FOR THE BENEFIT AND ENJOYMENT OF THE PEOPLE:

A STUDY OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN INTERACTIONS WITH NATIONAL PARKS AND WILDERNESS

Anna Floyd

TC 660HPlan II Honors Program

The University of Texas at Austin

December 14, 2017

_______________________________John Hartigan, Ph.D.

Department of Anthropology, Américo Paredes Center for Cultural StudiesSupervising Professor

______________________________Michael Mosser, Ph.D

Department of Government, Center for European Studies, International Relations and Global Governance

Second Reader

Abstract

Author: Anna J. Floyd

Title: For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People: A Study of Contemporary American Interactions with National Parks and Wilderness

Supervising Professor: John Hartigan, Ph.D., Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies

This thesis aims to reveal the character of contemporary American interactions with

national parks and wilderness. Employed for the achievement of this purpose herein are two

methodologies: exploration of personal ethnographic observations from four summers spent

working in national parks and forests, and first-hand interviews of visitors to national parks. In

the first section of this work, American wilderness relationships are sorted into four main

categories and parsed for better understanding of both motivations and manifested actions of

people who experience national parks. In section two, the thesis explores personal opinions and

experiences of national parks through interviews of park-goers in Rocky Mountain National Park

in order to determine American values regarding wilderness and their potential policy

implications. Finally, the work provides potential solutions to existent tensions between use and

preservation of national parks.

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Acknowledgements

I would not have found success in writing this thesis were it not for the wisdom,

intelligence, compassion, and support of many incredible individuals. First among these are my

parents, who raised me in an environment that values education, passionate pursuit of discovery,

and self-improvement. I am forever grateful that they instilled in me the idea that there is value

in hard work, or, as my father often phrases it, ‘the grind.’ Finally, I must thank my parents for

sparking my love of the natural world by making me hike and camp as soon as I could walk. This

seed they planted and tended in me has shaped the course of my life, as well as my career and

life aspirations.

I would like to thank my supervising professor, Dr. John Hartigan, for so thoroughly and

spiritedly introducing to me the field of ethnography. Before taking his course on European

ethnography, I, like many others, knew next to nothing about this form of study. Through his

teaching, Dr. Hartigan not only made me excited about pursuing ethnography academically, but

also helped me remember the significance, poignancy, and beauty of individual lives and

experiences. His passion and insight were instrumental in guiding this thesis.

Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Michael Mosser, who served as my second reader for

this project. Dr. Mosser’s course on the environmental politics of Europe in large part inspired

me to pursue this thesis, as well as graduate school. His composure and knowledge have been a

great comfort to me throughout the process of writing this work, and his confidence in me as a

scholar has helped me overcome any difficulty or discouragement I’ve faced in writing it.

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Table of Contents

Introduction......................................................................................................................................5

Ch 1. Hiking Boots on the Ground: Ethnographic Accounts of Human-Nature Interaction...........7

The Responsible Recreator/Wilderness Enthusiast.........................................................................8

The Complacent Recreator/Wilderness Enthusiast........................................................................10

The Enthusiastic Window Shopper................................................................................................27

The Comfortable Consumer...........................................................................................................29

Ch. 2 Ethnographic Interview Data, 2017.....................................................................................43

Ch. 3 Why It Matters: Implications...............................................................................................53

Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................58

Appendix........................................................................................................................................60

Bibliography..................................................................................................................................63

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Introduction

Federally protected land in the United States covers more than 84 million acres, or

131,250 square miles of land.1 This means that 3.5% of America’s 3.8 million square miles is

nationally preserved land.2 In other words, 1 out of every 33 squares miles in the U.S. is a

national park, national monument, national forest, wilderness area, national preserve, recreation

area, national historic place, or national battleground. The annual budget of the National Park

Service, which oversees these lands, is a little over 3 billion dollars,3 and the Service employs

about 22,000 seasonal, temporary and permanent workers.4 From these statistics alone, it is clear

that the United States government has placed immense value on natural land, such that it has

seen fit not only to protect land from exploitation and settlement through permanent legislation,

but also to provide stewards and guardians of that land.

In theory, this value has seeped into and broadly permeated American culture. In 2016,

more than 330 million people from the U.S. and abroad visited America’s national parks, a 7.7

percent visitation increase from 2015.5 This is a greater number than the population of the US,

and a quarter of the population of China.6 Since 1904, 3.574 billion people have visited United

1 “The National Parks: Index 1916-2016.” National Park Service. Accessed May 05, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/upload/NPIndex2012-2016.pdf. 2 “State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates.” United States Census Bureau, December 01, 2012. Accessed May 05, 2017. https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/state-area.html.

3 “Budget Justifications and Performance Information Fiscal Year 2017.” National Park Service. Accessed May 06, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/upload/FY17-NPS-Greenbook-for-website.pdf. 4 “Frequently Asked Questions.” National Park Service. Accessed May 10, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/faqs.htm. 5 Errick, Jennifer. “National Parks Witnessed Record-Breaking Visitation in 2016.” National Parks Conservation Association. February 16, 2017. Accessed May 07, 2017. https://www.npca.org/articles/1472-national-parks-witnessed-record-breaking-visitation-in-2016.

6 “China.” The World Bank. Accessed May 09, 2017. http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/china.

5

States national parks.7 The sheer numbers of people who have seen national parks is astounding,

yet the reality of their experiences and the many facets of national parks are much more complex

and interesting.

