Location Taken: Yellowstone National Park
Time Taken: October 2012
There’s one key difference between seeing a photo of some place and actually visiting it: context.
I mean, it’s clear in this photo how impressive and unusual these terraces are. It’s not exactly your everyday forest hill, you know. Except, well, it would be if it wasn’t for the hot spring here.
This particular terrace, Mammoth Springs, is actually pretty far from all the other geothermal features of Yellowstone. It’s even outside the volcanic caldera, by something like 20 miles. It’s surrounded by your everyday mountain forest on all sides. Well, it would be if we humans hadn’t built roads and a town next to it. And I suppose the hill this is on is at the edge of the forest anyway. It was largely bare hills behind me when I took this photo. Still, you get the idea.
I suppose that’s more context. This set of terraces has a road going all around it, and boardwalks and parking lots all neatly laid out for the tourists. It’s the main road, too. Not that there are really any non-main roads inside Yellowstone Park. This isn’t exactly inaccessible marvels here.
It must have been quite startling for whomever found this the first time. Just wandering through the mountains, trying to find a way through, alternating between bare mountains and forest, more mountains, more forest, and then, terraces! Unlike anything most people have ever seen!
It’s no wonder people started visiting the place just for the novelty of all the phenomena, and that’s back in the days when there weren’t really anything we would consider roads in the area. Just trekking through the forest into the heart of a mountain range, to visit a small hot springs resort town named after this Mammoth Springs. It’s not a particularly good hot spring, either. The resort has been converted into National Park facilities and what not. Though I can’t be more specific because the entire town had closed down for the season when I visited in late October. I’m not exaggerating, the entire town.
That, I suppose, is another piece of context.
