A Visit to Yellowstone
William Shih-Chieh Hung
August 4, 1992
My wife Susie Hung and I joined the “Yellowstone National Park Bus Tour”, organized by Lai Shan Tours, from July 25th to the 30th. The tour travelled 2,500 miles through California, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. As implied by its name, the main highlight of the tour was Yellowstone National Park. The tour also took us to several scenic national monuments such as Idaho’s Craters of the Moon, Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park, Utah’s Salt Lake and several cities and capitals of all five states. The deserts, the prairies, the high plains and the majestic Rocky Mountains…They were all stunning, gorgeous sights to behold. For me the length of the trip hardly mattered; all the views outside of the tour bus’ window were picturesque. As a result, besides videotaping them, I also ended up taking 12 rolls of pictures.
Yue Fei’s classic poem MAN JIANG HONG (“A River of Blossoms”) included such phrases as “Eight thousand Li (Chinese miles) of Cloud and Moon”. Back in the Sung Dynasty 8,000 Li was like a never-ending distance of astronomical proportion. For our journey, 2,500 miles equals 4,000 kilometers, which happens to be the same as 8,000 Li, and it only took us 6 days to travel that distance.
The new tour bus can sit 49 passengers. It is nicely equipped with air condition, restroom, and television. The driver was an American lady, beautiful and cordial. She would help both me and Susie to get on and off the bus, and she clearly did it out of courtesy and not because we couldn’t physically board the bus ourselves. The tour guide Mr. Chiu was a young immigrant from Beijing. He’s both experienced and knowledgeable, not to mention affectionate, as he quickly transformed all 49 strangers of us into one congenial group. Susie and I had discussed prior to the tour that we would not expose my painter identity, and would just admire the scenery quietly and discretely while I also conduct research for my works. Nevertheless, on the second day, as we were traveling across the vast desert, the tour guide became bored and asked each one of us to introduce ourselves and even sing a little to make the ride more tolerable. Because of this, I found out that the majority of our group was from Taiwan, with a few from China and hardly any local residents among us. The youths, the middle-aged, and the elderly each occupied one third of the entire group, and most of them were well educated. By the time the self-introduction ended, everybody knew I am a painter.
China has over 5,000 years of history in words, and most of its famous places are almost all monuments. Monuments and history are related, just like how people and history are related. Take for example Shaanxi Province’s Huaqing Hot Springs. It became a tourist spot because of its association with Tang Dynasty’s Imperial Consort Yang Guifei, who frequented the hot springs’ pools. Those who have read Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi’s famous poem “Chang Hen Ge” (The Song of Everlasting Sorrow) can surely envision how it must have been like way back when upon visiting the site! America’s history only spans a little over 200 years, and the land itself was snatched from the hands of the Native Americans. So while there are plenty of sites to visit, the majority of them are natural wonders and heritage sites with a moving history behind it are scarce. Most descriptions of the sites we visited had nothing but boring statistics. Take the Old Faithful Geyser at Yellowstone National Park; its fame may rank at number one in the world, and indeed it was quite an astonishing sight, but besides describing the scientific reasons behind its eruptions and their height, temperature, volume and intervals—all numbers—there were no other narratives. Chinese tourists like to be inspired both visually and mentally when it comes to sightseeing. Some of them, upon visiting a few of these sites, must have lamented that “Seeing it is not as good as hearing about it”, whereas Western tourists are more partial to the visceral impact of being at the site, so to them it’s “Better to see it than just to hear about it”.
