Yellowstone Memories

by Spinola, Jennifer Rogers

“Anybody else? How many hot springs and geysers?” Jersey asked. “And remember, the Upper Geyser Basin has more geothermal features than the entire Yellowstone Park or anywhere else in the world.” She pointed to a woman in the back. “A thousand? You’re pretty close. More than ten thousand. We don’t even know for sure how many.”

  Three teens huddled in a bunch, giggling, whispering, and sharing an iPod bud. Heads together, not hearing a word Jersey said.

  Oh no. “Sir?” Jersey called, louder this time. “With the camera? Please don’t lean between the railings—it’s dangerous. People have died here in Yellowstone’s hot springs. Not only are they full of acid but … sir? Sir!” She marched back through the group and faced him. “Please. Nikons don’t function well when dropped into scalding water. Believe me, I’ve seen enough people try it that I’m thinking of selling camera insurance.”

  The others tittered as the guy snapped three more rapid-fire shots then slowly retracted his camera and torso. Coolly wiping his lens and avoiding her eyes as if she’d never spoken.

  Argh. Did anybody listen anymore? Jersey walked back to the front of the group, trying not to think of the ignorant mom who’d wanted a picture of her child with a bear—so she set him in the middle of a field in grizzly territory with an open jar of honey. Jersey’s colleague Nelson had saved the child that time—storming through the field in his truck and hazing the approaching she-bear with rubber bullets. He’d given the mom a tongue-lashing and called the police and social services, and still Jersey had to hold herself from taking a punch at the woman across the ranger station table as she coolly lit up a cigarette, blowing smoke in Nelson’s face.

  Or what about the Chinese tour bus that unloaded sixty sardine-packed hikers who made a collective trash pile to attract wild animals and then climbed on top of the bus to watch? You’d think the two bison who rocked the bus back and forth might have created some healthy fear, but the following day (after the group had been ordered to leave the park) Jersey picked up seven of them for slipping through boardwalk railings and onto thin snowdrifts covering boiling mud pits to take pictures. About to fall through the ice and cook themselves alive in front of other tourists—and destroying fragile mineral deposits in the process.

  At the moment, Jersey wondered which would’ve been worse.

  The plaid-wearing redneck who shot two mule deer and tried to exit the park with them stuffed inside his camper? Been there, done that. The drunk college students who left their campsite a mess of broken beer bottles, vomit, and toilet paper—and tried unsuccessfully to burn a broken metal lawn chair in their campfire? Yup. The French hiker who dug up ginseng roots and got caught when Nelson found his stupid “fresh, hours-old, ginseng roots from Yellowstone” post on the Internet? Mmm-hmm.

  Jersey motioned the group ahead. “Everybody remembers Old Faithful, right? Well, even Old Faithful isn’t as precise as you think, and its timing has changed quite a bit in recent years. Any ideas what can make a shift that big?”

  “Dinosaurs?” quipped the bubblegum boy in a sarcastic tone.

  One of the teens poked his head up from the iPod. “Dinosaurs? Who saw a dinosaur?”

  His sidekick, who sported the shortest shorts Jersey had ever seen, laughed and shrugged long, sleek hair over her shoulder. She popped a bubble, hand on her hip, sunlight glinting off fancy oversized sunglasses. “Can we hurry up?” she whined, checking her watch. “I’m starving. Who cares about this stuff?”

  “What was the question again?” Bubblegum Kid’s dad asked with a hint of irritation. “Something about dinosaurs?” His cell phone rang a shrill and annoying jingle, and everybody turned while he proceeded to laugh over football stats with his buddy, so loudly that people across the geothermal pits on a different boardwalk turned to stare.

  “No dinosaurs.” Jersey held back a sigh, speaking over a noisy criticism of the Packers’ defense. “It’s okay. I was just saying that Old Faithful’s accuracy is subject to earthquakes that affect rock layers—changing temperatures or causing more gases to escape.”

  Teen Girl snapped another loud bubble. “I know somebody who’s got the same problem,” she said, elbowing her friend in the side. “Escaping gases.”

  “Hey, no writing on the rails!” Jersey jumped forward. The same kid. Again. “Could I have some help, please, Mom?”

