Note to Self: It’s Not Nice to Piss Off Mother Nature!

by Bob Sparrow

sprinkler

Revenge of Mother Nature

Last week while at Yellowstone National Park, I made the obligatory stop at ‘Old Faithful’, waiting nearly an hour-and-a-half in 90-degree heat for the great eruption. I was summarily disappointed when a paltry stream of hot water and steam limped out of a hole in the ground for about  a minute, issuing an odor of rotten eggs. In a previous blog I compared it to the excitement of a car radiator heating over and suggested that travelers should absolutely take in the beautiful flora and fauna of the park, but not go out of the way to see ‘Old Faithful’, which has become . . . irregular.

Well, it seems that Mother Nature reads our blog and was not the least bit amused by my characterization of her most famous geyser. The day after I got home from the trip, I was working in my home-office, which overlooks my back yard, when I heard a gushing sound coming from outside.  I looked out the window and saw water shooting up out of my lawn and into the air some 25 feet – I had ‘Old Faithful’ right there in my back yard (and in my neighbors back yard as well). I had a broken sprinkler line. I turned off the main water valve and looked skyward and promised not to bash ‘Old Faithful’ again.

2014-07-26 17.32.41

Being as ‘faithful’ as ever!

So I’ve included this wonderful picture that I took of this geographical wonder and have discovered through some additional research that while we were told at the time that the geyser erupts ever 26 minutes, I’ve come to learn that it is suppose to erupt every 91 minutes, which is about what it did when we were there. I won’t remind you that it still smelled bad and it only lasted a minute or so.  What’s that gurgling sound?  Oh shit, gotta go.

 

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2 comments on “Note to Self: It’s Not Nice to Piss Off Mother Nature!

  1. A friend recently told me about an Science TV program which said there is a fifty mile wide volcano under Old Faithful which will erupt in the next 1,000 years. The show added that Pompeii will erupt again in that time span as well as Iceland. So , No, it seems best to placate the Gods of Nature as Much as Possible. But your broken sprinkler story indeed made me laugh out loud.

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