On the first day of our tour, we departed from San Francisco and passed through the capital of California Sacramento before heading east into Nevada’s high plain deserts. Our first night was spent in the small incorporated desert city of Winnemucca. We kept heading east on our second day and stopped to rest at Wells, another small desert town. It was scorching hot there with hardly anybody in sight. We hastily went to the convenience store to buy the snacks and drinks and to use the restroom (Although there was a restroom on the bus, it quickly became stinky after a while) before continuing on our journey. Something unusual in this small town caught my eyes though; on the west side of the town stood a tiny red “signboard” with the words “CHINATOWN” on it. I put quotes on the word “signboard” because it was nothing more than a meek piece of cardboard, like the ones used in stage plays. The truth is that there was only one Chinese family living in the entire town, so the homeowner made this symbolic “signboard” to decorate his front porch. The unexpected consequence was that tourists ended up calling it the smallest Chinatown in the world. The homeowner has a delightful sense of humor that doesn’t carry a trace of self-mockery yet it’s filled with pride and a little bit of homesickness. He uses the signboard as his way of remembering his homeland and showing how proud of it he is. Many Chinese immigrants, upon arriving in America, choose to settle near where their relatives are or where it’s easy to find jobs. There are fewer incentives for them to move once they have settled down somewhere. We Chinese have a habit of “Facing the familiar rather than the unknown” and besides, there are bound to be financial losses whenever one relocates. I don’t know why this Chinese family decided to settle down in this small town in the middle of the desert. They must be a brave, hardworking bunch, maybe even quite well off, but destined to suffer a fate of utter loneliness.
We left Wells and headed North on Highway 93 until we arrived at the state line between Nevada and Idaho, where there is a small casino town in this crossing area. This town exists solely for Idaho’s gamble-loving residents since gambling is illegal in Idaho. Apparently there had been some Idaho potato farmers who ended up losing their whole year’s income from one night of gambling there alone. Before we reached the town we could see from the distance the world’s first nuclear power plant, built deep in the desert. We arrived at the “Snake River Canyon” not long after we entered Idaho. Snake River originates from Yellowstone National Park and gets its name due to its S-shape resembling a snake. The canyon itself was created by volcanic eruptions, as evidenced by the straight cliffs on both sides of the canyon that preserved the cracks. The canyon ranges up to 1,500 feet wide and up to 480 feet deep. Pass the Snake River Plain and one enters the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. This is a lava field created 2,000 years ago. The volcano rift cracks, together with the hot basaltic lava that covered the ground, gradually formed the volcanic craters. Because of the dry weather, close-to-zero precipitation, and the lack of underground water, there is no vegetation here, and the lava fields look just like they were 2,000 years ago. The lava field came to be known as the “Craters of the Moon” since the craters often have a crescent shape that resembles the moon one sees in a telescope. We headed north after leaving the “Craters of the Moon” and the change in scenery became readily apparent; green grass, river streams, and trees gradually came into view. We stayed at the Westbank Inn at the picturesque city of Idaho Falls that night, and the hotel staff even threw a champagne reception to welcome us.
On the third day (July 27th), we left Idaho Falls bright and early and headed north on Highway 20 towards the Rocky Mountains, and arrived at the West entrance of Yellowstone National Park a little before noon. The park itself has four entrances—East, West, South and North—and it has a circumference of 180 miles. Our guide announced that he’s going to collect the entrance fees from us and, since U.S. citizens aged 62 and above get to enter the park for free, he asked those who are U.S. citizens and 62 years and older to raise their hands. Turns out Susie and I were the only ones qualified and we could sense others glancing at us with envy. Many people long to come to America, not just to fulfill their materialistic desires, but also to seek freedom and stability. Folks in Hong Kong have to confront the “Countdown of ‘97”, while the Taiwanese fear for China’s military threats and political changes. They all realize that America is “A better land, yet not our native land”, but they still try to do everything possible to emigrate here. With that in mind, there is a reason why the rest of them look upon the two of us with a slight hint of jealousy. I used to have longings to come to America, and the country itself is indeed beneficial to painters like me, but my love and my sense of nationalism for my native country prevented me from having a sense of belonging in America. My heart will always long for the homeland that I have left. The two of us applied to have all of our children and grandchildren to come to the United States, and our wish has been fulfilled. Seeing how our future generations will establish their roots in this foreign land, the fact that they will be assimilated by Western ideologies appears to be all but unavoidable. Our hearts feel more and more conflicted because of this, so in a way our decision last year to begin compiling the “Hung Family Visual History Anthology” was a reflection of our state of mind on this struggle.
