Return

July 18, 2011

The town of Gardiner hugs the banks of the Yellowstone River at the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park in Montana, just downstream from where the Gardner River pours its turbulent, muddy waters into those of the wider, fiercer, eponymous Yellowstone that eventually co-mingles with the Missouri River near Buford, North Dakota, and flows from thence to join with the Mississippi just north of St. Louis.  Gardiner is, and always has been, a jumping off point for venturing into Yellowstone National Park.  Named for Johnson Gardner, a fur trapper who explored the area in 1830-31, it was born in the 1870s from the fervor of a few entrepreneurs catering to the tourist business and was officially incorporated in 1880. 

It is a town beset with contradictions.  They begin with its name.  The Gardner River, yet the town of Gardiner, traced to confusion and misunderstanding and a forgetting of its early explorer Johnson Gardner.  U.S. 89, a well-paved smooth highway, brings tourists down from Interstate 90 at Livingston, through the achingly beautiful Paradise Valley, then into Yankee Jim Canyon, and ends at the junction of

2^nd Avenue South

and

Park Street

in Gardiner, Park County, Montana, USA. 

Park Street

is officially within the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park and is very occasionally patrolled by National Park Service rangers.  Step out inebriated from a bar on

Park Street

and one steps into the jurisdiction of enforcement rangers who have absolutely no patience with silliness or safety violations.  Step outdoors anywhere else in town and the grip of law is nonexistent.  Drive onto

Park Street

and one rolls along a stretch of road  well-paved, well-maintained, and generally well-ordered.  Travel on most other streets in Gardiner give hints of past paving projects and offer evidence of a slow devolution of asphalt back to gravel, dirt, and potholes.  The homes lining these streets can, for the most part, be charitably described as “modest,” while those that rest on the nearby slopes of Sheep Mountain to the northeast bespeak wealth and the privilege of breathtaking views.  The few attempts of residents and businesses to brighten the sere, brown, dusty landscape of Gardiner with flowerboxes, small well-watered patches of lawn, and other signs of life are a welcome contrast to the eye.  Shade from trees is rare.  Shrubbery growing here and there in a haphazard attitude has been chosen with the purpose of being resistant to nibbling from the hungry mouths of elk, deer, and bison who in winter increase the town’s population tenfold. 

Gardiner is the jumping off point for pleasuring oneself in the delights of nature and the nurture of singing streams, superb mountain views, and the amazing,  intoxicating intermingling of geysers, waterfalls, fumeroles, hot springs, and the richest display of wildlife outside the Serengeti.  Gardiner lives off the blood of those who come to Yellowstone to immerse themselves in the magic of spaces that remain undefiled, places where one can wander wild, experiences that bring back the wonder of the child, a landscape that constantly leaves one beguiled.

When I last left Gardiner, it was late in the afternoon of a short winter day in February, just a few short months ago.  The temperature was 5^o, the light was soft yet sharply angled, and I was eager to return home to western Pennsylvania, following a volunteer stint of four weeks at the NPS’ research library and archives.  And now today, as I approach once again the elusive magic of this place of power and redemption, it is 95 ^o on a mid-July afternoon.  The light is so bright that the eyes hurt with an intensity suggesting migraine.  The landscape of snow and ice and bison and elk is replaced by fields and dust and automobiles and tourists.  A sense of anticipatory bewilderment is in the air as people wander about, pose for pictures at Roosevelt Arch, and search for something they cannot name or photograph.

Gardiner is just as I remember it, except for the fact that the day is about 90 degrees warmer than when I departed, another contradiction, a suggestion of the extreme polarity that is at its core. Also evident is the disappearance of the animals.  No bison roaming the streets, not a single deer leaping across the little streets in front of cars, nor any elk attempting to get a little nourishment from scruffy yard shrubbery.  And yet, the population has grown considerably.  I stop in the town grocery store that I like so much, North Entrance Food Farm—with its amazing selection for such a small town—and am stunned to see it bustling:  full parking lot, crowded aisles, and scores of young tourist-looking sunburned faces searching for caviar, pâté, and Côtes du Rhône.  Welcome to Yellowstone’s busy border town in high summer. 

So, here I am, mid-July 2011, and my new adventure begins.