This thesis will explore and analyze contemporary American wilderness interactions and

relationships by utilizing my ethnographic observations of people in national parks over four

summers working in Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and Arapaho

National Forest. Subsequently, it will analyze the values and opinions regarding wilderness held

by Americans through use of first-hand interviews in Rocky Mountain National Park. Finally, it

will offer potential solutions to the inherent tensions produced when humans interact with

preserved public lands.

7 “Park Reports.” National Park Service. Accessed May 11, 2017. https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/.

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1

Hiking Boots on the Ground: Ethnographic Accounts of Human-Nature Interaction, 2014-2017

After my first year of schooling at the University of Texas, I took a summer job as a

deckhand at Bridge Bay Marina in Yellowstone National Park. My experience there prompted

me to return the following summer, and if I wasn’t already sold on working in a public lands

setting, 2015 solidified my passion. In 2016, I worked the summer setting up banquets on an

island in Grand Teton National Park, and in 2017, I was a trails crew intern for the United States

Forest Service in Arapaho National Forest, just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. Each

of these four years, albeit in different ways, gave me the unique opportunity to observe—

covertly, as I wasn’t toting around survey questions—thousands of people as they interacted with

each other and with wilderness. Chapter three of this work will contain ethnographic data I’ve

collected over the past four years, which will give first-hand insight into 21st century interactions

with nature. Some data concerns day-to-day observation of tourists, and some concerns incidents

to which I was privy, either first-hand or by direct interaction with other employees, rangers, or

friends. It is my belief that I have a unique perspective on this information and thus a unique

platform from which to discuss these events, as I experienced them as a part of the park

community; my immersion in the culture of the national park system creates an insightful,

‘insider’ point of view.

I’ve organized this section by parsing my ethnographic data and identifying categories of

natural relationships based on overarching themes and currents I witnessed throughout my time

spent in national parks. I don’t mean to say that the categories I list fully represent the infinite

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number of unique relationships with wilderness held by people, but based on my four years

observing people in a wilderness setting, I maintain that the categories are a cogent distillation of

pervasive relationships and behaviors.   

The Responsible Recreator/Wilderness Enthusiast

Over the four years I worked in a wilderness setting, I largely encountered the type of

people I had expected to find before I’d had any experience living in national parks:

outdoorsmen whose relationship with nature was intimate and long-standing. I met avid hikers

and backpackers, including many of my co-workers, who prefer to experience nature away from

crowds and are able to do so in a successful, responsible, and safe way. People with this type of

natural relationship derive pleasure from wilderness in a way that is evocative of the

Transcendentalist movement: they find something spiritual or beyond themselves in being

immersed in scenery, and they hold great respect for it. The latter point—that of respect—is of

great import in identifying this category of people.

Each year that I worked in Yellowstone, marina employees were trained in rescue

operations by Rick Fey, a legendary Yellowstone Ranger of more than 30 years. Fey has

conducted countless search and rescue (SAR) missions in the park and is often the first responder

to gruesome accidents and high-stakes situations. (During training, he recounted to us the

incident in 1997 in which he found the bodies of two missing canoers in Yellowstone Lake. They

were both outfitted with wetsuits and dry suits, but the 41-degree lake water8 was enough to

freeze them once they capsized.) Something Ranger Fey drilled relentlessly into our heads was

this: that people who get the most benefit out of national parks are people who have respect for

8 “Yellowstone Lake.” National Park Service. Accessed October 23, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/yellowstone-lake.htm.

8

the parks--for their beauty, their fragility, and their danger. Fey represents the extreme of this

group of people, yet they all share the same values: getting out of the crowd, respecting life, and

respecting the tenacity and threat of wilderness.

A crucial aspect of respect for and success in parks (and one which I will willingly and

shamelessly promote) is responsible and ethical behavior. People who have a beneficial

relationship with parks incorporate into this behavior the principles of the Leave No Trace (LNT)

initiative, whether or not they operate under the formal knowledge of the organization. LNT is

modeled on the USDA Forest Service’s “No-Trace” campaign that was created in the 1960s, as

public land use increased and negative anthropogenic biological and physical impacts became

more evident.9 LNT propagates seven ethical principles by which one should abide during any

interaction with nature:

1. Plan Ahead and Prepare

2. Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces

3. Dispose of Waste Properly

4. Leave What You Find

5. Minimize Campfire Impacts

6. Respect Wildlife

7. Be Considerate of Other Visitors

It’s safe to say that anyone who spends a significant amount of time hiking, backpacking,

or experiencing parks is familiar with or has at least heard of LNT, as it has become prevalent in

discourse surrounding outdoorsmanship and has partnered with both NPS and USFS. LNT

9 “Our History.” Leave No Trace. Accessed October 23, 2017. https://lnt.org/about/history.

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principles account for not just skill at wilderness interaction, but for respectful interaction, which

describes people with this type of natural relationship.

I find it interesting that while people in this group arguably enjoy the most intimate and

successful relationship with the natural world, they are also the most unnoticed. When pondering

the content of this section, I was thinking of including some sort of specific example of an

incident concerning a person who displays an intimacy with and respect of nature in the

backcountry, but I came up short. This is precisely because the majority of wilderness

interactions are incident-free for responsible recreators; they neither encounter trouble due to

ignorance, nor do they make headlines by engaging in high-risk, dangerous activities in

wilderness or national parks.    

