More Yellowstone (and marriage) adventures

Sometimes staying married and being true to yourself is challenging.

The next day, Mike and I went horseback riding on one of those nose-to-tail group trail rides. I enjoyed the tail switching and ear swiveling as I coaxed a little interaction out of the paint gelding I’ve been assigned, while Mike looked ridiculously tall on a bald-faced old campaigner named Bert. 

Just the smell of horse lifted my spirits; I’ve been enamored with horses as long as I’ve been in love with dogs. I wrote about those formative experiences in Freckled: a Memoir of Growing up Wild in Hawaii.

I’m never happier than on a horse.

I enjoyed the vistas of late summer meadow, the clinking of the bridles and clack of shod hooves on stones. We spotted osprey nesting near the precipitous canyon over the Yellowstone River. Rising from the grass was the dinosaur-like skeleton of a bison, and we passed among pines marked by alarming slash marks and snarls of hair left behind by grizzlies scratching their backs.

The main wrangler, a Native American guessing by his high cheekbones, bronzed skin and waist length, glossy black hair worn loose under a cowboy hat, rode his horse backwards to talk to us. He told us that he’d raced horses when younger and had been to Mongolia to race the Mongols in a crazy 100-mile overland horse race. “I placed in it against all odds,” he said. “But I had to leave Mongolia as soon as it started getting cold.“ He shuddered theatrically. “Hate the snow here, too. I go to LA every winter to get away from the cold.”

After the ride, Mike and I drove along the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone“ a multicolored slashing chasm above a riverbed cut thousands of feet deep and marked by two gigantic falls. 

This was a feature of the park I’d never heard about, and it was more dramatic and stunning than many of the geysers. The trail along the rim, with artfully placed, boulder-lined lookouts, were designed so visitors could appreciate the cascading falls and buff, gold, burnt sienna and umber cliffs surrounding the turbulent river hundreds of feet down. 

Image of Yellowstone River Canyon by Mike Neal

If you go to Yellowstone, don’t miss a horseback ride and a trip along the canyon among the many things to see and do.

Driving to the Grand Prismatic Springs, another major attraction, I daydreamed aloud about what would be necessary to manage my writing business if we took to the road full time. “I’d need at least four hours a day alone, and with good WiFi,” I mused, as I stared out the window at a view of forests, streams, and mountains, flying my hand outside the window and pretending it was a bird. “I can’t write, let alone upload stuff or manage social media, in the current situation.”

“You’re not supposed to be doing that.” Mike took my comments as criticism of the current trip, where we’ve been together twenty-four/seven most days and with no WiFi at all since we entered Yellowstone. “You have to know when to stop.” 

“I wasn’t talking about now. I was speculating if we were digital nomads and I was writing full time from the road,” I said. 

But I’d tripped a sore nerve of his.