Lan Voss flew to Yellowstone in September of 2026, 3 months after the identification. She was 81 years old and she had not been on an airplane in 9 years.
And the flight from Bingmpington to Bosezeman with a connection in Chicago left her tired in the deep bone way that long travel leaves people of advanced age.
But she had asked to come and the NPS had arranged her transportation and accommodation and had assigned a liaison, a young interpretive ranger named Sophia Barrett, 24, who picked her up at the Bosezeman Airport in a government vehicle and drove the 90 mi to the park through the light of a September afternoon that was gold at the edges and cold at the center.
The same quality of high Rocky Mountain autumn light that had 52 years earlier turned the canyon walls the color of fire and prompted a young man in a cabin doorway to hold his coffee and look up at the sky.