The Complacent Recreator/Wilderness Enthusiast

I have encountered and observed many people in national parks who hold a familiar

relationship with nature, as well as a clear respect for the beauty and value of wilderness, yet

somewhere along the way lose their respect for the danger--the ‘wild’ part--of wilderness. Many

outdoor enthusiasts fall into a false sense of safety or comfort due to their high level of

experience with nature, and the consequences are often devastating. This section will provide

accounts of people who became complacent in a wilderness setting and faced consequences for

it.

Darien Latty

August 12, 2014 stands out in my memory for several reasons. It was the day I summited

Middle Teton, and my first ascent of a major peak. My spirits were high upon returning to

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Yellowstone Lake Village, where I lived in employee housing for the summer. They were

dampened, however, when my co-workers revealed to me at dinner that an employee of

Roosevelt Lodge, about an hour north of Lake Village, had been missing for a day. We were all

acquainted with employees of Roosevelt, and a few of them were our good friends. They were

utterly shaken at the disappearance of Darien Latty, a 22-year-old employee from Georgia. Latty

had gone tubing with two friends on the Lamar River near Tower Junction10 on the evening of

August 11. Where the Lamar River meets the Yellowstone River, the water had become

extremely turbulent, and Latty’s two friends managed to get out of their tubes and swim to shore,

but Latty was unable to exit and was swept downriver. His friends lost sight of him and reported

the incident to NPS; NPS subsequently sent out SAR teams and posted flyers all over the park

detailing Latty’s physical appearance and requesting help in the search. A SAR team found

Latty’s body ‘pinned to a large rock in a very steep and dangerous section’11 of the Yellowstone

River days later, on August 15, and recovered it on August 16.

10 “Body of Missing Georgia Man Recovered.” National Park Service. August 17, 2014. Accessed November 01, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/news/14058.htm.

11 “Body of Missing Georgia Man Recovered.”

11

12

The Yellowstone River, just below the site where Darien Latty went missing

Darien Latty’s death was indubitably tragic. It is worthwhile for the purpose of

understanding the type of natural relationship that Latty characterized, however, to examine the

cause and consequences of his death. Like many young national park employees, Latty was in

love with nature. He often spent his off days hiking and exploring Yellowstone with fellow

employees, and, according to his uncle, “the last two to three months were probably the best two

to three months of his life.”13 The vast majority of employees in national parks don’t choose their

jobs randomly; their affinity for wilderness leads them to opt for a job that allows them to live in

iconic places of American beauty.

The problem is this: there is often a sense in the culture of young outdoorsmen--in this

case national park employees--of invincibility in wilderness. They work in the parks, live in the

parks, see bison every single day, hike every weekend, camp in the backcountry--and become

12 “Body of man lost in Yellowstone recovered.” The Billings Gazette. August 17, 2014. Accessed November 24, 2017. http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/body-of-man-lost-in-yellowstone-recovered/article_c27a8334-1538-5bbe-9de1-fa2c046e013a.html.

13 Stevens, Alexis. “Northeast Georgia man’s body found in Yellowstone.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Accessed November 02, 2017. http://www.ajc.com/news/northeast-georgia-man-body-found-yellowstone/XcWr8KEUbuaSOjW4V7UkbI/.

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comfortable. While respect for the significance and majesty of wilderness is arguably unmatched

by these people, they can easily lose respect for the dangers present in nature, as life and

experience in a natural setting become so normalized. In Latty’s case, he and his friends were so

comfortable with the idea of floating the Lamar River that they disobeyed an explicit

Yellowstone NPS rule prohibiting floating on any river.14 Every summer, park employees

witness incidents and accidents that occur when people don’t follow park regulations, and they

often deride those involved in such accidents as ignorant or inexperienced. Yet it is by the very

same disobeyment that people who are accustomed to wilderness interaction experience

accidents and tragedies; the difference is only that those experienced in nature think that their

knowledge of the outdoors makes them safer in dangerous situations. There is a failure or

unwillingness to recognize that perils present in the wild don’t make exceptions for experienced

outdoorsmen.

Latty’s decision to tube the Lamar River that night not only led to his unfortunate death,

but also had consequences for the park and its resources. Over 50 people were involved in the

search for Latty, as well as ‘a helicopter, three dog teams, and several groups of searchers on

foot.’15 While the search for Latty was certainly warranted and necessary, it placed demand on

the park’s infrastructure and financial resources, including the very expensive provision of a

helicopter and the dedication of many government employees. His own complacency in his

relationship with the natural world ultimately cost the national parks. Costs incurred by poor

14 “Body of Missing Georgia Man Recovered.”

15 “Body of Missing Georgia Man Recovered.”

13

decisions of people in the parks are increasingly disruptive to the functioning of the parks,

especially as the current administration proposes to slash the Park Service’s budget by 13%.16

Employee Gored by Bison

During my second summer in Yellowstone, bison gorings were in fashion. A ‘goring’ is

the term used to describe an attack by a bison, which most typically results in puncture wounds

from ‘hooking’ (when a bison uses its horn to stab a person or animal) or blunt trauma from

being butted by the bison’s head or being tossed in the air and experiencing hard impact on the

ground.17 On June 23, 2015, a female concession employee was swimming with friends in the

Firehole River, in the Lower Geyser Basin region of Yellowstone, late at night.18 On the way

back to their car, the employees stumbled upon a bison lying down about ten feet away from

them. While the girl’s three friends were able to turn and run away, the girl didn’t react quickly

enough, and the bison approached her and threw her into the air.19 Her friends helped her to the

car and returned to employee housing, but the girl had to be taken to an emergency medical

center and treated for minor injuries later that night.

