I pushed another corn chip into my mouth, stretched my toes and gazed with sudden interest at the mountainous valley to the west. The sun had vanished, and dark clouds now choked the vale down to the valley floor, creating a menacing wall of grey vapor. The storm reminded me of a bottlenecked flash flood, fighting itself to get through to where I’d been resting peacefully against a dead tree. Shreds of concern began creeping their way around the edges of my curiosity, until I suddenly realized I was staring at the atmospheric equivalent of an oncoming train.
Warning bells should have gone off sooner, but hiking in the excessively-popular Yellowstone National Park had had muted my instinct for self-preservation. I had been exploring the Lamar River Valley, hoping to meet a descendant of the fourteen wolves that were reintroduced to the park in 1995. Any clever wolves lurking about would have taken shelter by now, I imagined, and I wished the shelter of my vehicle wasn’t still over two miles away.
Though the air around me was calm, I could now see the leading edge of the storm scouring the riverbanks, kicking up huge plumes of dust into the sky. Quickly, I laced up my boots, grabbed my backpack and hit the trail. A clash was inevitable, as my return path intersected that of the approaching storm. Tension made me grip the handles of my hiking poles tighter, and I wished I hadn’t left the Jeep windows cracked open.
The collision, when it came, was sudden and fierce; a crushing wave of air rocked the cottonwood trees overhead and ripped soil right from the earth, hurling it in my direction. I was blown off the trail completely. Coughing and squinting to keep dust out of my eyes, I changed course, fleeing upwards into the sagebrush hills in an attempt to escape the stinging gusts of wind-whipped sand.
Two hundred feet above the valley, I stopped being sandblasted and was able to catch my breath. Violent winds continued to lash the land below, but rain and lightning thankfully had yet to materialize. I spat grit from my mouth and cut overland, eventually spotting my Jeep on the opposite shore of Soda Butte Creek, one mile away. I needed to descend and regain the trail, but a solitary, one-ton buffalo was hoofing its way across the valley floor, heading exactly towards the space where I needed to cross. Rather than detour further and risk lingering in the unstable windstorm, I chose to hustle and hope I could avoid provoking the beast.
As I dropped back into the midst of the gale, I wondered how much defense my hiking poles would provide against a perturbed buffalo. Thankfully, I didn’t have to put them into action; I reached the trail while the shaggy-headed bison was still fifty feet away, and paused to watch the creature advance slowly upon my position. It gazed indifferently at me for a while, then decided that a patch of succulent grasses was more worthy of its attention. The storm didn’t seem to be getting on its nerves at all. I guess when you weigh 2000 pounds, you don’t have to worry much about the wind blowing you off your feet.
Gusts of wind continued to batter me about, however, and I arrived back at my Jeep thoroughly dusted from head to toe. The dashboard was also coated with a thin layer of silt, blown in through the cracked windows. I had to drive myself to a secluded stream to wash the dust from my body, and then I was ready to leave Yellowstone and find a peaceful campsite in Montana where I could spend the night.
Unfortunately, traffic along the northeast entrance road was backed up for nearly a mile. I left my Jeep and jogged ahead to discover the reason, which I should have realized: the same windstorm had thrown dozens of trees across the highway, and park workers were slowly chainsawing their way through the debris. At least the air was calm once more, and I could appreciate the good fortune that I wasn’t dodging lodgepole pines in my vehicle while the storm was passing through. That’s worth at least one dust bath, I’d have to say.