Entering Yellowstone National Park, we saw many wild animals on the sides of the roads. Since this national park is also a natural reserve, our guide had to keep reminding us tourists that, for our safety, we should not approach any large animals such as wild ox and bears. We first saw a mi-lu (David’s deer) before we saw a solo, wandering wild ox 10 minutes later. Wild ox usually travels in groups, so when there’s one roaming alone it usually implies that it’s been abandoned by its group, similar to a human king being banished by his people. We humans at the very least still uphold morality or hereditary, so banished kings were rare. But in the animal world survival of the fittest is their principle; even if they rarely eat their own kind, the strongest one is still king. We saw 5 wild oxen strolling by themselves and they must have been mighty once, as we imagined them roaming the South side as king and ruling the mountains and forests, with hundreds of their own kind and their “wives and concubines” trailing behind them, filled with vigor and prestige. But now, they’re expelled by the current rulers and abandoned by their own citizens while their “women” are now wives and concubines to the new leaders. They must spend their twilight years in isolation. It would’ve been better for them to just be a “commoner” and live a stable life if only they had predicted the outcome. The same can be said of our own human society; I read in the papers a few days ago that the former Prime Minister of East Germany is now being extradited from Russia to face prosecution, while the president of Romania Nicole Ceausescu was overthrown in a coup three years ago and executed on the spot. Iran’s toppled King Mohammad Reza Pahlavi left his country in exile to avoid prosecution more than ten years ago, and died here in America in the end. Similar examples abound in China, the Philippines, and the former Soviet Union. Come to think of it, the outcast kings of the wild ox here in the Rocky Mountains can still enjoy the green grass and the mineral springs. They shed their shaggy long hair in the summertime, but by winter their thick, woolly hair would have already grown back, so they certainly are not lacking in natural talents! They are immune to hunger and cold and can safely live out the rest of their lives here. So from this prospective it appears these lonely oxen are much more fortunate than us humans’ decadent kings!
The central portion of the Yellowstone Park rests 7,000 feet or more above sea level on the Rocky Mountains. While the park’s many views such as the cliffs, the waterfalls, the forests and even the wilderness animals can also be seen elsewhere at other national parks, its most spectacular wonder lies in the many geysers and hot springs. While the average thickness of the earth’s crust is 200 kilometers, here the crust is only about 10 kilometers thick, which means that hot volcanic lava is only a little more than 6 miles beneath our feet. Due to the abundance of water on the ground, the intense heat underneath it ends up boiling the water, and as a result both the boiling water and steam would surface and erupt between the cracks. The geyser area is vast and the geysers come in all shapes and sizes. Some would only erupt sporadically while others would erupt nonstop; some of the eruptions have crystal clear boiling water while others are mushier, almost as if they’re carrying concrete. Some geysers erupt nothing but bubbles while some splash boiling water all over. The steams erupting from the geysers are different too; some smell like rotten eggs while others hardly smell at all. The most beautiful ones were the multi-colored “rainbow” geysers; since the geyser water contains various minerals, the steam would sometimes form a big patch of blue under the sun’s reflection (which is very different from the regular rainbow we see in the sky as a result of reflection and refraction of light from rainwater droplets). At the same time the basin, saturated with minerals, would be basking in a golden-yellow or red-brown hue. And since the area is so flat and wide, it has an exceptionally bright and crystalline sheen with the geyser water above it. As the geyser water can be warm or superheated, one cannot actually set foot on the basin, so there are boardwalks throughout the area that are 4 feet wide and rise about 2 feet above the basin that weave around the geyser, and take you right into the heart of it. Walking above the geyser on the boardwalk is akin to strolling among the floating clouds: Paradise on earth.