This incident is another example of complacency that can come with being accustomed to

a place of wilderness. It is very unlikely that anyone visiting a national park, especially one as

wild as Yellowstone, would choose to do something like swim in a river after dark. If someone 16 “President’s Budget Threat to National Parks.” National Parks Conservation Association. May 23, 2017. Accessed November 02, 2017. https://www.npca.org/articles/1553-president-s-budget-threat-to-national-parks.

17 Conrad, Lily, and Jeffrey Balison. “Bison goring injuries: penetrating and blunt trauma.” Journal of Wilderness Medicine 5, no. 4 (1994): 371-81. Accessed October 31, 2017.

18 “Two More People Injured After Approaching Bison.” National Park Service. July 02, 2015. Accessed October 20, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/news/15041.htm.

19 “Two More People Injured After Approaching Bison.”

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isn’t usually immersed in nature, the thought of being out in a national park in the dark is rather

outlandish. Yet because this employee felt experienced enough to partake in what many others

would see as a highly dangerous activity, she took a huge risk and inadvertently exposed herself

to the whims of a bison, and she suffered the consequences for it.

Lance Crosby

In the summer of 2015, 63-year-old Lance Crosby worked as a nurse in the Lake Clinic

in Yellowstone Lake Village. I saw Lance from time to time around the employee village and

met him officially when my roommate became violently ill in late July. (I brought her to the

clinic, where Lance tended to her and administered anti-nausea medicine.) A few weeks after this

visit, word spread around the village that a lake employee had reported that his roommate hadn’t

returned from a hike he took on Thursday, August 6. We found out the next day that said

roommate was Crosby. A ranger found his body in the area of the Elephant Back Loop, a very

popular hiking trail located just behind Lake Village.20 The body was ‘found partially consumed

and cached, or covered,’21 and it was apparent that bears were involved in his death. He was also

found with ‘defensive wounds’22 on his arms.

At first glance, it wasn’t surprising or noteworthy that Crosby had gone hiking on

Elephant Back; the trail was a favorite of employees due to its easy access, reasonable length,

and incredible views. Only after speaking directly to the ranger (once information was released

20 “Hiker Found Dead in Yellowstone.” National Park Service. August 07, 2015. Accessed September 19, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/news/15053.htm.

21 “Grizzly Bear Involved in Yellowstone Hiker’s Death.” National Parks Service. August 08, 2015. Accessed September 19, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/news/15054.htm.

22 “Grizzly Bear Involved in Yellowstone Hiker’s Death.”

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to the public, of course) did we discover just how noteworthy and, unfortunately, irresponsible

Crosby’s hike had been.

His first mistake was that he went hiking alone. Anyone who has spent any time in bear

country knows that an absolute cardinal rule in bear-prone areas is not to hike alone. According

to the National Parks Service, 91% of the people injured by bears in Yellowstone since 1970

were hiking alone or with only one hiking partner.’23 Crosby, a Montana native, was highly

experienced in bear country. I remember him detailing to me and my roommate how he’d

worked for Medcor, an urgent care clinic that operates in national parks, for many years. He had

been with Medcor in Yellowstone for five seasons and was an avid hiker in his free time. As

someone who has herself spent a large amount of time in national parks, I understand the desire

to be alone in nature once in a while. I also understand, however, that bear country is not the

place to do it, and I think it’s reasonable to conjecture that Crosby knew this as well, given his

experience.

What’s more, he broke another cardinal (albeit tacit) rule of Yellowstone by not

bringing bear spray on his hike. (Bear spray is essentially a pepper spray specifically tailored for

use on bears, and is highly effective in deterring aggressive bears.) Even the most experienced

hikers I’ve encountered in Yellowstone never fail to bring bear spray when hiking or camping;

Crosby’s decision not to carry it was indeed surprising.

Crosby made one final questionable decision that contributed to his death: he went off

trail despite a ranger’s warning that there had been bear sightings near Elephant Back. Soon after

Crosby’s death, I talked to a friend of his whom he had spoken to right before he left for the hike.

She recounted to me that Crosby told her of a conversation he’d had with a park ranger on

23 “Hiking in Bear Country.” National Park Service. Accessed September 20, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/reducing_risks.htm.

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August 6, the day of the hike: the ranger had said there was grizzly activity in areas around

Elephant Back. The friend said that Crosby had liked bears, however, and was undaunted at the

prospect. None of the employees could fault him for going on the hike anyway; plenty of us had

hiked on trails near which bears had been sighted. All of Yellowstone, after all, is bear country.

Yet it is strange that Crosby chose to go off trail in such an area. Staying on trail does not

guarantee one’s safety; a hiker can do absolutely everything right and still be injured or attacked.

But staying on trail does decrease one’s chances of encountering dangerous wildlife, as animals

often avoid areas that they know to be frequented by people. (For this reason and others, NPS

strongly encourages hikers not to stray from trails.)  Crosby’s decision to go off trail on Elephant

Back very likely contributed to his death.

