Our guide warned us that we’d likely encounter bison on the road to Old Faithful, but there’s a big difference between hearing something like that, understanding it intellectually, and actually coming around a bend to find your path blocked by an animal the size of a Volkswagen.

I must admit, I wasn’t too sure about the idea of touring Yellowstone National Park by snowmobile when The Girlfriend first proposed it. Don’t get me wrong; I was happy enough to give it a try. After all, I’m the half of this couple that’s always talking about trying new things, seeking out new experiences, sucking the marrow out of life and all that Dead Poets’ Society crap. But I was dubious about how much I’d actually enjoy this experience. I’m not exactly what you’d call an outdoorsman. The closest I usually get to nature is eating Sunday brunch on the patio at Ruth’s Diner, and I’ve never had much interest in or luck with a certain breed of motorized vehicles (that would be the sitting-on type rather than the sitting-in types). And then there would be the cold to contend with, legendary, aching-in-the-bones cold that makes our comparatively mild Salt Lake winters feel like a balmy Caribbean afternoon. Nevertheless, an adventure was in the offing, and God knows Anne and I both needed a little getaway from our respective occupations.

It’s roughly a six-hour drive from Salt Lake to West Yellowstone, Montana, but we managed to stretch it into about eight hours by stopping for lunch and some nostalgic tourism in Malad, Idaho (lots of ghost signs and Old Main Street-style architecture), followed by a visit to one of Anne’s clients in Blackfoot and a gas stop in Rexburg. Thanks to these little detours, the daylight was already guttering out by the time we started up the Targhee Pass. We crossed the continental divide without realizing it in the evening gloom, and we never even saw the “Welcome to Montana” sign through the snow flurries.

My first impression of West Yellowstone, on the other side of the pass, was that the place was deserted, a ghost town where the last man out had forgotten to shut off the lights. The town probably only has a few hundred residents to begin with, and many of them apparently don’t winter over, preferring instead to board up their homes and shops and head south with the more intelligent birds. The snow piles up deep in those parts, and the unoccupied buildings were literally buried beneath ten- and twelve-foot drifts. We drove slowly along the snow-packed roads, encountering no other traffic even though it was only about 7 PM; we waited at an empty intersection where the flashing traffic signal (I haven’t seen a plain old flasher in ages!) painted the ground a sullen red. I found myself thinking of the John Carpenter version of The Thing, with its images of an isolated Antarctic base that appears as a string of lights in the dark. When we finally pulled into the parking lot of the Three Bear Lodge and popped the doors, the town was so quiet and cold that we could literally hear snowflakes touching down around us. At least until the first snowmobiles came whining past.

Snowmobiles rule West Yellowstone in the wintertime. The roads are graded, but not plowed, so there’s always an accommodating surface for them to run on, and you can hear their distinctive engines throughout the day (at least until 10 PM, when a noise ordnance goes into effect). There’s something charming about the sight of them zipping down the clean white street, pausing at the intersection just like a car would, and then skating away into the night. It’s almost like seeing the world as a twelve-year-old boy would’ve designed it.

According to the in-room information book, the Three Bear Lodge has been in West Yellowstone in one form or another since the 1930s, when it started life as a gas station. Today, it’s a fairly large compound of motel rooms, a restaurant and bar, a movie theater, and, of course, a snowmobile rental facility. The Lodge supplies everything you need for a day in the park, which is only two blocks away from the Three Bear’s front door: the actual snowmobile or “sled,” an insulated suit, boots, gauntlets, a fleece hood, a helmet, and, of course, a guide. The only way snowmobiles are allowed in the park these days is with a guide. For my greenhorn money, a guided tour is probably a better way to go anyhow.

Which brings me back — almost — to that bison in the road. We’d already had quite a morning before she put in her appearance. We left the Three Bear — Anne and myself, four firefighters from Pennsylvania, a passel of teenaged German exchange students and their handlers, and our guide, Rick — in the middle of a blizzard. I was pretty unhappy about the weather at first, thinking I wouldn’t get any decent photographs if everything was gray and hidden behind a veil of falling snow, but I soon realized that the storm was a good thing. It kept the temperatures just high enough to remain comfortable, if chilly, and the visibility was never as bad as I feared it would be.

We drove straight down the street from the lodge to the west gates of the park, a single-file line of sleds following Rick’s like ducklings behind their mother. I rode behind Anne on one machine so I’d have my hands free to take my photos. In only five minutes, we’d left behind the world of computers and automobiles and shopping and Starbucks. The new world looked like a charcoal sketch, chiaroscuro shades of gray against a white background, with all the sharp edges rounded off by drapings of snow and drifting clouds of geothermal steam. The park still bears the scars of the tremendous wildfires in ’88, but new trees are rising quickly, and most are already as high as my shoulders. It wasn’t long before we spotted our first animals: an elk ambling through the trees, trumpeter swans floating placidly down the Madison River, a rabbit darting for cover. Our snowmobile caravan followed a coyote for nearly a mile before he got bored and veered off the road into the woods. And we saw plenty of buffalo, several small herds and one large one. But they were all on the other side of the river from us, close, but still far enough away that they seemed vaguely unreal. Perhaps untouchable is a better word, like blown-up photos in a Mangelsen gallery.

And then the road curved and we found ourselves face to face with one of them.

It was a female, a cow, and if she was at all troubled by a line of ten smokey, noisy machines carrying a pack of tourists directly towards her, she gave no sign. Neither did her calf, which was standing twenty feet or so behind her. She stood her ground, serene in her own immovability.

Rick immediately gave the signal for us to stop and, following his earlier instructions on what to do in this situation, we all pulled in tight behind him, shut off our engines, and waited to see what the bison would do next.

She did nothing. She simply stood there, mere feet away from us, absolutely unfazed by our sudden interruption of her day. I can’t say that I blame her; this was her domain, after all, and we were merely puny little bipeds, almost beneath her notice. Our sleds weren’t even as big as her, let alone our bodies, and she knew it. If she took offense at something and decided to charge, we’d lose. I held my breath, zoomed out my telephoto lens, and started snapping the shots I’d been hoping to get all day. In the silence, we could hear her breath whuffing out of her like the draft made by a heavy door closing.

She was magnificent.

After a few moments, Rick decided the cow wasn’t going to be vacating the road anytime soon, so we should give her some space and move on. We started our motors, and, staying close to his lead, slowly moved out around her. I continued taking photos as Anne and I passed, amazed at the detail coming in through my 100mm lens: the textures of her coat, the powdery snow gathering across her back, the droplets of ice hanging from the hair of her belly and chin. She was close enough to touch, if I’d been so bold as to reach out. Or so stupid.

And then we were clear and accelerating down the road. I tucked my camera down between my stomach and Anne’s back, safe from the freezing wind, and bent down so Anne could hear my shout. I told her I was glad we’d decided to do this. She nodded in agreement. I leaned back, adjusted my helmet visor, and started scanning the woods for more subjects to photograph.