Originally published on hintofriches.com (Jul 15, 2021)
The book Yellowstone Autumn — A Season of Discovery in a Wondrous Land by W. D. Wetherell came out in 2009, though part of it was included in the Fall 2005 issue of Ascent, a literary magazine published by Concordia College.
You can access that in full here:
https://readthebestwriting.com/yellowstone-autumn-w-d-wetherell/
Being alone and fishing in Yellowstone are prominent themes in Wetherell’s book, but there were other parallels to TTOTC that stood out when I first read it. Perhaps the most interesting was that of a special tree (blaze?) in Yellowstone. Ultimately, it didn’t help me identify a specific blaze, but you might find it fun to read that section anyway. See below (bold added for emphasis).
“The only definite sign of fall were the golden aspen trees, which, with the sun pouring through their branches, were absolutely at their peak. They grow in well-spaced groves that stand out even more noticeably than maples do in New England; what’s more, they have no foliage competition, except for the willows along the creek. Aspens tend to be flame-shaped in silhouette; their leaves give the impression of wanting to go up, to sail skyward, rather than maple leaves which ponderously want to go down. They’re one of the stars in the park in autumn, and if I passed a grove near the road it was sure to be surrounded by photographers trying to come up with those classic, cliché shots you see when September rolls around on Western calendars.
I did my share of aspen watching during my visit, but on that first morning I was on the lookout for one tree in particular, of another species, a lodgepole pine. And yes, there it was high on the burned-over ridge north of Tower Junction, just where it had been the last time and the time before that. The scars from the ’88 fires have healed remarkably in the years since, with the green fuzz that took hold almost immediately afterwards now grown into teenaged trees taller than I am. The ridge I was looking at had been burned over entirely, and was dotted with black limbless trees that made it look like Verdun in 1916, a spiky forest of ugly charcoal. But there on the very crest of the ridge…and I had spotted this first on a visit in 1990…was a single mature and flourishing pine, one that had survived when every tree on either side of it in a radius of three miles had caught fire and burned.
It was still there, I was glad to see, though it wasn’t easy to pick out now, with the new green slowly reclaiming the ridge. A younger man (I told myself) wouldn’t have seen my pine, it’s just not the kind of exception his eye would be sensitive to; an older man probably would have seen only dead trees and turned away a little sad. And how old was my tree anyway? Fifty-four? Fifty-five? Old enough to teach some lessons at any rate. Life amid the ruins. Survival when all around you goes down in flames. The random play of chance, and how it can exalt as well as crush. I spent a long time sitting on the warm hood of my car staring up at it, thinking long, deep, Yellowstone thoughts. It’s a remarkable tree. A survivor tree. My favorite tree in the entire park.”
— Yellowstone Autumn — A Season of Discovery in a Wondrous Land (2009), by W. D. Wetherell
The book was on my radar because of my interest in fishing spots along the Madison River within Yellowstone National Park, and more specifically, in Nine Mile Hole. It’s not a lot, but Wetherell gives Nine Mile Hole some attention in the following brief passage:
“Later in the morning, driving downstream, I stopped at Nine Mile Hole, which forty years ago was probably the most renowned stretch of the Madison in the park, a half mile of river made famous by legendary fishing writers of the past. The currents governing who fished where again flowed in my favor; for an hour I had the boulders, the log jams, and the weed-covered lava shelves all to myself. This paid off very quickly. I was throwing my Wooly Bugger downstream toward where a raft of flotsam and jetsam thickened an already huge boulder, and when the fly arced through the sweetest of sweet spots just upstream and to the left of the logjam, a very good fish took hold. I hooked it — surviving those first terrifying moments when the fish shook its mighty head — and then we proceeded to dance a frantic little dance, the trout trying to get under the logs, me doing everything I could to persuade it to swim toward the bank.”
