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four hippies driving across the country jamming Dr. Dre’s new CD. So far, we seem to alternate between “The Chronic” and The Grateful Dead most of the time.
    I’ve got a good feeling; God has definitely blessed this journey.
     
    “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
    —Plato
    Wow. I don’t know if my infantile writing skills can properly describe how incredible Yellowstone National Park (YNP) is. I’m not talking about the tourist attractions that everyone has heard of, although I saw those too. We arrived up in Wyoming about two days ago and drove straight into Yellowstone. The park takes up damn near a quarter of the state and I am VERY thankful to whichever forefather had the foresight to preserve this wonderland.
    At first I have to admit I was disappointed because we drove and parked in the area around Old Faithful. There were so many fucking tourists around everywhere it might as well been a fire hydrant in the middle of a city with a big sign saying “Geyser Here”. By fucking tourists, I mean all the old RV people and yuppies in their neon jackets and luxury cars out seeing the sights. The people that they built the souvenir shops and the bathrooms and the motels and the power lines and all the fucking parking lots for! The same people and reasons that Mr. All-knowing Forefather Man set aside the land in the first fucking place to protect it from.
    We took our own obligatory pictures of course. Sure enough, the damn thing erupted right on time. Go figure. Some skinny park ranger in a snappy green uniform gave a little speech before Old F. went off, shooting it’s spit and steam into the air quite impressively I might add. Thankfully, John S. had a tentative notion of what we should do and before I knew it we were visiting the ranger station and had a remote campsite appointed to us somewhere out in the wilderness. We got out camping gear together and started following a sidewalk that led to a creaky wooden system of docks spanning an incredible field of colorful hot springs. From the slippery planks we could see deep down into perfectly clear pools of water lined with colors in burnt red and sulphuric yellows. There were areas that bubbled clean white mud and areas that looked like they might be fun to sit around in and drink frozen-drinks with scantily clad women. The air was crisp and cool but the ground felt warm, moist, reassuring and alive as if an area of the Earth was talking to us spiritually. Or maybe passing gas.
    When we reached the end of the dock there was a path on solid ground leading away in to the forest. Then the most amazing thing happened. We had walked less than a quarter mile and suddenly all the tourists and throngs of people were just…gone. There was nobody around but us. I learned and discovered that most people who visit YNP don’t venture past the roadside attractions to see where the beauty really lives. A lot of things in life are set up to be shallow like that. Seems I had no right to be angry with the tourists after all—they stay where they are designed to stay—preserving the soul of the land. The map says there are five main areas of attraction, by emphasizing and exposing certain places in the park the rest of it can be preserved. What a beautiful fucking paradigm. Cutting off the foot to save the body.
    Ansel Adams got rich capturing the raw spiritual energy of places like this. He was paid well by people who never knew they were hypocrites working toward destruction while hanging their black and white scenery in office buildings in a desperate subconscious last line of spiritual self-defense. He captured spectacular images that need no gimmicks or enhancements to be appreciated.
    There was a forest fire here about 4 years ago, I remember seeing it burn on the news and hearing about how it was a tragedy, blah blah blah. Most people don’t know that deep forest needs to burn every so