[b][color=00a651]Darla Ann[/color][/b]

I had only been at Yellow Stone for about a week. I was suppose to be staying with the park rangers in their housing, but my room was undergoing renovations. So, for the time being, I was living half-in and half-out of a suitcase at Roosevelt Lodge. Not that I spent very much time there. This first week had all been about exploring the park and its facilities so I could get comfortable with the territory. I was on a year-long program to explore geothermal energy possibilities as a part of my PhD work. Besides getting to live with the moose and bears I so greatly admired, I also was finally going to learn what actual seasons were like! Growing up in the South had kind of created a confusion about what Winter was actually like. 

This morning had started like any other. Backpack in tow, I had joined my guide for the day on the golf cart we used for short trips. We were only headed to Floating Island Lake. However, our trip was quickly interrupted. As I went to take a bite of the apple I had snagged from the lodge, the ground beneath us began to shake. A crack formed in the road, and our cart was thrown through the air. 

Several hours later, I awoke to a dream world. Everything was green, including me. Well, green minus the dark red plastering my hair to my face. I knew it was dark red because when I raised my hand to my throbbing scull, dried flakes of blood came away with my fingers. [color=00a651]"What the fuck..."[/color] I then remembered my companion and the cart and the crash. I had lost one of my contact lenses in the chaos, so I quickly pulled the other out with dirty hands and pulled my glasses from my backpack. Luckily I had spent that extra $30 on the shock resistant case, and my backpack had managed to stay attached to me. Once again able to see, I looked around. Ten feet away was the cart, still stuck in the huge crack. In the cart was the driver... dead. [color=00a651]"I'm so sorry."[/color]

Too shocked to do much else, I took off down the road towards what I hoped was the lodge. The road was relatively intact, but the same could not be said for the buildings at the lodge compound. Bodies, bricks, large wood timbers were strewn everywhere. Not really thinking, I stopped at a maintenance worker to see if he was still alive. Finding no pulse, I took his keys from his belt, vaguely realizing that they might prove useful. The lodge itself was split clean down the middle. I wandered through the opening in the wall and towards where my room had been. I even unlocked the door once I had reached it, despite the large hole leading into the bathroom. 

Then the panic hit me. [color=00a651]"Crap... Crap crap crap... No. I... I need to grab everything I can! But not too much. Right? Because I'll be walking and you can't really take everything with you to the grave!"[/color] Desperate laughter escaped my lips as I threw whatever clothes I could find scattered across the room into my carry-on suitcase. I grabbed anything within reach. Paints with no brushes, my laptop but no charger... Random crap. And then I saw it, or at least its box, sitting in a pile of towels. The porcelain moose made by a local artist. I had bought it for Bobby Keith... It had been so long since I had seen him last. I blocked the thought that he might not be able to wonder where I was now. I threw the moose into my bag. Luckily I was very anal about packing up my toiletries each morning, so I quickly added them to the poorly packed bag. Last of all was to find my bear. Beary was my constant companion and the only way I could sleep at night. But where was he? [color=00a651]"Beary! Where are you?"[/color] I began to cry as I shifted through the rubble in the room. I then noticed the crack in the wall leading to the next room. Hopeful, I looked through. There he was, resting on the bed, looking like he was a sleeping cub. I scooped him up through gasping, happy tears and placed him gently inside of the suitcase. 

As packed as I could get without breaking down entirely, I left the lodge and began to head southeast in hopes of finding someone at the Tower Falls campsite.