Getting to the campsite yesterday around 12, I was more than ready for lunch and so I scarfed down a can of refried beans mixed with a bag of ready rice. It was everything I wanted until I got a terrible stomach cramp. I must've eaten too fast. So I smoked in my tent and tried to sleep it off. I didn't really feel better 'til this morning but, that's okay because it rained off and on throughout the afternoon and into the night; not a bad day to laze around in the tent.
It was cold when I went to bed and just as cold when I woke up at 5:30 and still as cold when I hit the road at 7:00. Bundled up with pants, jacket, hat and full-length gloves, not the regular fingerless bike gloves, I was off to Yellowstone. Passing by the Tetons again on the way out I was sad I couldn't soend more time near them, seeing their reflection in the blue mirror of Jackson Lake.
In the early morning their peaks were covered by clouds, not yet awake; I thought about how good it feela to pull my sleeping bag over my head and snooze for another 30 minutes. The ride into Yellowstone was through a green hallway of regal-looking pines, tall and thin but filled with emerald needles from top to bottom.
It smelled like Christmas all around and I thought about work in the wintertime and all the joys the holidays bring; every big whiff made me forget where I was and what month I was in. Finally, a break in the long green hall appeared and I could see into the canyon below, all the way to the dark river winding through the bright green grass and up from there, the slanted walls were precarious platforms for the pines, looking like a strong gust might cause them to fall so far down but, they held what little ground they had.
Out on the horizon I was amazed to see the sea of green stretching further into high hills, up to mountain peaks that seemed so far above me; I've never had a view that saw so low and so high at the same time. Again, I felt smal and terribly happy that I can be here, a tiny lens taking it all in.
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