Lance Crosby loved Yellowstone, and he loved wilderness. He’d spent many years of his

life choosing to immerse himself in it. Yet it was through this very experience that he became

complacent in nature. Crosby’s sense of security culminated in the decisions that led to his death:

hiking alone, without bear spray, and going off trail in an area he knew was experiencing grizzly

activity. His death demonstrated that his relationship with that natural world had serious

consequences for him, indeed; yet it also had immense consequences for the ecosystem of

Yellowstone, which he loved so much.

Crosby’s body, as mentioned before, was found partially cached; this meant that the bear

saw him as food and intended to return for later feeding. If a bear in the park demonstrates a taste

for human, it’s NPS policy to euthanize the bear. Immediately after discovering the body,

rangers and biologists collected evidence in order to determine the DNA match of the bear, and

they set bear traps later that day.24 A mother grizzly was captured in a trap that night and was

24 “Grizzly Bear Involved in Yellowstone Hiker’s Death.”

17

positively identified as the bear involved in the attack. She was euthanized the next day. It was

later determined that her two cubs were with her at the time of the attack, and they were sent to

‘a facility accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums,’ where they would stay for the

rest of their lives.25

26

The grizzly sow that killed Lance Crosby, captured and sedated before her euthanization

The loss of three bears from Yellowstone may seem insignificant; however, there are

only 150 grizzlies that have ‘home ranges wholly or partially in the park.’27 That said,

Yellowstone lost 2%, or one in fifty, of its grizzly bears due to the incident with Crosby. As one

of the most unique ecosystems in the world and as the only area (along with northwestern

Montana) south of Canada that holds a significant grizzly population,28 Yellowstone indubitably

suffers at such loss of life, and its community mourns as well. Although I cannot claim that his

25 “Hiker’s Death Confirmed as Grizzly Attack.” National Park Service. August 13, 2015. Accessed October 31, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/news/15056.htm.

26 Koshmrl, Mike. “Park Service details man’s death by grizzly.” Jackson Hole News and Guide. January 15, 2016. Accessed November 05, 2017. http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/news/environmental/park-service-details-man-s- death-by-grizzly/article_e77e294f-ef24-5fc0-8aa4-f07ba30ec1c6.html.

27 “Grizzly Bears.” National Park Service. Accessed November 01, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/grizzlybear.htm.

28 “Grizzly Bears.”

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death was entirely the fault of his decisions, I am confident in the claim that his decisions, which

were inevitably a consequence of his relationship with wilderness, greatly increased his chances

of an encounter (and subsequent unfortunate ending) with a bear. Crosby’s case is a poignantly

heartbreaking example of a wilderness relationship gone wrong: his intense love for nature led to

poor decisions borne of excessive comfort in the outdoors, which led to the partial destruction of

the wilderness he loved so well. His connection to the natural world ultimately had far-reaching

and devastating consequences for Yellowstone.

29

Cody, one of the grizzly sow’s two cubs, in the Toledo Zoo

(It’s also worthwhile to note that Crosby was not alone in his impact on grizzlies: in the

Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in 2016, there were 58 known grizzly bear mortalities, and

thirty-eight of them were caused by humans.30 This means that 60% of grizzly deaths resulted

from the decisions and actions of people.)

29 Mester, Alexandra. “3 bears orphaned in wild find Toledo Zoo home is just right.” The Toledo Blade. March 02, 2016. Accessed November 04, 2017. http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2016/03/02/3-bears-orphaned-in-wild-find-Toledo-Zoo-home-is-just-right.html.

30 “Grizzly Bears.”

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Colin Scott

In early June of 2016, we got word in the Tetons of an accident that had occurred in

Yellowstone. (Word travels quickly between employees in national parks, so quickly that some

people joke about it being worse than high school.) All we heard was that a man had fallen into a

geyser and been dissolved. That man was later revealed to be Colin Scott, a 23-year-old from

Portland, Oregon. Scott had just graduated from Pacific University with a degree in geology, and

he and his sister were on a trip to Yellowstone when they decided to go ‘hot potting.’ Hot potting

is an activity in which people search for geothermal features--geysers--that are a good

temperature for bathing. (It’s essentially hot tubbing à la Yellowstone.) Scott and his sister were

in Norris Geyser Basin, in the northern part of the park, and had gone approximately 225 yards

off the boardwalk31 into the basin. Scott was at the edge of the geyser attempting to check its

temperature when he slipped and fell into the feature. Although his sister contacted NPS for help

as quickly as she could, park rangers were unable to save Scott; the temperature of the geyser’s

water was at least boiling, if not hotter,32 so once Scott was in, there was no feasible possibility

of saving him. NPS tried to recover his body the next day, only to find that there were no

remains left to recover. Deputy chief ranger Lorant Veress told the press that ‘in a very short

order, there was a significant amount of dissolving.’33

31 “Fatality at Norris Geyser Basin.” National Park Service. June 08, 2016. Accessed November 05, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/news/16032.htm.

32 Guarino, Ben. “Man who dissolved in boiling Yellowstone hot spring slipped while checking temperature to take bath.” The Washington Post. November 17, 2016. Accessed November 05, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/17/man-who-dissolved-in-boiling-yellowstone-hot-spring-slipped-while-checking-temperature-to-take-bath/?utm_term=.f9eabe725d7e.

