Starry, Starry Night

Oct. 15, 2014

Today I'm grateful for childhood memories of Yellowstone, homemade chili and stars. 

I remember my family's camping trips, many of them to Yellowstone, and some of my memories bubbled to the surface as we drove those roads again with Daughter, Son-In-Law and Grandson. Grandson is 5, and as five-year-olds do, he talks incessantly, usually nonsense. He pokes, squirms, laughs, then instantly turns to sulking when he doesn't get his way. That reminded me of three little girls squirming on the back seat of my dad's Oldsmobile as the miles stretched endlessly on, with my dad crossly threatening that he would pull off the road and spank me if I didn't stop giggling. He kept his word on more than one occasion, and I would cry, my bottom stinging, only to start giggling again as soon as the car was back in motion. My sisters have both independently recorded the same memory, so I'm pretty sure it really happened as I remember it. On this trip, the realization came to me that I must have been about 5 when my own annoying behavior caused some aggravation on family vacations. I never thought spankings would be a memory for which I'm grateful, but somehow, I am.

Daughter wanted a family portrait from this trip, so today, even though it was cloudy, we set up a portrait on the cabin deck and down on the river bank. Yesterday was sunny and would have been a perfect portrait day, but we had so much we wanted to see in the park that we got home too late to do a portrait.

Despite the clouds, the air was still today - until the moment we wrapped up, then the wind came up and blustered the rest of the day. I'm grateful that we got to take a family picture for Daughter. After my parents died, one of my sisters went through all of my dad's slides and made a digital selection of representative photos. I treasure more than words can express the ones of our trips to Yellowstone, many of them probably taken in the exact spots we have taken pictures the last few days. I know what this family photo will someday mean to Daughter and Grandson, and perhaps to others in the family tree who haven't yet been born. 

I also felt a sense of personal history when we drove the road around Quake Lake, as my family was in the great Yellowstone earthquake of Aug. 17, 1959. I was not quite 3 years old, and my family was in a camper when the quake hit at about 11:30 p.m.; the 7.5-magnitude quake triggered a landslide that sent 80 million tons of rock crashing down on sleeping campers at a Forest Service campsite just west of Yellowstone. About 28 people were killed, either crushed under the rock or drowned in the Madison River. I never realized until this trip how grateful I am that we were protected. The 50-year-old dead trees rising out of the depths of the six-mile-long lake are an eerie reminder of how blessed we were.

We put chili ingredients in the crock pot this morning before leaving on our day's adventure and came home to the most wonderful aroma. Even the next-door neighbor's dogs apparently knew something was cooking and were on the doorstep the minute our truck pulled up. I'm grateful for the blessing of food and for how delicious it tastes after a long day of exploring nature. After dinner we played games, and I'm grateful for the bonds that are formed when families play together.

The day ended with a gathering on the porch to look at the stars. This is the only night of our stay that the skies have been completely clear. It's been so long since I’ve seen stars like that, I was awe-struck. We saw the Milky Way stretch across the entire sky. Grandson saw for the first time the Big and Little Dipper, but the stars were so dense that Husby and S-I-L couldn’t find Orion. There we were with the expanse of endless stars like tiny holes punched in a perfectly clear blue-black sky letting heaven shine through; silhouettes of pines against that sky; the river shushing by, and night-birds calling … heaven on earth. I'm filled with gratitude for that breathtaking experience.