Part 19 (1/2)
”I'd love to know the story behind that ring,” Demming said, holding it up.
”I want to know who walks around with lug nuts in their pocket,” Joe said.
Cutler emerged in ranger green with a radio on his belt. He loaded a long aluminum pole with a slotted spoon on the end into a pickup, along with metal boxes containing electronics.
”Thermisters,” Cutler explained when Joe looked at the boxes. ”We hide them in geyser and hot springs runoff channels to track the temperature of the water. We learn a lot about which geysers are getting active and which ones are shutting down by the temps.”
”What's with the pole and spoon?” Demming asked.
”I use that to pick the coins and c.r.a.p out of the geysers to keep them clean.”
Joe and Demming climbed into the truck and Cutler roared off.
”Hoening, McCaleb, and Olig were all proud members of the Gopher State Five,” Cutler said. ”Since I'm from Minnesota,we hit it off right away. They were just big old Midwesterners.They worked hard, loved their beer, loved the park. They used to come along with me sometimes to check geysers and clean out hot springs, like we're doing now. They'd come on their days off, when they could be s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around. When Ranger Layborn came around to ask me about them, it was as if he was describing entirely different people. He seemed to think they were big into drugs and crime, that they were some kind of gang. I never saw that side of them.”
”Were they illegal hot-potters?” Joe asked.
Cutler smiled. ”I'm sure they were. We frown on it when it's our employees, but it's just about impossible to stop. We can't watch everyone twenty-four/seven, even though the rangers think we should. No offense, ma'am,” he said to Demming.
”None taken,” Demming said, tight-lipped.
”Any other problems with them? What about the drug allegations?”
”Nothing I know of, and I mean that. That's not to say all of my people are clean. It's like any other work situation; there's a percentage of bad apples. But no more than any workplace in the outside world and less than some. h.e.l.l, I went to school in Madison, at the University of Wisconsin. Ranger Layborn could really ply his craft there.”
”Not even marijuana?” Joe asked. ”There seemed to be drug references in the e-mails he sent. 'Flamers,' he called them.”
Cutler shrugged. ”Again, I can't swear he wasn't smoking, but I never saw or heard anything that would confirm it. As you know, there's a certain att.i.tude and culture that goes with drug use, and he didn't seem to be a part of it. He was pretty tightly wound at times-kind of naively idealistic about environmental issues. But drugs, that would surprise me.”
Cutler turned the pickup off the highway at the Upper Geyser Basin and parked it in the empty lot. Joe trailed him while Demming remained in the pickup to report to the PaG.o.da on the truck radio. The smell of hot sulfur and water was overwhelming.Cutler explained that the pools on either side of the boardwalk were 190 degrees, and the water temperature could be gauged by the color of the bacteria in the runoff-white beinghottest, green and blue cooler but still too hot to touch. Usingthe slotted spoon, he carefully picked up coins that had been tossed into the thermals and handed them back to Joe, who juggled them from hand to hand until they cooled off enough to inspect. Three pennies and a dime. The pennies were already gray with a buildup of manganese and zinc from the water, Cutlersaid, but the dime, being silver, was unblemished.
Cutler swung over the side of the railing and landed with a thump on the white-crust surface. He urged Joe to follow him.
”What about the 'Stay on the Boardwalk' signs?” Joe asked, knowing the ground was unstable near geysers and the crust was brittle. Horror stories abounded of pets and visitors who wandered off the pathway.
”And if I break through?” Joe asked.
”Third-degree burns at the minimum,” Cutler said, businesslike.”Excruciating pain and skin grafts for the rest of your life. If you live, I mean. Worse, you'll deface the thermal. But it would be nothing like if you actually fell into a hot springs or geyser.”
”What would happen?”
”You'd die instantly, of course; then your body would be boiled. I've seen elk and buffalo fall in over the years. Within a couple of hours, their hair comes off in clumps and the flesh separates from the bone. The skeleton sinks and the meat and fat cooks and it smells like beef stew. Sometimes, an animal body affects the stability of the thermal and it erupts and spits all that meat back out. Not pretty.”