33 Guarino, 2016.

20

34

Acidic and superheated Porkchop Geyser, the closest feature to the geyser that claimed Colin Scott’s life in Norris Geyser Basin

Scott’s death is a brutal and chilling example of a wilderness relationship gone wrong. He

was experienced in the outdoors, as evidenced by two things. First, having graduated university

with a geology degree, he would’ve had to spend significant time performing fieldwork, and he

would be familiar with the danger of any geothermal feature. Second, it is incredibly unlikely

that someone not experienced in wilderness would attempt to go hot potting; most visitors who

go to Yellowstone aren’t even aware that hot potting is possible, as they assume that any geyser

would boil them alive. Scott chose to partake in an activity that, in the culture of many outdoorsy

people in Yellowstone, would make him an ‘insider,’ because he felt confident enough to do so.

His confidence, however, was horribly misplaced, and was ultimately fatal to him.      

Rene Dreiling

The final example I write about in my attempt to demonstrate the substantiality of the

‘complacent recreator/wilderness enthusiast’ category is one that affected me deeply, and in

large part inspired me to write about this subject. 34 Wright, Michael. “Man presumed dead after falling into hot spring at Yellowstone.” Bozeman Daily Chronicle. June 07, 2016. Accessed November 15, 2017. www.bozemandailychronicle.com.  

21

The summer of 2016 was my first summer living in Grand Teton National Park, a place

which in my mind is unparalleled in sheer grandiose beauty. The Teton mountain range,

contained within the park, is utterly unique in North America. The mountains lack foothills to the

east, so they essentially arise straight up from flat ground, and tower over the Jackson Hole

valley. (The elevation of the Jackson Hole valley is roughly 6,000 feet,35 and the height of Grand

Teton is 13,776 feet, and there’s nothing in between but vertical mountain.)

I spent the summer working on Elk Island, in the middle of Jackson Lake, preparing and

organizing banquets for guests who were shuttled to the island from Colter Bay Marina. The job

was a cross between marina work and kitchen work: my crew would go to the Colter Bay kitchen

at 5 am, prep and load food onto a pickup, then drive to the marina and load the food onto a 42-

foot landing craft to head to the island. Through my time spent in the kitchen, I met Rene

Dreiling. (I will refer to him as Rene throughout this section, as use of his last name feels too

formal and distant.)   

Rene, 21, was a small, tan, incredibly fit Filipino man who worked as a meat prep cook at

Colter Bay. He had an understated demeanor and a soft voice, but his personality compensated;

he was literally always smiling and dancing, even as he cut meat in the kitchen. Rene emitted an

aura that made everyone around him feel light and at ease, even in the highly stressful

environment of work. He was a pure, innocent young man who genuinely loved making people

feel special, and it was inevitable that people would have fun when they were around him.

My favorite memory with Rene was from the Grand Teton Lodge Company employee

mid-season dance. Each July, the concession company goes all out and throws a massive themed

dance party in a hotel ballroom for its employees. It’s replete with food, drink, DJs, a dance

35 Boner, Jeannete. “Altitude 101.” Jackson Hole Magazine. January 20, 2015. Accessed October 16, 2017. http://jacksonholemagazine.com/altitude-101/.

22

floor, extravagant decorations, and raffle prizes. Employees spend the first half of the summer

season in anticipation of the party, and people take the costume, dancing and--perhaps mostly--

the drinking elements of the shindig very seriously. As can be expected from a bunch of 18 to

30-year-old people, there was plenty of suggestive dancing and behavior going on at the dance,

but I remember running into Rene, who was jiving all by himself. He was hardly even dancing to

the beat of the music; he had a strange sort of jumping-scooting- combination going on, and was

evidently having the time of his life. His energy was entirely infectious, so I joined him, and

together we jumped and wiggled for the next half hour in complete innocence and fun. This

image is cemented in my mind as the perfect emblem Rene’s personality and effect on people.

More than anything, Rene loved climbing mountains. As I mentioned before, he was

exquisitely fit. I’d often come back to the employee village after work to find him running

shirtless sprints around the perimeter of the parking lot, non-stop, with a huge grin on his face.

His fitness enabled him to summit mountains that other people could only dream of conquering;

by the time of his accident, he had summited seventeen peaks in the summer alone. When it

came to mountaineering, Rene was not only dauntless, but also able to make ridiculous feats: he

reached the peak of 12,605’36 Mount Moran, which many of my older, experienced workmates

called the most difficult peak in the park, wearing pajamas and carrying a whole watermelon to

eat at the summit.

36 “Mount Moran.” SummitPost.org. March 10, 2014. Accessed October 10, 2017. http://www.summitpost.org/mount-moran/151412.

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Rene free climbing in early summer of 2016 (photo by friend/coworker Everett Meert)

While Rene’s joy for climbing was defining and beautiful for him, his methods made all

of us nervous. He often went hiking alone, and he rarely planned his routes. He never used

equipment that most mountaineers and rangers highly recommend having in the Tetons, like ice

axes, used for digging into snow and ice fields and for self arrest, and crampons, which are

spikes fitted to the bottom of one’s hiking boots that give traction each step on snow and ice.

Rene’s physical abilities, natural knack for mountaineering, and extensive experience always let

him get away with such risk-taking, and while he in no way lacked respect for the magnificence

of the mountains, those abilities and experiences did blind him to the severe dangers of the

Tetons.

Rene had a scare in early August, when he made his first attempt at Mount Moran. I was

working at the marina when I saw him board one of our 40-passenger cruise boats, as one of the

captains had agreed to give him a lift across Jackson Lake to the mountain’s base. He was

supposed to summit and then return on the same boat the next afternoon, but no one saw him

disembark at the marina that day. Knowing the difficulty and danger of Moran, we were all on

edge when he didn’t show, and the next day we watched each returning cruise, waiting to see

him. Only later that evening did we exhale in relief when we saw him walking down the dock,

24

and we swarmed him, swamping him with questions about where he’d been and what had

happened. He told us, in typical understated Rene fashion, that he’d gotten lost on the mountain

and spent the next day trying to make his way down across steep snow and ice.

