When you imagine Yellowstone, you might think of grassy fields teaming with buffalo, elk, and oddly punctual geysers. As an East Coaster I admit that my concept of Yellowstone was a giant forest filled with bears and various wildlife. But I’ll present to you another picture:
Imagine this: Forests of dead trees, killed by wildfires, teaming with not wildlife but tourists (and one lethargic-looking buffalo that I personally suspect was stuffed.) And in this dead, blackened land (which gave you the feeling of one approaching Mordor) cars sit in constant traffic, amongst holes spewing out steam that smells exactly like rotten eggs. The camping ground is thirty bucks a night to get stuck next to another rotten-egg smelling family, and there are signs and rope everywhere telling you what to do. You are constantly being reminded not to take selfies with the buffalo (if one should ever present itself) because more people get killed by buffaloes a year than bears, many of them trying to do exactly that.
Needless to say, I was disappointed, though the kindly Kazakstanian family who’d given me and Kevin a ride into the park seemed satisfied enough waiting in line to take pictures of various landmarks (all helpfully specified on a convenient map.) We’d gone out of our way to get there, and it was far harder than I’d heard to get a ride in the park. So we found ourselves there, the sun setting, the campsites full (not that I would have paid) and with no where to go.
Having found a part of the park not absolutely drenched in tourists, we decided to do some stealth camping, though I was absolutely terrified (but like hell am I paying to sleep on the ground.)
But just as we were checking out a footpath, a ranger patrol drove by.
“‘Scuse me guys, what are y’all doing around here?” asked a bearded man.
“We were just looking for campgrounds but saw that you can’t camp here so we were heading back,” I said instantly, falling easily into my I’m-a-confused-lady-not-purposely-committing-mild-crimes (based off my actual personality of being a confused lady purposely committing mild crimes.)
“It’s illegal to camp around the park,” he said. “You guys weren’t trying to camp outside the grounds by any chance?”
Which is when I discovered that Kevin, having not been raised by a public defender (or been rejected from Canada and taught to lie to everyone in uniform) actually said the truth:
“Yeah we were. We were hitchhiking through and don’t have a lot of money and didn’t have a lot of luck.”
“Well we have emergency campgrounds for people like you,” said the Ranger (and I can’t write that without imagining Strider which makes me very happy.)
“Like I said, we don’t have a lot of money,” said Kevin.
“Ah, I see,” said Strider the Ranger. “Could we drive you out of the park?”
So yeah, that’s how we got an hour-long ride out of Yellowstone.
“Yeah we didn’t want you sleeping out there–we’ve had a lot of bear attacks on campers.”
Here me and Kevin exchanged looks, supremely glad at our luck. This cop car was like the others, except it had handles on the inside, though they still didn’t work.
“My name’s John and this is Adam,” said the Ranger. “Hold on, we gotta stop and yell at these guys.” He stopped the car, let us out and changed his tone completely. “Good evening sir, have you gotten that kayak inspected?”
Turned out, John and Adam were basically the coolest cops a couple of hobochildren could ever hope to meet.
“Yeah I never understand why people don’t pick up people in the park. This happens all the time, people are hithhchiking through and aren’t able to get out and then end up camping illegally. ”
“How often are there bear attacks?” I asked.
“Depends on the year,” said John.
“Depends on how many hitchhikers they get,” I muttered to Kevin, snickering.
“Once we had a lone, Swiss woman camping. She got eaten by a bear. The bear had gotten a taste for human flesh– turned out it’d been stalking her for two days. Never did find that bear. That was a while back.”
“You never found the bear that had the taste for human flesh!?” we both exclaimed.
“Nope,” said John nonchalantly, “but don’t worry, that was in the eighties.”
And if you ask me, bears getting the taste for human flesh is a pretty eighties thing to happen.
“So you’re from Chicago?” said John. “No kidding. You’re doing a great thing. Back when I graduated I biked around the country. It was pretty similar. Had to search for a place to sleep every night and all that.”
Just to be sure, Kevin asked: “You’re not just gonna leave us out in some random place where we’ll get mauled by a moose or anything? Like, you’ll take us somewhere safe?”
“Nah, you’re fine,” said John, and then laughed. “Yeah, we’re actually kidnappers.”
“Just every year you do this, for population control,” I added.
“Ha, yeah!” said John.
“Actually,” said Adam, “I’ve always thought there should be some Ranger horror movies.”
“Ranger Danger!” exclaimed Kevin.
“Actually you’re not allowed to use Ranger badges or uniforms in movies,” said John. “You can imagine the kind of uses it would go towards.”
“Ma’am, I hear you’re looking for a wild animal?” I suggested.
“Haha, yeah!” said John.
“So what’s your living situation, do you like, have a cabin or something?” asked Kevin.
“Yeah, we have cabins. It gets pretty empty in the winter. The staff drops down to like 30%.”
“Wow, does that lead to some weird sexual tensions?” said Kevin, for some reason.
“Nah, not really,” said John. “Most of the people are pretty old so that’d be weird.”
“I don’t know,” I said, skeptically. “I feel like a few weeks of that and Old Man Mr. Peterson would start looking pretty appealing.”
“Oh God no!” said John, looking horrified.
We finally reached the edge of the park– it was completely dark now, and we were along a rushing river edged with short green grass.
“This is a National Forest, and you didn’t hear it from me but their campgrounds are a lot easier to sneak into. You don’t think I biked around the country and payed for that kind of thing?”
“Watch out for wildcats,” said Adam, just trying to be a fucker.
And that’s how we hitchhiked with cops in Yellowstone.
this is real this is fiction 