Hemingway Adventure

Series: Hemingway Adventure
Chapter: Bozeman, Montana
Country/sea: USA
Place: Bozeman, Montana
Book page no: 235

Bozeman, Montana

Yellowstone National Park, USA
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My one-ton Ford pick-up truck is dwarfed by the fire-scorched forests of Yellowstone National Park.

This morning, early, we load up and head south to see Yellowstone Park for ourselves. I can’t match Hemingway’s yellow Ford, but given the nature of the weather, have accepted the kind offer of a Ford F250, a big bruiser of a pick-up that, literally, weighs a ton.

The day looks promising, a big, largely clear sky with licks of grey cloud on the Bridger mountains to the north-east. At Livingston we swing south and follow the Yellowstone River, past turn-offs to places whose names tell you all the essentials of local history. Pray, Emigrant and Miner.

The valley road, bordered by pale and ghostly stands of silver birch is still dark, but the snow-covered slopes of the high mountains ahead of us shine gloriously in the first brightness of the rising sun. Highway 89 feels like the road to heaven.

Once we’re inside the park boundaries, there’s a dramatic change of scenery. A third of Yellowstone Park was burned by multiple fires in 1988 and we pass through a desolate and depressing landscape of slopes strewn with scorched and broken pine trees.

But where the grass grows there is plenty of life.