4. **The Sleeping Giant’s Breath**

One of the most beautiful stories about Yellowstone centres on the geothermal elements of the park as the breath of a sleeping giant buried below the ground. This story, which combines Native American and early settler narratives, holds that a great monster sleeps endlessly under Yellowstone’s surface. While the more forceful hydrothermal explosions are claimed to occur when the giant stirs in its sleep, the frequent eruptions of geysers such as Old Faithful reflect the monster’s continuous breathing. Should the monster ever fully awaken, the entire area will undergo a disastrous occurrence, the mythology predicts. Though it predates any scientific knowledge of the caldera’s existence, this narrative has fascinating similarities with present scientific knowledge of the Yellowstone supervolcano.