Earlier in the summer I was give the opportunity to go to India and Thailand for about a month with a friend from my semester abroad. However, if I went I probably would have squandered all of my money on the trip. Instead I decided to visit my one of my closest childhood friends, Ethan, in Yellowstone National Park, where he was working at one of the lodges. This seemed like the vacation for me, free accommodations, inexpensive food and the thrill of the great open outdoors. I arrived on a Thursday after spending the night in DC with another of one of my closest friends, Jon. I flew in to Jackson Hole, WY (actually the airport was in Moose Junction, but trivial little fact) a small town nestled at the base of the Grand Teton mountain range and the national park of the same name. As we were flying there wasn’t much on the ground to look at, however, as our plane was 10 minutes before landing the pilot banked the plane left and boojakasha! out of nowhere the Tetons appeared in its all encompassing glory. The magnificence of the mountains leaves mere mortals in awe of its size and beauty.
Before I go any further you need to know a little about Ethan. We met and became friends in the fifth grade (my first year in public school); we were introduced by another one of our friends Jahred. Throughout middle and high school we became really close friends and after high school Ethan would spend his summers in national parks (Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon) photographing in his words “beautiful country.” He is also one of the best storytellers that I have ever met, he makes everyone laugh with his colorful way of recounting the truth with just the right amount of twist. This also comes out in his photography, though nothing to laugh at, he is an artist who can capture epic photos in digital and film. Ethan can also hold a conversation with anyone, I asked him a few times after he would be speaking with someone if he knew them, he would answer no and he was being friendly.
As soon as I walked off the plane and into the airport, Ethan met me with a grin and a hug. We gathered my bags (the first off of the luggage carousel) and headed to a lookout off the road to get some photos of the Tetons. As we were shooting clouds began to form overhead, and dropped a little rain on us. We waited it out for about ten minutes then continued taking pictures for another ten minutes. We stopped at Old Faithful (Ol’ Filthy as Ethan calls it), in between Jackson and Canyon Village where Ethan lives, to see it explode and the other geysers and vents around it. Yellowstone sits on top of an inactive volcano, which heats up subsurface waters to boiling temperatures that then seeps, spews and spits up from geysers and vents across the park, of which Ol’ Filth is the most well known. As luck would have it we pulled into the parking lot just as Old Faithful was going off and would have to wait about 90 minutes before the next eruption. This worked out great for Ethan who wanted to get the erupting column of boiling sulfuric water as the sun was setting, casting shadows and marvelous oranges and reds in the dusk sky.
After another hour of driving we finally reached Ethan’s dorm that is identical to most college dorms with small rooms, bunk beds and communal bathrooms. Luckily, his roommate had been kicked out and only Ethan lived there giving me the top bunk to sleep in.
