Hayden Valley (Yellowstone) was all breath and murmur at 5:52 a.m.—bison steam rising, the river silver and still. I stood behind the pullout line with bear spray on my hip and a thermos cooling fast, waiting for the light. A dog-like feature ghosted the far bank. Sandhill cranes stitched the fog with their calls. When the sun finally slipped over the ridge, a pair of grey wolves lifted out of the grass—tiny in my binoculars, unmistakable in their gait. That was the first lesson of this trip: show up early, wait longer than is comfortable, and let the valley introduce itself.
I came to Yellowstone—and then to Grand Teton—for a week of patient looking, supported by the Sean A. Collier Adventure Grant. I had first read about Sean on the walls of the MechE graduate lounge at MIT; his life and service nudged me to plan an adventure that was not just mileage, but mindful time outdoors. As a new MIT grad student and new member of MITOC, I wanted to knit my Himalayan Mountaineering Institute training to the everyday skills of being a good partner on public lands: kindness at the trailhead, Leave No Trace, preparedness, and sharing what I learn.
Yellowstone sharpened those instincts immediately. Old Faithful’s tidy intervals taught timing; Daisy and Riverside taught buffers and patience. Between eruptions I knelt (safely on the boardwalk) to study the colours I had only seen in textbooks—carrots and sapphires in living mats of thermophiles, each pigment a temperature band where a particular microbe can survive. It is one thing to memorize “life in extreme environments”; it is another to watch sun, wind, and pH paint a pool in real time and realize these organisms are mapping heat the way contour lines map mountains.
Not everything arrives on schedule, and that is a gift. I hiked the gentle old road to Lone Star Geyser and waited, listening to the forest. The cone sighed, the pool domed, and the eruption came in a sudden, exuberant column. I thought about crust thickness, silica deposition, and how superheated water can wait under pressure until a tiny shift unlocks it—then empty upward with purpose. Back on the main loop at Norris, Steamboat reminded me that wilderness does not owe us spectacle: no major eruption, but the basin hissed and pulsed like a living machine. I left happy and humbled.
Evenings belonged to wildlife. In Lamar Valley, I watched a black bear turn stones on a distant slope, saw pronghorn stitch the flats, and laughed as a chipmunk scolded me from a log as if I were the interloper (which, of course, I was). At a turnout, a kind stranger let me look through their 60× scope at a ridge where the wolves had last been seen; I traded a spare map and tips on the best dawn pullouts. That exchange felt like the Collier spirit in miniature—small acts that make a community safer and more generous.
Grand Teton added the geology I had craved. Three miles beyond the Inspiration Point, a moose browsed the willows at first light while the Tetons caught alpenglow. Later, a ranger talk linked what I was seeing—2.7-billion-year-old metamorphic rocks vaulting skyward on a young fault—to the ice that carved U-shaped valleys and fed the braided bars of the Snake River. It reframed “mountain time” for me: old bedrock, young uplift, fresh ice, present wind. You cannot get that scale in a classroom; you need to feel your feet on glacial outwash and watch clouds pile on a fault-scarp skyline.
Traveling alone sharpened my safety habits. I carried bear spray every time I stepped from the car and practiced with an inert can. I kept lawful distances—100 yards for bears and wolves, 25 for everything else—and stayed on boardwalks where ground is thin. In geyser basins I answered questions when I could, pointed visitors to rangers when I could not, and offered to take family photos so everyone in a group could be in the frame. Small kindnesses add up; they change the temperature of a place.
This grant also changed me. It funded the gear and logistics for winter-ready preparedness in summer conditions and gave me a reason to slow down. I learned to plan like an engineer—fuel at gateway towns, water refills at visitor centers, no-cook meals that nourish—and to notice like a naturalist. I came home with a notebook full of times, wind directions, eruption windows, and bird lists; I also came home with a quieter way of moving through wild places.
I arrived looking for geysers and wolves; I left with a better practice for being outside. That feels like the right way to honour Sean Collier—curiosity anchored in service, courage sized to the day, and enough patience to let the nature show you what it’s been doing all along.
If you go (practical notes)
- Arrive early & stay late: Be in Hayden or Lamar Valley 45 minutes before sunrise and again 90 minutes before sunset. Patience beats miles for wildlife viewing.
- Carry bear spray and know how to use it. Keep 100 yd from bears/wolves, 25 yd from other large animals.
- Stay on boardwalks in thermal areas; the crust can be thin even where it looks solid.
- Time your geysers: Check the prediction boards (and the NPS app- no network in park) in the Old Faithful Visitor Center; build a buffer for Daisy, Riverside, and Grand.
- Refill & resupply smart: Potable water at visitor centres/campgrounds; cheapest fuel and groceries in gateway towns (Gardiner, West Yellowstone, Cody, Red Lodge).
- Share the road: Pull fully into turnouts, use flashers around wildlife jams, and offer a look through your binoculars when you can.
