Yellowstone Park - the best

We were back at the hotel at 6 p.m. The sun was shining brightly and our feet were itching to walk. Snjezana, Paola and I decided to try to complete the Beaver Pond trail I had started in the morning. The entire loop is about 8 km. We started from the other end, near the hotel.

It was a slow climb that took us along the mountain, higher and higher up. Down in the valley below we could see the river winding through the canyon and guessed where Dai and "the girls" were enjoying the hot water spring.
The path turned left into the woods, mosquitoes were swarming round our ears and a German couple came from the opposite direction and told us those would be the only animals we would see tonight.
But we were not easily discouraged and decided to walk at least to the Beaver Pond. After a while we arrived at a pond in the middle of the woods, surrounded by multi-coloured flowers. It looked as if a painter had spilled all his blue,white and yellow on a tablecloth of green with specks of pink and orange. The sun was slowly setting and the shadows grew taller. A bird stirred in the water and we giggled nervously.
On the second bend a second pond appeared and at the far end, three graceful male deer stepped out of the shadows. They were quietly grazing on the slope in front of us. We stopped in our track, grabbed our cameras and shot about a hundred pictures, I think. Then we slowly moved closer. They looked at us, inquisitively but without fear, and grazed on. And closer we came, the trail took us there, they climbed a little higher on the flank of the mountain and let us share their space. We didn't know what to say, but didn't want to walk on. It was so intense, so unbelievably beautiful.
We had to shake ourselves and leave them be, knowing our paths would never cross again and that it was sheer luck that we were there when they came along.
Singing in our hearts, we upped our speed, worried about the time and fearing darkness would fall.
Then, the trail turned away from the woods, to a clearing and another pond. We stopped to listen to a woodpecker and the strange sound of other water fowl. We noticed a hiker with a camera pointed to the other side of the pond and then we spotted the object he was looking at:
a cinnamon coloured black bear was having a nap in the late afternoon sun.
We couldn't believe our eyes. Our cameras' zooms were not strong enough and we swore we would get stronger ones in case we'd have another encounter of the kind. But an encounter of this kind, you never get that chance again. We just stood there and watched the bear slowly move back and forth. We didn't spot any cubs. We were happy the pond separated us from him.
In the mean time, we were covered by mosquitoes, but who would care, when you can watch a bear?
We finally tore ourselves away from the spot - the bear didn't have the intention of moving -and continued towards Mammoth Hot Springs. Elated and a little nervous in case our path would cross his, but it didn't and all by all we felt relieved. The rest of the way we felt as if our feet had wings and the 3-hour walk only took its toll when we finally sat down for a beer in the bar and told the others about our adventure.
Yellowstone had given us a peep inside its secret world. The one we dream of, the one we long for. To be part of it, albeit but a moment, is divine.