“Old Faithful” is without the doubt the park’s topmost attraction. She’s been erupting nonstop almost hourly ever since she was discovered in 1870, hence her nickname “Old Faithful” due to her dependability. It’s probably safe to say that she has been reliable with her hourly eruptions for hundreds and thousands of years prior to her discovery as well. This intermittent eruption is not exactly hourly however; its shortest interval has been 42 minutes, with 126 minutes being the longest. However, based on the time and volume of its last eruption, one can pretty much predict when the next eruption will be. Our tour bus arrived at Old Faithful at 11:40 am and our tour guide would first go to the visitor’s center and inquire about the time of the next eruption, in order to determine whether we should eat our lunch or view the eruption first. Once he knew that the next eruption will be at 11:52, our lunch was promptly postponed. The eruption vent was situated on a rock that was slightly elevated above ground, and steam kept pouring out of it. A wooden semi-circle over 200 feet in radius and 2 feet above the ground was built as a viewing stage with the eruption point in the center. There were two rows of benches on the semi-circle and they’re quickly being occupied by other visitors. Those who arrived late had to either squat or sit in front of the benches or stand behind them. To ensure that one can witness the view of the eruption in full, a certain distance was needed between the spectators and the geyser itself, since the eruptions can shoot really high sometimes. Safety was probably the second reason; water temperature from the geyser vent is 97 degree Celsius, and since we’re at an elevation that is 7,000 feet above sea level, the boiling point of water here is much lower than the standard 100 degree Celsius, so 97 degree at this altitude is way above boiling point. The noise from the spectators became to die down by 11:50. At 11:51, this crowd of over a thousand people began staring at the geyser vent, holding their breath with anticipation. The atmosphere was as solemn as a ritual at an altar. Sure enough, at 11:52 a stream of hot water was emitted from the vent, causing gasps all around. After this “pre-emptive” eruption things got relatively quiet for about 10 minutes before the constant full throttle eruptions actually began. The boiling water along with the scorching steam went up high into the air with majestic momentum. The audience was crazy busy with fidgeting between shooting video or taking pictures of this wondrous sight, while the air was filled with their enthusiastic admirations. The eruption lasted about 2 minutes before the stream gradually diminished in height, until the geyser returned to its previously calm, peaceful state, upon which the crowd began to quietly disperse.
One of our fellow tour mates was an elderly teacher from Taiwan. He took a photograph of his wife at the famous geyser and named it “Two Old Faithfuls”. The meaning was fresh yet deep; his loving wife’s devotion to him is as longstanding as the famed geyser. His improvisatory christening of the photograph clearly shows he has had an excellent cultural upbringing. There were five other elderly couples in our tour group besides us (putting aside the middle-aged and the young couples for a moment) and it appears that they had all been growing old together since getting married. All of us have silvery white hair on our once youthful heads. Our group includes a teacher who has been teaching all his life, a Medical Center founder who was also once an editor, a graduate from the famous Republic of China Military Academy in Taiwan who eventually became an engineer, a painter (yours truly), and also a female heroine who was part of the “10,000 Youth Army” during the Anti-Japanese War. All of us pursued different paths and careers, but we all share the same notion on the holiness of marriage. While there were plenty of Western couples admiring the geyser at the park, white-haired couples like us who have obviously been spending most of their lives together were few and far between among them. This observation makes me immensely proud of the culture and ethics of our Chinese nation!
Although we’ve been staying mostly at luxurious hotels during our trip, at Yellowstone Park we had to stay at a wooden lodge with no television and no telephone. From our bus we could see a bison casually strolling by the lodge as we arrived, so obviously other animals like bears and wolves might also pay us a visit. Since the temperature up in the high mountains can get pretty low at night, keeping the heat turned on in the rooms is a must. However, having the heat on with the windows closed—as opposed to just keeping the window screens closed–is also bad for air circulation. Bears use their sense of smell to look for food, so there are regulations at the park’s camping area requiring campers to lock all of their edibles inside a general metal box, to avoid attracting the bears’ unwanted attention. The night we spent at Yellowstone was a tempestuous one, with a raging thunderstorm, pouring rain, and lightning illuminating the sky every so often. With no phones to call, the thought of being unable to communicate with the outside world during an animal invasion petrified me. I ended up putting my camera’s tripod next to my pillow as my weapon of self-defense. Luckily, I quickly fell asleep, exhausted by the day’s excursion.
