Washing Up

Acrylica gouache on cradled panel

10″ x 10″

Like all parts of nature, geysers present multiple faces to culture. At times they can be spaces of natural wonder, drawing in spectators from around the world. At times they can be places of spiritual significance, intertwining with stories handed down over time untold. At times they can variously be objects of scientific study, of aesthetic beauty, of historical import, of intermingled fear and delight, of the sublime—or, as in one historical example, they could be a glorified laundromat.

Old Faithful, the geyser of Yellowstone National Park fame, was used to wash settlers’ clothes for a time during the early days of Western colonization. Linen and cotton garments were propelled hundreds of feet above the geyser’s pool. Scalding, sulfur-infused water cleaned fabric and provided entertainment. Soaps added to the water transformed the geyser into an enormous bubble cannon, spreading rainbow orbs to the winds. The settlers didn’t stop at clothes, either; in some cases, trees and stones in excess of a thousand pounds were shot from the pool to test the forces at play.

Absurdist in its irreverent practicality, this transformation of a natural wonder into the world’s biggest washing machine speaks to the attitudes underlying culture’s relationship to nature and, ultimately, to the Other. Overlaying a perfunctory domestic act with such an engagement with nature seems ironically foreign in its immediacy and rawness compared to contemporary sensibilities as everyday life is more detached from untamed nature than ever before. From colonialism we have inherited a society dependent a fundamental divide between the wildness of nature and the civilized human. Yet the reality is we are inescapably embedded. That we ever thought otherwise, and for so long, is wild.