My parents met in Yellowstone Park in the early 1980s. As the story goes, my mom and her best friend had taken off on a road trip from Los Angeles, planning to crisscross the country before summer’s end. For a lot of it, they were tremendously high, mostly on acid. As they passed through Yellowstone, they made what was certainly not their first mistake of the trip. By now it was August, and the pair had not made a reservation. As they drove into the park, they discovered that there were no campsites available. I imagine them traversing the serpentine forest roads in their VW Bug [check], the day turning to dusk, and the anxiety of two young women alone in the woods beginning to set in. At some point they happened upon a ranger station, where they asked the young rangers if there was anywhere to camp. The rangers said no, but—apprehending their good fortune at having two good-looking twenty-year-old girls fall almost directly onto their laps—they offered that perhaps my mom and her friend would like to…stay the night…with them? Defying every bit of good sense my mother later pounded into me, the pair agreed.

My dad was not actually a ranger that summer, but a contract cook for the park. Nevertheless, he bunked up with the rangers. He had a girlfriend at the time; I believe her name was Julie. I can’t remember if he had already moved to Boise, or if he was still living in Idaho Falls, at the eastern edge of the state, where he grew up.