At the Park's West Thumb Geyser Basin, a family of otters frolics along the shoreline. Clouds of steam billow skyward. Hot springs gleam emerald with algae. The surreal landscape reminds me of an Ingmar Bergman film. Yellowstone is not Disneyland.
People can die here, and some do.
A coyote materializes like some Hindu deity and leads us down the road to a peculiar traffic jam. Forty American bison mill over both lanes, spilling out into the meadows. I remember the famous horned profiles of the massive woolly giants from my childhood textbooks. A noble presence, they demand respect. They lived from the Pacific Ocean to the Appalachian Mountains.