  He jumped forward, scribbled on her hand in green ink, and then threw the marker cap into the mud pit. Grabbing for the other half of the marker to throw it in, too.

  “No, no! Don’t do that!” Jersey searched for the brat’s parents, but they’d walked forward, leaning over the railings. “These are fragile environmental ecosystems, and when that plastic melts from acid and heat, it’s going to … wait, what are you doing?” She straightened up. “An X-ACTO knife?”

  Jersey walked up the boardwalk and tapped the kid’s mother on the shoulder. “Sorry, could you take the knife from your son, please? No knives.”

  “What?” Brat Boy’s curvy mom finally looked up from her lengthy, lowered-voice conversation with the miniskirted bottle blond. Appraising Jersey’s shapeless, light green park ranger’s uniform and brimmed hat with a nose scrunch of open distain. “What’s he done now?”

  “The knife.” Jersey tried to pull him away from the rail, where he’d begun to carve in silent defiance. “Please.”

  His mom pushed herself off the railing and took a few steps toward him. She sighed and held out her palm, showing the undersides of long, red acrylic nails and a little too much cleavage. “Give it, Parker. Now.”

  “Naw. I don’t wanna.” He continued carving and swiping at Jersey with the other hand.

  “I swear this boy’s gonna wear me out. Doesn’t do a thing I say.” Mom turned back to her blond buddy, apparently giving up the chase. “It’s the age, I guess. That’s what everybody says. His teacher wants to put him on Ritalin—thinks he’s got ADHD or something fancy like that—but I think he’s upset by new school rules. They’ve gotta wear uniforms, which, if you ask me, is borderline child abuse.”

  Jersey reached for her walkie-talkie to call for another ranger’s help when something hit her square in the forehead. Something sharp, like tiny folded paper.

  The folded wad of gum wrappers fell to the boardwalk, slipping between two slats and into the bubbling mud pit. Bobbing away on a roiling tide.

  The teen girl with the short shorts buried her head in her friend’s arm, shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

  A headache pulsed in Jersey’s head as she ended the tour and waved good-bye, trying to keep her smile pleasant. After all, park rangering had been a dream come true—the first thing in Jersey’s life that truly clicked. Once she’d inhaled Yellowstone’s dewy morning air, tinged with earth and pine and lupine sweetness, she’d never regretted it. Yellowstone lay in the rugged heart of the Rockies like an iridescent jewel: shimmering in snows and showers and vaulting peaks and a shocking froth of flowers.

  A far cry from the smoggy Chicago skyscrapers of Jersey’s past.

  But lately people didn’t seem to … notice. To care. Traipsing over thousand-year-old petrified wood without a glance and littering it with empty Aquafina water bottles and Diet Coke cans.

  Maybe she was too hard on them. Jersey lifted her head to the pines, catching a bit of breeze from the mountains against her sweaty face. Not so long ago she’d been clueless, too—sitting around a campfire in a sort of wide-eyed wonder, like gazing at her first love.

  Only Yellowstone didn’t break hearts like he did. Leaving her to pick up the pieces and fend for herself.

  Jersey pushed open the door to the ranger’s station, catching a glimpse of herself in the glass: pale green hat sporting the iconic National Park Service patch, messy red-gold hair pulled back in a knot, badges glinting. Blue eyes starting to show the lines of thirty-three years, the last six of which she’d spent in the Wyoming sun and harsh winter wind.

  “Morning.” Nelson breezed past her on his way out, his brown ponytail tuc
ked under his hat. A cup of coffee steaming in one hand. “You doing the Old Faithful tour after this? Heard there’s a big group.”

  “Right after lunch.” Jersey nodded. “But first I’ve got to do that funding report for Don. He’ll have my head if it’s not finished this week. Not that I have anything good to say in it anyway, with all our funding down.” She let out a sigh. “We’re all gonna have to pan for gold or something.”

  “Gold. Right.” Nelson chuckled. “Well, good luck with any reports. Computer’s down again this morning.”

  “Again? Are you kidding?”

  “Sorry. Preet from the tech place is on vacation until next week.”

  “But it’s urgent, Nelson! Really. Don’ll flip! Maybe even write me up—depending on what kind of mood he’s in.”

  “Know any magicians?”

  Jersey groaned.

