Swirling, Mind-Boggling May

The world's first National Park: Yellowstone National Park, WY.

What a May. Quite the mind-boggling May, actually. We ended up road tripping like Dharma Bums over 4,000 miles in, through, and around a dozen states, six National Parks, countless hours of scenic routes, and at least three State Parks. We were subsumed by nature and Her substances. Yogic hearts bowing in the presence of Her treasures: mountains, geysers, birdsong, bear, steam vents, hot springs, rivers, elk, marshes, meadows, canyons, lakes, lightning, winds, bison, valleys, gulches, foxes, forests, boulders, buttes, gulfs, streams, prairies, glaciers, swamps, chipmunk, marmot, squirrels, bubbling pools and mud volcanoes.

Cruising down the scenic route.

Typically for me, the Almighty Surrender tends to happen after drinking certain sacred jungle drinks, for example, or exhaling platinum clouds of Salvinorin A, but waking up alive to greet the rising sun, head-on, after tent-camping amongst the Grizzlies in the super-volcanic Caldera—which, as a gentle reminder, is due for a mega-colossal eruption any geological second, now—may just be another sure-footed way to literally bring your beating heart to the ground.

Mammoth Hot Springs

However, if the heart has an aversion to the ground, for whatever reason, or if the soul has become too rigid for those sorts of appreciative, religio-spiritual, psycho, pagan activities, settling for breath-taking wonder of Nature at Her finest is almost just as well. In either event, inspiration is at the celestial root of both.

Green, thermophilic bacteria thriving like proper extremophiles.

The radical, thermophilic bacteria reflecting their extraordinarily vivid forest green appear to mimic a primordial ooze oozing out of fissures.

On another occasion, we found ourselves having front-row seats in our parked black Jeep as we witnessed a stampeding herd of bison traversing the pavement before us at the rate of a hundred per minute. As the herd dissipated, however, we noticed the inevitable, the penultimate wobbly-legged baby bison and the limping, clearly injured bison elder tragically trailing the herd. But of course that's expected—why wouldn't Nature run Her course?

In any event, I'll leave you with some photos and a tiny excerpt of colorful Kerouac verse:


So whatever plan you have for me
Splitter of majesty
Make it short
   brief
Make it snappy
   bring me home to the Eternal Mother
   today


At your service anyway,
   (and until)