A few hours later at Lewis Lake in Yellowstone, I wondered if they would change their minds as we sat huddled under an elaborately tied tarp, trying to start a fire as the rain downpoured around us. “Geez,” James commented forlornly as he stared into his hot chocolate, “This insect repellant is strong. I had it on my hands, touched my mug, and now my lips are numb.” But they would not be defeated.
The next day in the car, I held my breath as the guys made jokes about their flatulence. “Did you hear those squirrels?” Matthew asked for the third time as he rolled down his window. Gasping and sputtering, I managed, “Why don’t we just leave the window open?” “Hey, good idea!” Matthew remarked, “But, wait then we can’t keep the air conditioning on.” I took one last deep breath as the window went back up.
We drove around Yellowstone for the next two days, taking pictures of geysers, playing Frisbee, hiking, and soaking in hot springs. On the fourth day of our trip it rained again and the guys were bored and antsy, getting looks on their faces like my second grade students do just before they hit someone on the head with their lunchbox. We went to the movie about the park in the tourist center and sat in the back row. I taught them a game that I play with the very same second graders in music class, where we find objects in the room with different syllables and chant the words over and over to create the effect of a polyrhythm.
They loved it, and each took a name of an animal Conner and James claimed to have seen one week earlier in Badlands National Park. James had, “Buffalo, buffalo,” and Chris whispered, “Bear, bear.” Matthew chanted, “Rattlesnake, rattlesnake” while Conner repeated the title of our ballad, “Badlands, badlands.” They let me have the most exciting animal, “Coyote, coyote,” pronounced with two syllables, of course, because that was the way true cowboys said it. We took turns being the conductor, dramatically signaling when each person should join in, crescendo, or drop out of the human orchestra. We giggled uproariously, getting a kick out of ourselves, but unfortunately, other movie-goers didn’t. We may be the only group of people to ever be kicked out of a national park movie theatre.
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