A Grand Prismatic Dream

Ever experience that eerie “I’ve been here before” feeling?

I just had a déjà vu visiting Yellowstone National Park.

I was last there in 1969. We drove from northern California in a station wagon and trailer—we have a few photos as evidence. I’m the baby in my mother’s arms.

First, what were my mother and father thinking, going to a 2-million-acre national park in Wyoming with a brand-new baby, a two-year-old, and an almost five-year-old?

Second, what possessed them to trailer-camp with all of the above? And how come we didn’t bring the St. Bernard?

I thought I remembered seeing Old Faithful do its every-90-minute geyser thing from going on that trip. But unless that moment is burned into baby memory, I probably remember only from photos. I was just a few months old.

Memory blends what is real and what is imagined.

I’m getting the sense that life is the same way. It’s a kaleidoscopic mixture of actual moments and a dream-state that we touch now and again.

How do I know what is real? My first Yellowstone trip was over 50 years ago. I know that because the slides are labeled 1969 and I’m in at least one picture.

What do I imagine? Staring at gurgling mud pots, studying the rainbows of the Grand Prismatic Spring, my mother and father holding us tight to make sure we didn’t stray from the boardwalk and fall into burning thermal pools, just like I saw moms and dads do on my trip now.

What do I know that is real? A bear once visited our campground looking for food while we were safe inside our trailer watching him.

What do I imagine? That I saw that bear and remember it. But the image I have of that moment could be a dream I had after hearing my mother retell the story.

What do I know that is real? There were a lot of people at Yellowstone. Over 658,000 visits so far this year, far surpassing 2019.

What do I imagine? That my mother and father know I am here again. And they are smiling.

There is a land where the real and imagined comfortably hang out together. That world is full of bubbling paint pots and prismatic springs—I like to think it’s like Oz, a land where anything is possible. A land where we don’t know for sure what’s a dream and what’s actual.

Just like the Lower Falls in Yellowstone where my father stood before I did—him with a heavy Kodak contraption—taking the same picture that I would take with my iPhone 50 years later.

What lives for you in that space by the Lower Falls, where dream and reality meet?

Just like what quantum mechanics has discovered, that matter can act like a particle or like a wave, depending on how you look at it. So it is with a dream. It can be a particle or a wave.

It can be a prismatic pool.

A fumarole.

A geyser.

I think this dream space is where our human potential also lives. This is the land where what hasn’t happened yet exists.

It's close enough so we can dream about it at night when we sleep. But it’s also far enough away to inspire us to keep trying to get closer so we can touch it.