There are many Yellowstones. Each in its own way is something of a miracle. That they should all exist together, here in this one place, at this moment in time, is among the major miracles of this truly fabulous country of ours.

There is the historian's Yellowstone: the world's first national park, indeed, the place where the very idea of national parks was given shape. There is the tourist's Yellowstone: a unique landscape of overwhelming scenic splendor and natural wonders. There is the scientist's Yellowstone: an immense volcanic cauldron where a bubble of fire from deep inside the earth fuels the world's greatest concentration of geysers. There is the naturalist's Yellowstone: a rich and varied wilderness of forests, lakes, rivers, mountains, plains, and canyons, inhabited by every animal species (including the gray wolf) that was here when the first pioneers ventured into the place. And there is the Yellowstone that belongs to these creatures of the wild: not miraculous to their eyes, simply a place where life goes on as nature intended.

On the coldest and clearest of winter nights, when the temperature falls far below zero for the first time in the season and the sky is aglitter with brittle starlight, vast stretches of this last, wildlings' Yellowstone are locked in snowy silence. Nothing moves; the stillness seems unbreakable, eternal.

Then strange noises begin. The forest cracks with sounds like rifle fire. Across the icy expanses of the lakes the silence itself grows taut, and then seems to moan and sing. In the primeval unseen, the atmosphere echoes and reverberates with chords struck from the very sinews of the earth. (Explanations exist: the sap in the trees is freezing, splitting the wood; the ice is straining as it freezes and expands. But explanations matter little on such nights.)

Yet on this same night, in another part of this huge park, the sounds of flowing water, gabbling waterfowl, and snorting animals can be heard. In and around the waters of the geyser basins near the Firehole River, even though the steam above hot springs shatters into ice crystals as it meets the air, plant life grows and insects continue their activities. Elk and bison paw the ground, still warm enough to melt the falling snow. Just enough warm water flows into the Firehole River to keep it from freezing, and so ducks and geese swim through the winter.

Here, too, strange sounds disturb the darkness: hissing, burping, splashing, and lapping in the night. The air seems to breathe, first with exhalations, warm, moist, and foul smelling, and then with inrushes of cold night air. From time to time there is the shriek of a distant fumarole venting steam. And then a soft rumble comes from deep within the earth, the clearing of a monstrously powerful throat, and Old Faithful itself spews and splashes.