  “Well, then, good luck.” Nelson winked and blew on his coffee, waving over his shoulder as the door fell shut behind him. Blotting out the golden, sunshiny morning with the dull glow of artificial light.

  “Mornin’, Rodney.” Jersey patted the taxidermied cougar by the wooden counter. “You’re looking crabby today. What’d you do, stay up all night taking our computer down?”

  Rodney showed pointy fangs in a permanent scowl.

  “So you’re not talking, huh? Well.” She passed a wall of brochures that campers usually took and left littered all over the campsites. “That figures.”

  Jersey gave an exaggerated salute to Phyllis, one of the other rangers. She stopped by the coffee machine and poured a cup of horrible black stuff, which she doctored up with an unhealthy dose of sugar and artificially flavored vanilla creamer.

  She was still mixing the powdery muck with her plastic stirrer (yes, park rangers resorted to plastic if it was cheaper than wood down at the closest Albertsons grocery) and started into the back office. Then as quick as she’d come, she jerked back out, leaning up against the side of the door. Hoping he hadn’t noticed her.

  “Is he in there again?” Jersey wrinkled up her nose at Phyllis in a whisper, nodding with her head toward the office.

  “Who, that Japanese researcher guy?” Phyllis whispered back.

  “Yeah. From Caltech, right? What’s his name again?”

  “Taki? Taco? Don’t ask me. Researchers give me the creeps. He’s probably a CIA plant, you know? Looking for drugs or something.”

  “Taka. That’s his name.” Jersey glanced through the crack in the door. “I don’t want to be rude, but he’s … weird. He bugs me.”

  “Tell me about it. He wears bedroom slippers to work, and he never smiles.”

  “Never.”

  “Those researchers all think they’re better than everybody else,” Phyllis muttered. “I knew one who went around with a pocket dictionary so he could correct everybody’s grammar. Beastly little jerk. This guy carries one, too. I’ve seen it.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure his is a pocket translator. You know. To type in the Japanese words and get the English version.”

  “Well, he drinks weird stuff. Look at him.” Phyllis pulled Jersey over to peek through the crack in the door. “What is that, tea? He carries it in a Thermos, and he packs little compartmented lunch boxes with perfectly trimmed carrots in the shape of flowers and stuff. Strange if you ask me.”

  Jersey shook her coffee cup. Frothy, lumpy, creamer-laden coffee quivered back, reminding her of the geothermal mud pits. “Then again, we’re not really one to talk about drinking weird stuff, eh?”

  “Good point.” Phyllis smiled. “What’s he doing, research on moose or something?”

  “Elk, I think. Something about population patterns after the reintroduction of wolves and the big fire back in ‘88.” Jersey sipped her coffee. “At least that’s what Nelson said. But then again, never trust Nelson. He told me five years ago that you were only staying for the summer. And look at you now.” She poked Phyllis’s arm. “You’re practically a tour exhibit.”

  “Old Faithful?”

  “Nah. I was thinking of a different one.”

  “If you say Porkchop Geyser, I swear I’ll slash your tires.”

  Jersey chuckled. “Snort Geyser—or maybe Spasm. Remember that birthday party at Nelson’s? I think that Coke came out your nose.”

  Phyllis snickered. “Poor guy had carpet stains for weeks.” She nodded toward the back office. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about ol’ what’s-his-name. I’m sure he’ll be gone in a few weeks.”

  Jersey sighed and shook her coffee cup, tapping the stirrer. “Probably. But it’s not his tea drinking habits that bother me. It’s … a lot of things. For starters, every time I turn around he’s asking me for something. To ride out to the lake to put down some equipment. To go here and go there. To let him borrow my phone or take him out to the wilderness station.” She raised her hands. “It drives me bats! I’ve got a job to do, and I sure don’t get paid extra for ferrying researchers around.”

  “Snobby researchers that don’t know how to use a normal two-syllable word. And I’m still not convinced he doesn’t carry a pocket dictionary.”

  “Well.” Jersey tossed her coffee stirrer in the trash. “I’ve got to get that report done, or I’m in trouble. The computer’s really down?”

  “Yep. Dead as the possum I scraped off the road this morning.” Phyllis jerked a thumb in the direction of the office. “I hear that computer was here before Don, and it takes up more space than the truck. What a dinosaur!”