After this incident, most of us chided Rene in one way or another, as friends but also in

all seriousness. I remember giving him a slap on the arm and telling him that he needed to be

with someone or at least take equipment when attempting a summit, because if he had gotten

hurt, there would’ve been no one to help him. He got the same treatment over and over from

other employee friends in the village, and while he nodded and told us he understood, the

message didn’t sink in.

I left the Tetons at the end of August and moved to Lisbon for a semester abroad in

Portugal, but most of my friends were still working in the park. A few days after I left, on Friday,

September 2, I got a call from a friend saying that Rene was missing. He had gone hiking at the

beginning of his weekend on Wednesday, telling friends that he was thinking about summiting

Table Mountain but not giving concrete details. He didn’t show up for his kitchen shift on

Friday, and after no one saw him at the village, our friends reported him as missing to NPS.

Park rangers began the search for Rene that day, asking hikers in the Jenny Lake area,

where Rene was last seen, if they had encountered anyone matching his description. The search

was enlarged to include 100 people,37 and two days later, on Sunday, September 4, rangers found

Rene’s body ‘on the north side of Mount Owen, on a rocky cliff band beneath steep snow

37 Mieure, Emily. “Rangers work to recover hiker’s body.” Jackson Hole News and Guide. September 06, 2016. Accessed October 20, 2017. http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/jackson_hole_daily/local/rangers-work-to-recover-hiker-s-body/article_b0f19a45-8b6b-5ba8-986f-39f387549c13.html.

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fields.’38 The Teton county coroner determined that the cause of death was ‘a fractured neck and

head trauma,’39 so he likely died after falling down a snowfield and hitting the rocks below.

40

Mount Owen, Grand Teton National Park

Rene Dreiling loved wilderness more than most people I’ve met in my life. He enjoyed

nothing more than hiking and summiting peaks, and he was both skilled and experienced at it.

However, through my personal relationship with him, I am certain that his intimacy with nature

affected his behavior and the decisions he made in that wilderness. Risk-taking in nature became

normalized for Rene, and because he had extensive experience without ever suffering

consequences, he acquired the mindset that climbing the way he climbed--alone, without

equipment, and without notifying people of his plans--was not inherently dangerous. This

mentality ultimately led to Rene’s death, and to the mourning and grief of many.

38 Mieure, 2016. 39 Mieure, Emily. “Teton park says hiker likely died from fall.” Jackson Hole News and Guide. September 07, 2016. Accessed October 20, 2017. http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/news/cops_courts/teton-park-says-hiker-likely-died-from-fall/article_879ba708-fa1e-5e3e-bb82-607f4ff91fc7.html. 40 “Grand Teton National Park Mount Owen.” Accessed November 20, 2017. http://tetonclimbingowen.blogspot.com/.

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Conclusion

The examples given in this section are just some among many instances of brilliant and

knowledgeable recreators who feel a unique connection to American wilderness but lose sight of

its hazards through complacency. It is important, from an ethnographic standpoint, to take note

of this type of natural relationship. There is a definitive culture of outdoorsmanship in the US, to

be sure, but within that culture is a subculture of risk-takers. The willingness to take a gamble

has long been respected and valued in the outdoor sports community. Society rewards people

like free climber Alex Honnold, skydiver and basejumper Felix Baumgartner, mountaineer

Reinhold Messner, and adventure hiker Bear Grylls with fame, sponsorships, and exposure.

These people are the extreme examples that embody the characteristics of the complacent

recreator: they are highly experienced in wilderness situations and therefore take unnecessary

risks. (They are the extreme in that they also take huge risks for the financial and career

benefits.) The societal value of risk-taking exists in my ethnographic samples as well: Darien

Latty thought he could have a unique and privileged experience tubing the Lamar River; a young

employee dared to romp around Yellowstone at night; Lance Crosby thought he could break the

most basic rules of hiking in bear country; Colin Scott was confident enough to approach the

edge of a hot spring for a bath; and Rene Dreiling thought he could summit peaks in the Teton

range alone and without proper equipment. In a way, it makes sense that these people do what

they do. Human beings generally enjoy feelings of safety, but many also like adrenaline; people

with this type of relationship hold the illusion that they can always have both simultaneously.

While consequences of this sort of wilderness connection are not always so grave as they were

for the people discussed in this section, the fact that people become complacent with wilderness

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always has the potential to have an adverse effect on both parties of the relationship: the people

and the nature.

The Enthusiastic Window Shopper

The third broad type of American wilderness interaction I have witnessed is that of the

enthusiastic window shopper: the person who enjoys nature but never really experiences it.

Yellowstone backcountry ranger Milo Williams supports the traditional Yellowstone saying that

‘95 percent of the people use 5 percent of the park, and 5 percent of people use 95 percent of the

park.’41 Window shoppers make up that 95 percent of people.

