A Month of Haiku - Week 1 (Theme) Wanderlust - Yellowstone National Park

_{Photo by Anukrati Omar on Unsplash}

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Yellowstone's geysers
sputter steaming sulfur tears -
thunderbirds slumber.

Yellowstone National park is a place that conjures up the spirit of adventure to me. My imagination wanders through scenes of buffalo and Native Americans living in balance with this living landscape.

It is one of those places in the US that has appealed to me for a long time; rarely is a place so infused with colour, expressing the fecundity of this planet and the psychedelic pastel tapestry of Mother Nature.

_{Photo by Meina Yin on Unsplash}

This is a land of mountains and canyons, steaming geysers and wide-open grasslands. A place of legend and ancient myths, only a handful of which have come out of the veil of secrecy the Native American's kept around this sacred place.

One such legend of the Crow tribe describes an epic battle between a Brave and a monster, finally culminating in its destruction to create the steam vents around Yellowstone Lake. This tale has been interpreted as a description of the extinction of the dinosaurs, although I find that a bit of a stretch, the thunderbird in the story is a common mythological spirit among many tribes, and tales of dragon-like beasts pervade the mythology of nearly all ancient cultures.

Another mythic tale, told by the Crow and associated with the park, concerns Yellowstone Lake and what happened to the dinosaurs. A thunderbird grabbed a Crow Indian by his hair and took him to “Overlook Mountain,” on the southeast side of Yellowstone Lake, and placed him in a nest there. The thunderbird told the Crow that he wanted him to help him fight the giant water beast that lived in Yellowstone Lake and which ate the thunderbird’s young. The Crow built a large fire and heated many rocks and boiled much water. When the beast came out of the lake and climbed up the mountainside, the Indian pitched hot rocks and hot water into its mouth. Steam came out of the monster’s mouth and it tumbled down the mountainside and into the lake. Supposedly this was the last “dinosaur,” and steam vents around Yellowstone Lake may be remnants of this event.

_{A myth from Crow history (Nabokov and Loendorf 1999: 107-109)}

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The air of mystery that pervades Yellowstone's far past, and the veil of secrecy the Native Americans kept fascinates me, and it is something that has directly influenced parts of my fantasy setting with the tribal horse folk of the Plateau who closely guard the secrets of their religion, mythology and magic against outsiders.

Another mythic tale, told by the Shoshone tribe and associated with the park, begins with “long ago there was no river in this part of the country. No Snake River ran through the land.” A man came from the south who was always sticking his nose into everything. He traveled north past the Tetons and went up onto a mountain in what is now called Yellowstone. There he found an old lady with a basket of fish. Hungry, he asked her to boil some fish for him. She offered to make him food but warned him not to bother her basket. He did not listen, stepped on the edge of the basket, and spilled its water and fish. The water spread all over. The man ran fast, ahead of the water, trying to stop it. He piled up rocks to hold the water back, but the water broke his dam and rushed on. That is where the Upper Falls is today. The man ran on ahead of the water and again built a dam of rocks, but it did not hold the water back either. That is where the Lower Falls is today. The water kept on rushing and formed the Yellowstone River. The man then ran to the opposite side of the fish basket and followed its waters downstream, building several dams of rocks, but the water would not be stopped. Those broken dams are the site of American Falls and Shoshone Falls today on the Snake River. The big fish basket that the man tipped over is Yellowstone Lake while the old woman with the fish was Mother Earth.

_{A myth from Crow history (Clark 1966: 191-193)}

Just like the Native Americans the people of the Great Plateau in my fantasy world worship personifications of nature, and their shamanic magical traditions borrow partly from the Native American traditions.

This is part of the reason I would love to visit Yellowstone; beyond the personal spiritual connection I find with nature, and the joy and wonder I find in majestic landscapes such as these, the writer in me yearns to walk those canyons. To drink in the smells and sounds of the geysers, lakes and rivers to better describe the landscapes in my fantasy setting.

It is only with such close observance that a writer colours their creation with the building blocks of description that make it seem real, whisking the reader into those realms of fantasy with them.

"If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities."
_{Quote: Maya Angelou}

It is this quality that draws me to travel again and again; the ever-changing landscapes of places like Yellowstone spark that wanderlust in me, drawing me both spiritually and professionally to mine the gems of inspiration for future narrative.

Thanks for reading 🌿

I have decided to challenge myself for a month (until the 23rd of July) to post Haiku and accompanying blog on Hive at least 3-4 times/week. Each week will have a different theme based on picture prompts from either Pixabay.com or Unsplash.com.

This week's broad theme is wanderlust.

In this first week, I will share pictures of places that I have always wanted to visit and write a haiku/blog focused on these places.

To read more about the aesthetics of true haiku, and the difference between haiku and senryu, please check out my post: Haiku Vs Senryu - The Aesthetics of Form

The picture used in this post is creative commons, linked below pic. If you have enjoyed this Haiku, please check out my homepage @raj808 for similar content. Thank you.

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