In which Moominmama visits more geothermal features and learns how Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph led his people through Yellowstone as they fled the U.S. Army...

With morning temperatures below freezing, the steam rising from Yellowstone's volcanic features makes for an otherworldly experience. At the Artists Paint Pots, the steam not only obscured parts of the boardwalk, it froze on the bushes nearby, creating brief winter wonderlands.

Nature puts on a heck of an artistic display in and around the paint pots, which reveal a diversity of colors attributed to cyanobacteria, heat and volcanic chemistry. These phenomena are still being studied throughout the park.

One of the most famous of these is the Grand Prismatic Spring, but the steam when I visited obscured the large multi-colored pool that Yellowstone is known for.

The best I could do was this snapshot of the Opal Pool nearby, smaller but just as beautiful!

Everywhere you turn are bright colors and boiling waters. Even the bland-colored mud pots are entertaining as they throw splats into the air like jumping fish. 

The landscape is surreal and a warning sign proclaims: Change is the Only Constant. Instead of signs about rattlesnakes, bears or alligators, I'm now warned about the ground beneath my feet.

One learns to adapt while working in the park. This past week, we closed Lake Lodge for the season, cleaning and shutting up the cabins.

With the departure of our human guests, a herd of elk moved in. We are required to work around them, and that left me stranded in one of the cabins as several females partook of the grass before moving on.

 

I mentioned the bison in a previous post, but I also saw a fox trotting unfazed between RVs earlier this week. You can't so much as pick a flower legally in the park, and the animals apparently know they're the boss. 

The ravens will land right on our carts, which we use to transport bedding and pack out garbage from the guest rooms. It took a split second of turning away before one of the bags I had bound for the dumpster was torn into by a sharp beak. 

"Excuse me!" I said, and the raven reluctantly hopped down and walked away. My objection didn't even merit taking flight. 

I have now done the obligatory trip to Old Faithful, surprised at what a crowd of people still gather there in late September to see the geyser erupt. Compared to the colorful paint pots and smaller geysers in the park, Old Faithful was a bit of a letdown.

What I was more excited to discover were placards in a quiet turnoff that told the story of the Nez Perce as they fled from the U.S. Army tasked with forcing them onto a reservation. Unbeknownst to me, their evasive maneuvers took them from eastern Oregon into Montana where they veered south and then east through a section of Yellowstone. 

On Aug. 22, 1877, about 600 of the Nez Perce men, women and children under Chief Joseph -- those who'd fought back and survived a pre-dawn Army attack at Montana's Big Hole Basin -- took shelter in the woods of western Yellowstone before making their final and failed attempt to reach safety in Canada.

The next day, sightseeing members of a family called the Cowans unknowningly set up camp near the Nez Perce. Rather than risk these nine tourists tipping off the Army, the Nez Perce took them captive. One of the Nez Perce leaders took it upon himself to set them free and told them to hide. The group apparently failed at this task and in the process of being recaptured, George Cowan was shot. 

In the end, the Cowans all were released and even George survived. The Nez Perce continued east and then north, but General Oliver Howard followed. Forty miles short of the Canadian border, he was joined by General Nelson Miles (for whom Miles City, Montana is named) and following the Battle of Bear Paw, forced Chief Joseph to surrender.

While I read the placards that relate this history, I wondered if anyone else ever stopped at this peaceful site in such a busy park. I need not have worried. Like so many other spots that memorialize the losses of of America's first people, there were little gifts: flowers and feathers. And though I've seen this now time and again, it touches my heart every time.