I love Yellowstone. A lot. One of my earliest memories is from the back seat of our car as Mom yelled at Dad not to get so close to the buffalo he was taking a picture of during my first visit to the park. We went back when I was about ten, but it wasn’t until the summer after my freshman year of college that I became fully enraptured with this special place. I stepped out on a limb and was hired for the summer as a housekeeper in Grant Village, near the southern end of the park. To this day that summer as a whole is one of my absolute fondest memories.
The job wasn’t glamorous, but the setting couldn’t have been more spectacular. And the people were absolutely wonderful. I remain good friends with some of them now more than two decades later. Yellowstone is where I fell in love with hiking (I logged over 100 miles that summer). It’s where I saw my first wild bald eagle. It’s where I learned I had leadership skills, and where I discovered Creed and U2.
Sharing My Love
I was so excited to share this special place with my family on our national park adventures. We spent a week there when Mikayla was a baby, but this was the first trip where both kids would be old enough to really experience and remember it. I wanted them to love it as much as I did.
I showed them around all of my old haunts. We stopped at Moose Falls, my old swimming hole. We got huckleberry ice cream in Grant Village, my tradition for spending the pittance of tip cash I received on off-paycheck weeks. I showed them the employee dorms where I lived and the amphitheater where my friends and I hosted weekend church services. We went to my favorite geyser basin (West Thumb) and saw my favorite thermal feature (Abyss Pool). I showed them the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Grand Prismatic Spring, Riverside and Grotto Geysers (and, of course, Old Faithful). We visited Mammoth Hot Springs and walked the travertine terraces that overlooked the room where my orientation to my summer job began.
Unique Perspectives
When I asked the girls what they thought of Yellowstone, they both replied that it was stinky. (They’re not wrong.) They said there were some cool parts and they liked watching the geysers erupt, but it wasn’t among their favorite parks. At first, I was disappointed that I hadn’t passed my love for this place on to them. But as I reflected on their experience, I recognized that they are unique individuals with their own set of experiences and perspectives.
Imagining Mom as a teenager swimming at the base of Moose Falls isn’t the same as remembering the view from behind the waterfall. Hearing me gush about Abyss Pool and how it used to be a gorgeous deep blue but had swapped colors with neighboring Black Pool’s dark green just doesn’t have the same impact as seeing the change with your own eyes. My memories are not their experiences. I spent months absorbing the park and creating my own experience. They had three days bouncing from site to site without much time to really take it all in.
Mine and Theirs
I don’t think I’ll ever stop sharing my memories and experiences with my kids, husband, friends, and anyone who will listen. But when I do, it’s important to remember that they are my experiences – precious in that they have a place in forming who I am, and valuable in understanding me. But they are mine. When I introduce people to places and experiences and even other people who have so greatly impacted my own life, I must remember that they are on their own journeys. Their own experiences are what shape them, not mine.
Special places help us form our identities. They ground us and fill us with a familiar comfort. And that is a deeply personal experience, one that can’t be shared simply by recounting the memories. It’s up to us to shape our own meaning from our special places and the experiences that put them on our life’s map. So if my favorites aren’t my kids’ favorites, that’s okay. I will continue to bring them to my special places, and to let them find their own special places – and help them deepen their connection by bringing them back and giving them space and time to soak it in and let it become a part of them. And I will revel in the joy of learning more about the unique individuals they are through the places that are special to them.
Beautiful post. I worked at Yellowstone one summer while I was in college a very long time ago. I don’t speak of it often, mainly for the reasons you mentioned. My experiences at the park can’t be translated effectively for others to have the same feelings and memories that I do. My kids always seemed impressively uninterested in anything I had to say about my summer at Yellowstone, so I decided to keep the memories to myself and enjoy them that way. In the meantime I worked at creating memories of their own of things we did with them/for them as they grew up. I’m happy for my memories and happy I helped them have memories of their own for their lifetime.
Thank you! I’ve come to realize the often maligned living vicariously through one’s kids includes not only unrealized hopes and dreams for oneself, but also trying to relive fond memories through them. I’m all for passing on traditions, but have to recognize that their experiences will always be different from mine, even if we’re there together. Kind of makes it more exciting to see what they will take away from the places we go and the things we do!
Lol, forgot to include my name in the comment. It’s Alyssa 🙂
Hi. When my partner and I went with my family to camp in Mammoth Lakes, CA, no matter how I tried, I could not get them to understand the power of the place for me, the pure joy I feel on the shores of Lake George at 5:00am, cold wind in my face, waiting for the trout to bite. My mom, a single mom with limited resources for extras, managed to take us on vacations every summer. Mammoth Lakes was at least three summers in a row. She had a friend who owned a trailer in a trailer park that we could stay in.
We went into an earthquake fault, drove down to Devil’s Postpile, saw anything she could find for us to see, and we fished. Those vacations were some of the best times for my brother and I.
It sparked my life long interest in geology and volcanology specifically.
I took my daughter and my partner with my brother and his son to the lake in the freezing wind to fish at 5:00am. For my brother and I it was the magic hour. My partner also found the joy, but our kids just didn’t experience it like we did.
We made several trips up there as a family and although the kids did not understand my love of the place, they did love it. They found their own reasons to love it.
Taking the tradition our mom created for us and making it a tradition for our kids was magical.
I completely understand how your girls just didn’t see it the way you did. It’s always our own perceptions that shape the experiences. They see things from angles we may never have considered.
Beautiful story, Mike. You have a way with words that paints not only a picture, but a feeling. I’m glad you were able to carry on the tradition, even if your iteration was different from your mom’s, and the kids’ experience different from yours. Thank you so much for sharing!