michigan.

If the weather hadn’t been so crappy, and I wasn’t so hell bent to keep pushing west, I would have camped there. Instead, I drove a few hours more and spent that night sleeping at a truck stop inside my car.

Anyway, Sand Dunes is administered by the National Parks service, so I’m going to add it to my count.

Badlands National Park-South Dakota

My dad on our trip to the badlands

I first encountered this strange desert landscape when I made the drive out to Wyoming. That’s also where I ran across my first rattlesnake and saw buffalo for the first time.  In March, my dad came out to visit and I got to go over the same territory of  buttes and canyons. This still may be the most beautifully strange place that I have ever been.

The Black Hills National Forest-South Dakota, Wyoming

Spearfish canyon in March

There is plenty to love in the Blackhills if you are into driving RV’s or have always dreamed at spending the night in a Flintstone-themed campsite. From Wall Drug to the Reptile Gardens to Mt. Rushmore millions of Americans have flocked to the sacred lands of the Sioux, now an oasis of tourist schlock. 

But there is still plenty of beauty out there. I am particularly impressed by Harney Peak, the highest point in South Dakota, which I have been up twice since moving out west. The nearby Needles rock formation is spectacular.

There is also Spearfish Canyon, which is a fine place for cross-country skiing or hiking, and the Bearlodge Mountains, in Wyoming, which afford much of the same scenery with fewer tourists.

Devils Tower National Monument-Wyoming

No, there is no apostrophe in Devils Tower.

I still haven’t climbed it, but I have been around its base for what that’s worth. Not only is the tower itself a spectacular sight to behold, but the land around it is very pretty. There are the ponderosa pines and the Red Beds near the Belle Fourche River down below. In my trips there, I have had the chance to see hawks and bald eagles wheeling around its summit.

The Bighorn National Forest-Wyoming

Looking past a cairn towards summit of Cloud Peak

The majestic Big Horn Mountains lie right outside of Buffalo, just 70 miles west of me. They are a nice place to get away to that’s not so far.

I’ll just want to have some good snowshoes in order to hike there when winter rolls around.

Grand Teton National Park-Wyoming

View of Grand Teton between two pine trees

I can’t wait to go back here and climb some more mountains.

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument-Montana

Memorial to fallen Indians  on the Little Bighorn Battlefield

If Custer had come in on a day like the day Ben (from my hometown) was there, the battle probably wouldn’t have happened. The smoke from a fire on the nearby Cheyenne Reservation obscured cut the visibility drastically so that he probably wouldn’t have spotted the Indians from the “Crows Nest” up in the mountains. It was a great way to see where this terrible battle occurred, which hardened the United States resolve to  subjugate native  tribes and land.

 I had read “The Last Stand” by Nathaniel Philbrick earlier in the year, which gave me a better sense of how the battle had unfolded, and how strong personalities like Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse had clashed with against one another like tectonic plates. As wonderful as the national parks are, in many ways they seem like a compromise made necessary to check the land-grabbing ambition of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny won and the west was tamed.  As great as the parks are, they will never match that original freedom over the land.

Shoshone National Forest-Wyoming

&Custer National Forest-Montana

Shoshone National Forest near Cody, Wyo.

I haven’t really hiked in these places yet. But based on my drives to and from Yellowstone, I really want to.

They have the beauty to match Yellowstone and the Tetons and have the added bonus of being less populated and not requiring campers to register their places in advance.

 Both Shoshone and Custer are in the Absaroka range, in Wyoming and Montana respectively.

On the way from Cody to Yellowstone’s east entrance, the mountains in the Shoshone Forest have a Utah-like quality to them with majestic, weathered stone overhead. The elements have hewn the rock into strange, towering formations that would look right at home in a surrealist painting. Even with the desert quality of the landscapes, there is still snow on the peaks, that climb as high as 13,000 feet.

On my second trip to Yellowsone, Ben and I went to the Northeast Entrance via Red Lodge, Montana, taking us through Custer National Forest and through a different segment of Shoshone.

After we stopped to sample beer at the brewery in Red Lodge, we went over the pass, which tops out at almost 11,000 feet.

We stopped at the Montana/Wyoming border and went for the walk in the tundra. Above us glaciers remained, scorning the heat of summer. Below, pine forests climb the slopes..

Shoshone on the Wyoming side, was far different from the Utah-like waste near Cody. Instead, the mountain slopes were lush with pines and meadows full of wildflowers. It was spectacular in the late day light.

Shoshone National Forest near the Montana Border

Yellowstone National Park – Wyoming, Montana and Idaho

Ben looking at the Yellowstone River at the start of our hike in the north part of the Park

In my two excursions to Yellowstone, I have covered a good part of the territory. From Mammoth Hot Springs, to Grand Prismatic and of course, Old Faithful. Along the way, I saw plenty of buffalo and elk.

Needless to say, the place is not overrated. It is filled with tourists up to the Wazzoo, but I think the park does a good job of accommodating them all.

Plus, when I did want to get away, I managed to. Ben and I spent two full days of hiking near Mammoth and the only time we saw people was near the trailhead. In their place, we had an ungodly amount of bugs, which was a drag.

On my first trip out, my dad and I climbed to the top of 10,500-foot Mt. Washburn and got the treat of taking in a panorama that included the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, Yellowstone Lake and the distant peaks of the Tetons.

Like any place, taking the time to walk away from the car and get into nature firsthand makes the experience all the more rewarding.

Elk horn resting near the trail in northern Yelowstone

And there you have it! 12 months, 12 national parks, forests and monuments. And while I’m on the subject of federally maintained lands, I guess I’d be remiss if I left out the Burnt Hollow Recreation Area 20 miles outside Gillette. This land belongs to the government via the Bureau of Land Management. When I don’t have the chance to explore the far-flung and spectacular places, it’s nice to have something relatively close and still pretty good.

I would like to thank Big Government for setting aside these areas specifically for me to play in, and for the amount of work they have put into keeping them unspoiled and full of wonder.

Grand Prismatic, Yellowstone