Remembering Snowlodge

The air sparkled and shimmered with suspended frozen ice crystals from the steam of the geyser basin. It was 34 degrees below zero, and the air was spectacular in its coldness. It was a bright, bitter day, and I was in Yellowstone Park. The snow crunched and squeaked beneath my feet, and my jacket crackled oddly when I moved my arms to ski. My nose hair froze, and my breath caught as I inhaled, my lungs protesting against the absence of warm air. I could smell nothing but cold, blue, icy, pure cold. Even as I coaxed my muscles to ski and forced air through my lungs, my hands remained cold and stiff on the way to the lodge. They were going to sting with white-hot fire as soon as I got into the warm, damp safeness of the lodge. It was the litany the Park and I chanted every day on my way to work. The air sang its high, cold, clear song of frost and winter; I replied with harsh, hot, red shouts and praises of warmth found and blood flowing.

One such cold bright morning as I strapped on my skis to venture to work, I spotted movement in the trees ahead on the trail. I skied a few feet ahead and looked to my left. Just beyond the trail, half hidden by the pine trees stood a lone coyote. He followed me for a few minutes as I traveled down the trail towards the lodge, my jacket crackling in the cold, and my skis crunching on the frozen track. The coyote stayed just in my peripheral, but stayed nonetheless. As I approached the main road, he seemed to vanish. In hindsight, I wondered what a lone coyote was doing so close to the housing area. Later that evening, I asked my fellow employees who had also skied that trail if they had seen the coyote. No one had. I began to wonder if perhaps the coyote, that animal that day, had been my animal spirit for those brief moments. I think of the coyote often, and wonder how he spent the rest of the day, and if he survived the winter. If it was my totem, he still lives, hopefully guiding some other person skiing through the woods of Yellowstone on a spectacular winter’s day.