There are too few places in the world where one can go for a 37-mile bike ride in the middle of the night, return home just before dawn, and then drift into an illustrious sleep as a bear makes himself at home on your cabin porch.  While you are in bed dreaming, the bear will sit a few feet away, licking up (you will learn later) the contents of your sick roommate’s stomach, which in the middle of the night he had deposited on the stairs.  Your roommate, bless him, will not feel well for another day or two, but you and the bear are happy, for you are in Yellowstone National Park.

One of the best things I did in graduate school was apply for a summer job at Yellowstone.  If you read the statistics on the park, you’ll know that Yellowstone is America’s oldest national park, that it was established in 1872, and that it is larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined.  But to those of us who have worked there, the park is so much more than facts and statistics.

Myself with my two roommates at Roosevelt Lodge, Brett (from Pennsylvania) and Mitch (from Minnesota).

I first set eyes on the park in 1991.  I was 17 years old and fell in love not only with Yellowstone but with everything I saw in Wyoming.  The objects of my wonder included the sunset over open country, the bounce of pronghorn, and road signs bearing names such as Casper and Cody.  They also included a waitress or two, particularly one college girl at a steakhouse in Laramie.  She broke my heart by wearing a white t-shirt and blue jeans, and by walking so agilely around tables.

Yellowstone, shared by three States—96 percent is in Wyoming, the rest in Montana and Idaho—has been appreciated by well known individuals, most famously by Theodore Roosevelt.  Each summer it is also appreciated by the several thousand lesser known college students and the other employees who run its lodges and restaurants.

Brett and I enjoying a day off atop Yellowstone's Mount Washburn

During the summers of ’98 and ’99, I worked at Roosevelt Lodge, one of the park’s smaller and more rustic locations.  I loved my job as a waiter, which allowed me to meet people from around the world, just as I loved the camaraderie among employees and the long hikes on days off.  I hiked more than 400 miles over the course of two summers.

And once, I went on a 37-mile midnight bike ride.

The genesis of the bike ride came during a meal in the employee dining room.   The roads in Yellowstone, particularly around Roosevelt Lodge, are virtually empty in the middle of the night, and a few of us wondered what kind of wildlife would be seen if you traveled a stretch at night and in relative quiet (i.e., by bicycle).  And so, having been told by experienced staff that they had never heard of anyone biking in the dead of night from Roosevelt to Mammoth Hot Springs, a guy from New Hampshire and I decided we had found our calling (if not for life, at least for later in the week).

Minutes before departing on the bike ride with James

During our several-hours nocturnal journey to Mammoth Hot Springs and back, James and I saw only one car.  We also heard something large tear through the brush early in the ride.  In the darkness we couldn’t make it out, but we guessed it was an elk.

Of course, we weren’t really doing this ride for the wildlife.  Sure we were interested in that, but it was secondary.  We were riding through the night because we were young and adventurous, and because we wanted to work our legs and lungs until they burned like fire.  We were doing it because we wanted to live now, and to live fully.  We were doing it because nobody else seemed to have done it, and because the world is experienced differently at night than in the day.  We were doing it because we were in the grandness of Yellowstone National Park, and because we were free.

I should confess that one summer in college I worked as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.  That was a mistake.  But in graduate school, when I filled out that application for Yellowstone, I redeemed myself.

Mammoth Hot Springs

Fellow summer staff Cody and Sho-Marie at work in the restaurant

Joel Carillet, chief editor of wanderingeducators, is a freelance writer and photographer based in Tennessee. He is the author of 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia. To learn more about him, purchase prints, or to follow his weekly photoblog, visit www.joelcarillet.com.