Skip to content

Yellowstone: The Terror of Change

2015-09-11 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:44 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature (also: Philosophy & meaning, Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: on location, recurring series

Hank argues from Yellowstone's supervolcano and ever-shifting geysers that nothing constant is real: change is inevitable, terrifying and exciting, and Yellowstone is honest about it in a way the rest of life isn't.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hook: Tumblr changes how it displays reblogs and Hank is frustrated by the change

  • ★★ A couple of weeks ago Tumblr changed how it displays reblogs; Hank did not like it because it was change, and was frustrated. — 00:00:01 · Tumblr

00:00:07 — Hank's trip to Yellowstone: first national park, the supervolcano's eruptions, the 600,000-year-old caldera and life's return

  • ★★ Last week (week of 31 August 2015) Hank went to Yellowstone National Park, which he calls potentially the coolest place on Earth. — 00:00:07
  • ★★ Hank says Yellowstone was the first national park ever created, and is one of the most dangerous things on the planet, to the whole world rather than to visitors. — 00:00:12
  • ★★★ Yellowstone is a very big volcano: 3 times in the last 2 million years the supervolcano erupted, spewing tens or hundreds of cubic miles of debris, affecting global weather and laying ash as far as Texas. — 00:00:23
  • ★★ Hank says another eruption won't happen anytime soon but will happen someday, and the park will then basically be gone. — 00:00:40
  • ★★ The last eruption was 600,000 years ago; visitors drive over the rim of the caldera it formed, yet its desolation is pretty much invisible because life rushed back in. — 00:00:48

00:01:07 — The ground is not constant: Yellowstone's shifting geysers, springs and ground; false stability of Old Faithful, New Blue Spring, Constant Geyser

  • ★★★ We think of the ground as the thing that doesn't move while people change, but in Yellowstone places do not stay the same: geysers switch on and off, springs open, mounds build, the ground rises and falls. — 00:01:07
  • ★★★ Hank says everything constant is a lie, as his life keeps reminding him; we want stability but can't have it, which is both sad and wonderful. — 00:01:40
  • ★★ We apply false stability to Yellowstone, Hank says: Old Faithful will one day stop, leaving its benches and lodges around dry rocks. (playful) — 00:01:49
  • ★★ Yellowstone's most famous landmark, Old Faithful, is a geyser that erupts every 70 minutes or so with remarkable regularity. — 00:01:52
  • ★ Hank shows New Blue Spring, now dormant and white, and Constant Geyser, named because it never stopped spurting, until it did. (playful) — 00:02:09

00:02:17 — Yellowstone's honesty about change; change terrifies and excites Hank; the cliff of the unknown; Tumblr reblogs put in perspective

  • ★★★ Yellowstone has broken no contract with us and makes no pretense of stability; Hank calls it honest in a way the rest of the Earth and even life isn't. — 00:02:17
  • ★★★ The inevitability of change terrifies Hank but also excites him, feeding his 'incurable illness' of always wanting to know what's next and see the future. — 00:02:27
  • ★★ Hank imagines a future that lets him miss what once was, scrubbing the present of its dinginess until only the brilliant sparkles and deepest gashes are remembered. — 00:02:39

  • ★★★ We all stand on a cliff beyond which there is nothing until there is; those rarely burned believe it will always be there, until life changes and can't be got back. — 00:02:50

    “We're all standing on that cliff, beyond which there is nothing, until there is.”

  • ★★ Since even the ground could one day fly into the air and land in Texas, Hank suggests how his Tumblr reblogs look isn't what he should worry about. (hedged) — 00:03:10 · Tumblr

00:03:23 — Sign-off; a long traffic jam in the park turns out to be caused by a bison

  • ★ Stuck in a long traffic jam in the park, Hank finds the cause is a bison. (playful) — 00:03:26

In the description and comments

  • ★★ In the description Hank calls the video, in a weird way, a response to John's video on the refugee crisis: confronting the cliff of the unknowable is scary, especially for someone who has known safety. — video description
  • ★★ Hank writes that the truly terrifying thing may be that, faced with people who have lost everything, he looks to his own fear of the same fate rather than to helping rescue them, which is worth any disturbance to his stability; change is terrifying but inevitable. (hedged) — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Yellowstone Caldera · Yellowstone National Park

Also: Constant Geyser · New Blue Spring · Old Faithful · Texas · Tumblr

Only in the description or credits: European migrant crisis · Thoughts from Places

Also centred on Yellowstone National Park: Top 10 Freaking Amazing Explosions

← Previous: Understanding the Refugee Crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the World · Next → John Gets a Tattoo