Dear Reader,
It's another session of YCC! On Sunday, staff, including your narrator, embarked on their way to Yellowstone International Airport in Bozeman and picked up all but one student who flew their way here (the one remaining student arrived midnight Monday). On the way to the YCC camp, some groups descended U.S. Route 191 towards West Yellowstone, whereas others took the 89 instead to Gardiner, where they waited for the Old Gardiner Road to open. As a reminder, the Old Gardiner Road is an employee-only entrance to the north part of the park and Session I contributed to its opening by clearing sage brush. Mindy and Your Narrator took the time to show their students the town of Gardiner as well as the Roosevelt Arch, a park icon with the words "For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People" atop, the very words in the Congressional Act that established Yellowstone.
Over the next month (exactly), we will learn, play, work, and grow together. To make this goal the best experience for everyone, we engaged in community building activities throughout Sunday and Monday orientation. This took the form of name games in a circle:
A hike:
A facilities tour and tools orientation: after all, this is home for the next month so we'd better know it like that:
Then, Kelly from the bear management team came to talk about self-defense strategies in face of a bear and students got to learn how to use bear spray on some volunteer bears.
For night recreation, the students explored the Mammoth Hot Springs, the main landmark-turned-metonym of our location in the park.
Today, crews departed for their first spike. More updates on that soon and looking forward to an awesome session of YCC!
Regards,
Your Narrator
P.S. An ice breaker question: If you an aquatic creature that lived under ice of wintry Yellowstone Lake, what trait, be it anatomical or behavioral, would you acquire (or evolve) in order to break the ice above? Leave your answer as a comment below.
Fins with super sharp ice pick points