I watched the landscape slide by far below. The Upper Geyser Basin fell quickly away beneath us, and the Midway and Lower Basins passed below within minutes as we flew north. Miles of forest, green and untouched by the fires of 1988, stretched away across the central plateau, reminding me of the freshly raked green shag carpet in my parents' house when I was young.
We picked up the road again as it threaded its way between the cliffs of Gibbon Canyon. Here the trees had been burned in the fires and their naked trunks prickled the mountainsides, casting long shadows in beautiful patterns that could only be seen from an aircraft flying over the rugged slopes.
We passed over the white slopes of Roaring Mountain, which from this height looked like a mogul-covered ski run. It was getting dark on the ground. Two or three campfires could be seen winking out through the trees where Indian Creek campground lay and on the road to Mammoth the headlights of a car crept slowly across the valley. Gardner's Hole was being swallowed by the ever-lengthening shadow of Quadrant Mountain. Scattered across Swan Lake Flats were small ponds that had been transformed into droplets of flame, catching and throwing back the heartbreaking beauty of the fiery alpenglow blazing from the huge thunderheads piled miles high over the Washburn Range and beyond, out across the lonely black peaks of the Absarokas. A thin tongue of lightning licked down out of the leaden bellies of the clouds and danced on a mountain top, while below, the shadows from the valley crept up the flanks of the mountains, as if pulling a blanket over their shoulders for the night.