”Maybe I should stay up here,” Joe said.
”Just step where I step,” Cutler said. ”Not an inch either way and you'll be fine. I've done this for years and I know where to walk and where not to walk.”
Joe felt a thrill being allowed to go where millions of tourists couldn't go, and stepped over the railing. He wished Demming-or Marybeth-could see him now.
For the next hour, Cutler carefully removed coins and debris from the geysers and hot pools. Joe followed in his footsteps and gathered them and noted what was found in Cutler's journal. Cutler explained how the underground plumbing system worked, how mysterious it was, how a geyser could simply stop erupting in one corner of the park and a new geyser could shoot up forty miles away as the result of a mild tremor or indiscerniblegeological tic. How the water that came from the geysershad been carbon-tested to reveal it was thousands of years old, that it had been whoos.h.i.+ng whoos.h.i.+ng through the underground works before Columbus landed in America and was just now being blasted into the air. through the underground works before Columbus landed in America and was just now being blasted into the air.
Cutler took a quick turn off the road and pulled over to the side. Ahead of them was a hugely wide but squat white cone emitting breaths of steam. Joe was unimpressed at first glance.
”What you're looking at is Steamboat Geyser,” Cutler said. ”It's by far the biggest geyser in the world. When this baby goes-and we never know when or why-it can be seen from miles away. It reaches heights of four hundred feet, three times Old Faithful, and drenches everything around here for a quarter of a mile. The volume of boiling water that comes out of it is scary. Nearly as scary as its unpredictability. We've waited years for an eruption, and almost declared it dormant when it proved otherwise.”
”When's the last time it blew?” Joe asked.
”A year ago, in the winter. Three times. No one was there when it went, but the evidence of the eruption was a herd of parboiledbison found a hundred yards away. It seems to be getting more active. The eruptions used to be up to fifty years apart, but last winter they were four days days apart.” apart.”
Cutler whistled. ”I'd give my left nut to see it erupt.”
The firehole river was on their left as they departed the geyser basin and drove north on the highway. Bison grazed along the banks and steamy water poured from Black Sand Geyser Basin into the river.
Geyser Gazers, according to Cutler, numbered nearly seven hundred strong, although the hard-core, full-time contingent amounted to only about forty. They were all volunteers, and includedscientists, lawyers, and university professors as well as retired railroad workers, laborers, and the habitually unemployed.The thing that brought them together was their love, knowledge, and appreciation for Yellowstone and the thermal activity within the Yellowstone caldera. Most showed up on weekends or took their vacations to help. Only a few stayed in or near the park on a full-time basis, like Doomsayer and George Pickett.
”How many ascribe to Keaton's philosophy that we're all going to die?” Joe asked.
”Maybe a couple dozen,” Cutler said. ”The rest recognize the threat but choose to go on and live their lives normally, like me.”
”What about Hoening and the other Gopher Staters? Were they Keaton disciples?”
”No chance.”
”Another theory shot down,” Joe said, and smiled at Demming.That's when he noticed how introspective she was. She didn't appear to be listening to Cutler explain about geyser activities.
”Are you okay?” he asked.
She shook her head, indicating she would tell him later.
Cutler parked at Fountain Paint Pots and grabbed his pole and slotted spoon. Joe said he'd meet up with him in a minute. As Cutler strode away on the boardwalk, Joe turned to Demming.
”Ashby?”
”Yes. He met with Chief Ranger Langston and they're gettingagitated and nervous. They want us to break it off here and come back up to Mammoth. Langston is quite adamant about it.”
”Why?”
”Ashby said they don't like the direction we're headed, goingto the Bechler station, interviewing Mark Cutler. He thinks we're going to open the Park Service to unwanted exposure.”
Joe shook his head, felt anger well in him. ” 'Unwanted exposure'? What does that mean?”
”I'm not sure, but they seem to think you have another agenda. And they don't like your friend being up here.”
”How do they know about Nate?”
”I told them,” she said. ”I had to. It's my job.”
Joe said, ”How much time do we have?”
”They want us back by tonight.”