We headed South on the morning of the fourth day, traveling alongside the Western coast side of the vast Yellowstone Lake (The largest freshwater lake above sea level in America). The glow of the dawn nicely complemented the morning mist, and with the still, reflective surface of the lake, the vista outside the bus window was like a Technicolor movie screen. Watching the view this way was even better than seeing it from a plane. We arrived before noon at Wyoming’s second national park, the Grand Teton National Park. The landscape of the Grand Teton Range was created back in the ancient Ice Age. Viewed from a distance, each of the Grand Teton Mountains resembles one big, whole piece of rock with hardly any vegetation. There were still visible remnants of snow between the straight cracks of the mountains, and each of the mountain’s façade reminds one of the Pyramids of Egypt. There is a natural freshwater lake by the foot of the mountains called Jackson Lake (Named after the early brave hunter Jackson, so it has nothing to do with former US President Andrew Jackson). The lake’s sweeping views have often been featured in many paintings and photographs. The origin of the “Grand Teton” name however, is of a more hilarious nature; the various European expeditions were conquering this big piece of land of America, and a French Trapper general had brought his soldiers here. While resting by the lake’s grassy fields, two soldiers reminisced about their native country of France as they gazed upon the mountains and started having dirty thoughts. One of the soldiers remarked that the mountain peaks resemble the big breasts (“Grand Teton”) of their fellow French women. The French word for “Breast” is “Teton”, so the largest mountain among the Range was called “Grand Teton”. Unbelievably, the U.S. Congress kept this vulgar name when they were establishing this national park! Had our elderly Taiwanese teacher in our group arrived here before those French soldiers, then I am certain the park would have a much more tasteful and impressionistic name than “Grand Teton”!
We left Grand Teton and arrived at the town of Jackson. The state of Wyoming is known as the home of the cowboy, and Jackson, Wyoming is the definitive cowboy town. Bright and airy, the town has retained the simple charm of the Western era. There’s a park in the town center (Jackson Hole Town Square) that’s square in shape and it’s no bigger than the typical city crossing. The four gates at the park’s four corners were made out of stacked deer antler arches. At the middle of the park stood a bronze “Cowboy Warrior” statue. Many pedestrians—women included—in the park were wearing the wide-rimmed cowboy hats. This was a quiet area completely void of the metropolitan cities’ fashionable trends and noises, a perfect place to take refuge from the summer heat. President George H.W. Bush was spending his vacation here a week before we arrived and he even made a speech. After lunch, we crossed through Idaho again as we head towards Utah and its capital Salt Lake City. We got there at around 3 pm and our first sightseeing place there was the famous Mormon Temple, followed by the state’s Federal Building. We had dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, and since this was the first Chinese meal we have had in four days, it was exceptionally delicious. Afterwards we checked in to our rooms at the Olympus Hotel. We stayed at Room 76 on the Ninth floor and, looking out from the balcony, we had a great view of the renowned Salt Lake City skyline.
We have gotten to know our fellow tour mates a little better after spending four days on the road together. I have brought with me a few printouts of my works before we left for the trip, which included the replicas of Susie’s oil-on-canvas portraits, and I gave them to the tour mates sitting closest to us on the bus as gifts. They were probably not expecting my kind gestures, and some of the older tour mates began to use such terms as “Fate” and “Fortune” to describe our acquaintances as a result of this trip. We finally got a full night’s rest on our fourth day as our departure time on our fifth day was pushed back to 9 am, a clear sign that the pace of our trip is slowing down. As a result, the ladies have more time now to dress themselves up better. Susie garnered some unexpected attention with her blue-and-white suit jacket and dress. One of the female tour mates Ms. Man asked me candidly if I am fine with her taking a picture with Susie, and she thanked us profusely after the picture was taken. Before that, the entire tour group had a group picture taken at Jackson Lake.
On the morning of the fifth day we visited the Bonneville Salt Flats/Speedway on the Southwestern side of Salt Lake, an area so vast one cannot see where it ends with the human eyes. This is where numerous land speed racing world records were broken. The passage of time has caused the salts on the ground to harden and turned into a flat, rigid surface, providing greatly reduced aerodynamic resistance for speed racers. And since the heat generated by the rubbing tires is absorbed by the salts, there is less chance of the tires getting “burned” by the high speed rotation. All these elements allowed man to reach speeds unreachable on man-made roads here.
