Day three of our trip to Yellowstone, and we were all a little frazzled.
Two nights sleeping in a tent with only a little padding. Two days of cramped travel inside the park, combined with a lot of walking and dogs who were just getting used to being in the car for a long time.
Add a longer than expected stay at Mammoth Hot Springs in the heat and up the stairs, a mild parental spat over a parking spot and picnic, then a long-ass drive to find a picnic spot and an even longer-ass drive to Yellowstone Lake while the youngest complained we were going to miss dining at Big Jud’s on the way home that night if we delayed any longer, and we were tired.
Yet.
We get to the lake. Or at least the lodge. Separating us from the lake itself is a dirty, sandy cliff about twenty or so feet high.
Mom speeds down a gully in the cliff to the shore, followed quickly by daughter, trailing one of the dogs on her leash. The rest of us stand on the brink.
The oldest, who planned the trip, is flummoxed. “The map showed the beach right at the lodge!” he says, standing at the edge of the cliff, which seems undescendable though he’s seen his mother and sister do it. “The beach is supposed to be right here!” Which it is, albeit with a cliff between it and us.
Youngest begins to descend, but he’s wary. He recently sprained an ankle and doesn’t want to hurt it again. I follow, but quickly fall on my butt. Daughter comes up to take the second dog by the leash and help her down, leaving me to scoot on my behind. I scoot.
Youngest stops scooting, climbs back up to the top where his older brother is still squawking about the inconsistency of a flat map not revealing a cliff at the final destination.
Nevertheless.
Seeing Mom, sister, Dad, and dogs at the bottom of the cliff, walking on the pebbly shore of the wind-swept lake, he descends. Scooting, grumbling the whole way. But he arrives. And the world brightens for him. We remind him of the joy he found at Catalina Island, wading in the surf in his shoes and jeans, shoes that never really did dry out for the rest of our cruise up and down the coast of California and extremely northern Mexico. It’s a bit cold here for wading, but he too warms at the memory, and the fussing fades.
His younger brother is still at the top of the cliff, walking to the east.
We on the beach walk past stacked rocks, jumbles of driftwood, shouting a bit to be heard over the wind and waves. The dogs clamber over the pebbles, sticking their paws in the water and occasionally their snouts.
Then the youngest appears on the beach, coming around a corner from the east.
“I found an easier way down,” he says. And we’re thrilled to have him on the beach, in the wind and shouting over the waves.
Tensions of the day drizzle away. We watch the dogs on the brink of the beach, leaping back when the waves crash. I throw some driftwood into the water and watch wind and waves push it back to shore. The youngest throws rocks as our daughter takes off shoes and socks to wade in the rocky water.
Then it’s time to go. We have just enough time, we think, to drive the two hours we’ll need to Ashton to get to Big Jud’s before it closes. Still shouting over the wind and waves, we climb up the much easier slope the youngest found, ducking at the last moment underneath the branches of a lodgepole pine on the cliff top, then head back to the lodge, then the car.
Daughter: Always ready for an adventure, never doubting for a second we’ll get there. Much like her mother.
Oldest son: The planner, easily flummoxed when even a small thing – like a sandy cliff – gets in the way, but always willing to follow. Much like his Dad.
Youngest son: Easily the most easily frustrated of the bunch, but never wanting to be left out. He will find a way to join us, even if it takes him a bit. And he’ll lead us back up the way he went, just because it’s cool to be the leader when he already knows the way. Kind of like Mom and Dad combined, that kid.
Where will these characteristics take them, I wonder.
I suppose we’ll find out.
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