Yellowstone

It's been a while, most noble and gracious viewers. Nelson is currently serving a church mission in Ukraine, and I, myself, have been working over the summer at a scout camp located smack dab in the middle of the Targhee National Forest, two miles from Yellowstone in the north and two miles from Grand Teton National Park to the south. Boy has it been fun.

There is a lot of beauty in that part of the country. As part of my job I guided hikes through the two parks and elsewhere in the forest and had the opportunity to observe many aspects of nature. Exhibit No. 1: The butterfly.

This was taken at the Union Falls ranger station. I don't know if you could really call it a ranger station; it's simply a tiny shack with emergency supplies and a radio repeater. Nobody rangers are ever stationed there.

Anyway, I'd seen these butterflies (and their close relatives) for about a week and hadn't taken any pictures until a friend remarked that he wished he had a camera. Well, I did, so I took some pictures of this one. When it folds up its wings it looks just like a flake of bark (Ninja vanish!)

Exhibit No. 2: Bacteria.

This one I like for its abstract values and contrasting green and orange. Now you may be wondering: Bacteria? What the heck? Well, this is indeed a photograph of bacteria. Bacterial colonies, to be exact. In the warm pools at Yellowstone, many different kinds of extremophiles will collect in colonies until there are just so many of them that the mass builds up into a sheet of...mush. The dark green is one kind of bacteria, and the orange another, living where the conditions change slightly but just enough to kill off the one and support the other.

Exhibit No. 3: Towers of Commerce.

Several wildfires were burning in the Yellowstone area, and that lent the sunsets a brilliant reddish-orange glow at about 7:00 every evening. Yes, the smoke was that bad that the sun began setting at seven even though it was the middle of July. This is the old Oregon Short Line water tower at West Yellowstone, a tribute to the railway industry that helped develop the National Parks. The power pole in the back, the support for the electric infrastructure of the city.

That's it for today's photo montage. Thanks!

-Josh