For our tour there were a total of two buses arranged by the travel agency. The principal of Taiwan’s Fudan University (maybe he’s now retired) Mr. Ju and his wife were sitting on the other bus, and we initially didn’t know each other. On the afternoon of the fifth day, we paused at the desert town of Elko in the Northeastern part of Nevada and had lunch there. The state of Nevada is situated on the high desert plains, so industrial, agricultural, and commercial businesses were not very viable. Therefore, the Nevada State Legislature legalized gambling to generate state revenue. As a result, every town and city in the state has casinos, and some of them are attached to hotels and restaurants like the one we’re having lunch at. Most of the tour mates went to check out the casino side after lunch, and since Susie and I weren’t interested in gambling, we decided to take our food and drinks with us and sit outdoors at a shaded area, so we could admire the view and chat over a leisurely lunch. Coincidentally, Mr. and Mrs. Ju also came outside; needless to say, both of them aren’t gambling fans either. That’s how we began chatting with them as the four of us had all experienced “a career of using chalks” one time or another. Mr. Ju started the conversation by telling Susie and I that we have “an unusual aura”, while Mrs. Ju praised Susie as both “beautiful and generous”. I didn’t know how to respond with this sudden and unexpected “compliments”, so after feeling speechless for a while I said, “You’re too kind. We’re too old now to deserve such high praises”. Mrs. Ju responded, “But young people won’t be able to imitate such mature beauty and demeanor!” I admire their candor and their sophisticated way of talking, and I should have praised the two of them with her same flattening remarks in return. Sadly I wasn’t sensitive enough to react, and before I could return the favor, we’re back on the road again.
We stayed at Reno’s Nuggets Tower Hotel and Casino on this fifth night. We were in Room 12 on the 25th floor. We languidly brewed our “Kung Fu Tea” from Chiuchow and made our own dinner in our room as we watched the sunset and the night skyline of this casino city. At 10:30 pm we went downstairs to the first floor to see a show consisted of elephants and “elephant ladies” performing circus acrobatics, and there were some singing too. We had a great time and didn’t go back to our room until midnight.
We began our return trip to San Francisco on the sixth and last day of our tour via Nevada’s capital Carson City. During a sightseeing stop at Lake Tahoe, a young Taiwanese teacher Ms. Lui invited Susie and I to take a picture with her. And Mrs. Ju, whose real name is Xu Que (“Promise and commit”—A nice and meaningful name), asked to have a picture with Susie. Mr. Ju wanted to take a picture with me too. Since the pictures were taken with both their camera and ours, there was no need to resend them to each other by mail afterwards. Mr. Ju handed me a note with his address in Taiwan and invited us to stay with him when we visit there. We hurriedly boarded our respective buses and that was the last time we saw each other. The total combined time of our two encounters must have lasted no more than 15 minutes, with hardly 15 lines of conversation, so this was a true embodiment of the phrase “Feeling like old friends from the first acquaintance”. Perhaps, we will never see each other again. This was friendship without impurity, clear as the Lake Tahoe waters or pure as the white snow on the Tahoe mountains; a beautiful memory that will stay with all four of us forever.
It’s easy for friends to endure hardship together, but it’s much harder to share happiness. Besides, it’s virtually impossible for friends to experience both success and failure simultaneously. You may become engrossed by your own illusions and be happy even in poverty, but envy for your friend’s wealth is bound to arise, perchance in your dreams, which will lead to hatred! The word “friendship” itself is a beautiful one, and friendship that was fostered over many years should be even more precious. Alas, reality dictates otherwise; it’s precisely because of it spanning “over many years” that there will be some “impurity”. If we have chronicles of helping each other out, then this “debt” of helping out will never be completely repaid. In the end, the friendship that started out as pure will gradually become more tainted and not as appealing or genuine as friendship that began by chance.
Time flies, and our outing has come to an end. As Susie and I returned to Oakland and disembarked the bus at 3 pm on July 30th, we shook hands with our fellow tour mates and said our goodbyes, lamenting that we haven’t met each other sooner and feeling saddened over our parting.
