It was July

The morning heat of southern Utah in late July made me want to drive to some nice cool mountains. Yellowstone seemed like a good place to be, so I drove that direction. In the afternoon, when I reached Yellowstone, Madison seemed like a good place to camp for the night, so I headed north past Lewis Lake, West Thumb and over Craig Pass.

As I drove down from Craig Pass and through the Upper and Midway Geyser basins, I drove into a thick snow shower of big, clustered, puffy flakes, drifting down like clumps of cottonwood seeds. Two inches or more had accumulated on the ground and in the branches of the trees by the time I reached the Lower Geyser Basin. There, as I continued to drive north, the sun came out. The sky to the west and above me cleared to a bright blue. The snow shower, mysteriously, continued as thickly as before, falling softly through the yellow light of the evening.

The sight of Fountain Flats—a huge, open, grassy plain—exhilarated me. At the same time, I felt a vast sense of contentment. The snow and light were exactly what I'd come north to find, although I hadn't known it until that moment.

I pulled over and stopped beside the road, then got out of the car and grinned into the view through the glittering snow shower, looking far out over the Flats. Then, as my gaze pulled back from the long distance, three birds in the grass a few hundred feet away drew my attention. I went back to the car for field glasses, so I could get a closer look.

Using the glasses, I saw three tall, lanky, light brown birds standing a few feet from each other. A fourth flew in and landed as I watched. I guessed they were cranes. My guess became certainty when two of the birds began an elaborate dance in the sun and the snow. They hopped up over and around each other, twirling in midair, sometimes with their wings crooked, sometimes spread full out, sometimes flapping, sometimes still.