Nelson

The National Park Series; The Sounds of Yellowstone; Randy Petersen, composer

1998 was the second year in which I served aboard the legendary steamboat Delta Queen as dining room pianist, calliopist and band pianist. My fellow band members and I worked on a rotation where we would work everyday for six weeks and then have two weeks off during which a relief band would cover our absence.

This was also the year that I heard about the piano opening in “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band. Before even taking an audition, and being, perhaps, a bit presumptuous, but certainly optimistic, I established that I was in the market for a vehicle that could ably cart around me, a keyboard, an amp, a keyboard stand, a drum throne and be able to reach any job in any kind of weather. A gigmobile. So, in August, after shopping around, I zeroed in on a shimmering little honey named “Nelson”: a 1998 4X4 Dodge Durango. When I drove up in the yard with my new purchase, the first thing my mom said was, “I’m getting you running boards for your birthday.”

My family is pretty tight. The only real sadness of parting that I knew up to this time was the passing of my father, my grandparents and our cat, Snoopy. Thus, I was not properly and emotionally prepared, after only four days together, to be separated from the new love in my life for six weeks. SIX WEEKS!! For 46 DAYS my baby sat in the driveway of my cousins in Bloomington, MN, while I moped up and down the oh, so lonely, Mississippi River.

The reunion was a happy one. I disembarked the DQ in St. Paul, MN, with my bag in hand to see Nelson glistening in the cool October dawn by the bank of the Mississippi. My cousin Tim had driven her (him?) to the river that morning before going to work. I loaded up my gear, headed to the airport to drop off a friend, stopped at Emma Krumbee’s to pick up a Dutch apple pie, and headed to South Dakota.

Mom had been convalescing after a couple of surgeries in July and September and was suffering from cabin fever. I was at home about 30 minutes before we had loaded her bags, picked up a friend, Bev N., in Sinai, SD, then headed to Missoula, MT, to see my sister K. This was to be a relaxing trip for all of us. No rush to get anywhere. So we stopped in Pierre, SD, and at Devil’s Tower and stayed in Cody, WY.

And on an absolutely beautiful October morning, with the colors of autumn out in industrial strength, we drove through Yellowstone National Park. We hadn’t gone through the gate five minutes when we saw three bears standing right in the middle of the road waiting for us. And it was just the beginning of a good day. We saw buffalo. We saw elk. We gazed in wonder at Artist’s Point on the lower falls of the Yellowstone River. We ate leftover pizza from the night before for lunch while drinking in the glory and majesty of a brilliant waterfall. And didn’t see many more than 30 cars during our entire visit.

In about the middle of the afternoon, we pulled up to Old Faithful Inn and I let Mom and Mrs. N. out so that they could see the famous geyser. I quickly parked the car and returned to where I’d left them only to find that I’d missed the eruption of the great geyser by three minutes. Mom and Mrs. N. saw it, though, and that was most important. So, I headed back to the Durango, but made a pit stop in the gift shop. While there, I stopped for a few moments to see what they had and happened upon a curious CD.

“The Sounds of Yellowstone” will most likely surprise you as one of my favorite CD’s. It is put out by a small company called Orange Tree Productions from California. Randy Petersen has composed music that is beautiful, thoughtful and interesting, yet extremely subdued and doesn’t detract for a second from the “real” music that is proclaimed by the title of the CD. The recording engineers went out into the Yellowstone wild with a unique microphone system to record birds, buffalo, moose, creeks, waterfalls and much, much more. One of the most haunting, stunning tracks on my entire iPod features an elk bugling in a valley where you would swear you could see the lateness in the day, feel the fog suspended above the heather, and sense nearby the presence of the untamable community who have paused to listen to his rugged, enchanting hymn of nature. The whole CD functions like a movie soundtrack and made most memorable the rest of our ride through Yellowstone.

Orange Tree Productions has produced similar CDs for each of the major national parks and donates a generous percentage of its sales to National Parks Associations and Funds in an effort to preserve our National Parks and wildlife sanctuaries. You should look them up on the ol’ world wide interweb. They do honorable work.

A year ago this month, Nelson threw up the white flag without an apology and accurately declared that 10 years and 269,000 miles was enough. We had driven the glamorous streets of Hollywood, dragged the strip of Las Vegas, cruised the Going-To-The-Sun road in Glacier National Park, criss-crossed the nation from Nevada to Maryland, and parked by the house of the President. We even had an adventure out on the tarmac of Dulles International Airport. As I took one last glimpse in the mirror as we parted for the last time, I thought of the final track on this CD, with the campfire crackling and a pack of wolves in the distance, howling a missive of farewell.

Credits: To the people who work in our National Parks, who know the sacrifice of comforts to ensure the sustainability of some of our Lord's most majestic places.