  “Don’t talk about dinosaurs.” Jersey’s headache throbbed again as she remembered her rowdy tour group. She swallowed the rest of her coffee and tossed the cup.

  “Whatever, Jersey. But as long as that computer’s still running, Uncle Sam won’t spring for another one.”

  “Believe me, I can make it quit running. If that’s what they want.” Jersey picked up a taxidermied squirrel mounted on a slender log and pretended to swing it like a baseball bat.

  Right as Taka Shimamori abruptly stepped through the door—the end of the log catching him square in the chest. His sheaf of papers spilling everywhere, glasses flying off. Dislodging the squirrel and sending it hurtling into the copier.

  Chapter 2

  I’m so sorry!” Jersey gasped, not sure whether to rush to help Taka or pick up the injured squirrel, which bonked off the copier and landed in a pitiful heap on the short gray carpet.

  Phyllis shrieked and promptly backed into the coffeepot, knocking it sideways with her hip. Spilling coffee down the side of the maple cabinet—where they’d wedged the coffeemaker and a stash of supposedly recycled paper cups, plus an ancient jar of sugar that ants periodically invaded.

  While Phyllis ran for a wad of paper towels, Jersey dropped to her knees and scooped up Taka’s files, not daring to look him in the eyes. “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t know you were coming through the door just now. I’m … I’m an oaf. Forgive me.”

  Taka’s face remained the same mask of sober, emotionless blank, but he blinked faster. Something like an embarrassed laugh choking out of his mouth as he avoided her eyes, reaching for some printouts. “It’s okay. Please. Don’t worry.”

  Jersey scrambled around on the carpet for his trendy rectangular-rimmed glasses, the style of young businessmen and artists, and then handed them back in humiliation. “Here. They’re not broken, are they?”

  “They’re still usable, I’m sure.”

  Was he laughing at her? Jersey narrowed her eyes at him in contemplation then reached for another printout. “What is this, your research?”

  “Yes. My initial analysis of elk migration patterns and factors affecting movement in the park area.” Taka reached out to point, his pale fingers trembling slightly. The faintest Japanese accent clipping his syllables. “This one shows herd numbers following the 1988 fire, which disturbed breeding and feeding grounds, along with other more recent ecological dynamics of concern. Particularly the reintroduction of Canis lupus.”

  “Wow.” Jersey bobbe
d her head like a lizard as if she understood. “Um … sure.”

  Wait a second. Canis lupus. Wolves. Aha! “You’re talking about wolves, right?” she asked, relieved to have decrypted some of Taka’s blabber. “So how are the numbers?”

  Taka handed her a paper. “Overall the population has reduced due to predation but also because of a fear-based behavioral reaction. The elk are declining, with more and more frequency, to venture deep into thickets due to fear of attack in areas of very low visibility.” He straightened his glasses. “Incidentally, Populus tremula, Salix bebbiana, and other new-growth vegetation species have increased, which is good for park biodiversity.”

  “Oh.” Jersey felt as intelligent as the taxidermied squirrel. “So … that’s good, right?”

  “Not exactly.” Taka ran a hand through his black hair. “You see, the recent long-term declines in elk recruitment has been across the board, which means that several potential biological factors are having a definite impact on population dynamics.”

  Riiiight. Exactly what I was going to say. Jersey handed him the rest of his papers and started to get up, annoyed at his show-offy gibberish, then noticed the broken squirrel lying by the copier. Its frozen arms in perpetual mid-run where they’d popped off the log.

  “Oh no,” she groaned, scrambling over and scooping it up off the floor. Its tail had broken off in a furry heap. “Don will kill me! He loves this squirrel.”

  She turned over the stiff body, its beady eyes glinting, and tried unsuccessfully to fit the tail back in place. She pictured Don scowling under thick gray eyebrows, writing a nasty note in her file.

  “Superglue?” Jersey shrugged. She tugged off her hat with her free hand and scratched her hair, wondering if there were an emergency taxidermy hotline.

  Taka peered at the squirrel tail. “No, you need something like … hmm. A polyepoxide, maybe? Something with a thermosetting polymer to bind the epoxide and polyamine to the surface of the material. But not too viscous that it’ll soil the surrounding fibers.”

  Jersey stared.