People with this wilderness relationship spend most of their time in national parks in their

cars, stopping at pullouts to admire vistas and at visitor centers to learn about parks and visit gift

shops. They are clearly interested in nature, as they choose to spend their time and money

visiting national parks, but they generally don’t step through the window and interact with

nature, admiring it instead from the safety of paved roads and boardwalks. The National Parks

Service very much caters to this group of people; the very existence of infrastructure, like roads,

pull outs, visitor centers, gift shops, and, in some parks, hotels and restaurants, means that the

parks value the visitation of these people. And the system has reason to value them: their

visitation fees and money spent in the parks are a huge contribution to parks’ revenue, and they

are therefore a legitimately important constituency for the maintenance of national parks.

41 Crisp, Andrew. “The Hidden Treasures of Yellowstone Park.” Boise Weekly. August 18, 2010. Accessed November 01, 2017. https://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/the-hidden-treasures-of-yellowstone-park/Content?oid=1734364.

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(Entrance fees make up a crucial 7% of the NPS budget, as the average annual intake from fees

is about $200 million,42 with the 2016 NPS budget at $3 billion.)43

44

Typical summer traffic in Yellowstone, which I argue is mostly comprised of window shoppers

Window shoppers are also an important constituency in that they generally don’t do harm

to wilderness, as they don’t really approach it. Yet the fact they don’t tend to interact directly

with nature also makes their actual relationship to it very uncertain. Is visiting national parks a

mere act of aesthetic consumerism, or is their connection to the land something deeper? I’ve

certainly encountered people who grew up taking car rides through national parks but were

inspired to explore nature once they grew older; I’ve also met people who wouldn’t go to

national parks at all if the parks didn’t have the infrastructure necessary for a comfortable,

sedentary view of American wilderness.

42 Repanshek, Kurt. “Entrance Fees Generate Hundreds of Millions of Dollars a Year for National Parks Service.” National Parks Traveler. February 18, 2010. Accessed November 02, 2017. https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2010/02/entrance-fees-generate-hundreds-millions-dollars-year-national-park-service5360.

43 “Budget.” National Parks Service. Accessed November 03, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/budget.htm.

44 “Yellowstone visitation up only slightly in July.” Billings Gazette. August 09, 2016. Accessed November 06, 2017. http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/yellowstone-visitation-up-only-slightly-in-july/ article_b0aa3389-40de-5f54-bb3a-896243c669ff.html.

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Conclusion

It is hard to know if window shoppers’ relationship to wilderness translates into a policy

commitment to parks. Both responsible and complacent recreators and wilderness enthusiasts

share a deep commitment to defending and protecting America’s natural lands, given their deep

commitment to experiencing said lands; it’s difficult to determine if people with such a

seemingly tenuous relationship to nature would be willing to take action to defend it. Based on

my experience, I confidently argue that this is the most prevalent type of natural relationship held

by American people. Paradoxically, while this connection is the most common, it is also the

hardest to parse and assess in terms of its actual value and depth.

The Comfortable Consumer

The final prevailing kind of wilderness relationship is what I call the ‘comfortable

consumer.’ While the window shoppers lack wilderness experience and choose not to step into

nature, comfortable consumers lack wilderness experience and choose to interact with it. The

consumers’ fault is that they are unable to distinguish between a safe, controlled environment

and a wilderness environment. They assume a false sense of safety not because they are used to

natural interaction, but because they have too little of it to understand how dangerous wild lands

are. The existence of tourist infrastructure also plays a substantial role in affecting the behavior

of these people: because parks have to some extent been modernized vis-à-vis infrastructure,

they figure that the parks must be safe. Dearth of experience, combined with misunderstanding

of the nature of wilderness, often leads to accidents and misbehavior in national parks. This

section will give accounts of such incidents in an attempt to understand this relationship.

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Zahra Allahyari

On August 17, 2014, the news of the day was about Zahra Allahyari. She was an eight-

year-old girl on a family vacation from southern California. The family had gone to the Grand

Canyon of the Yellowstone, one of the most popular sites in the park, to see the 308-foot tall45

Lower Falls that morning. On the way to the observation platform, about two-thirds of the way

down,46 Allahyari stepped off trail, slipped, and fell around 550 feet47 into the canyon. Rangers

recovered her body later that day.

48

The steep Yellowstone Lower Falls Trail, from which Allahyari fell

The Allahyari case is a poignant demonstration of the comfortable consumer natural

relationship. While I cannot claim this with certainty, it is very likely that the Allahyari family

felt safe at the presence of the handrail that lines the entire trail, as well as at the large number of

people present on the trail. (At any given time during the summer, this path is utterly packed

45 “Yellowstone Waterfalls.” Yellowstone Net. Accessed November 01, 2017. http://yellowstone.net/waterfalls/yellowstones-waterfalls/lower-falls/.

46 “Identity Released of Canyon Fall Victim.” National Park Service. August 18, 2014. Accessed October 10, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/news/14060.htm.

47 “Identity Released of Canyon Fall Victim.”

48 “Lower Falls.” All Trips. Accessed November 07, 2017. https://www.yellowstoneparknet.com/lakes_rivers_falls/lower_falls.php.

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with people.) These two factors probably gave the Allahyari family a sense of comfort that

caused a lapse in caution concerning the monitoring of their children. Either that, or they

knowingly let Zahra off trail, which would display an even worse misunderstanding of

wilderness. I confidently argue that most families with outdoor experience, especially being in a

place as dangerous as Yellowstone, would be hypervigilant about watching children near the

precipice of something as deep as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The inability to

recognize the immense perils of nature had grievous and tragic consequences for the Allahyari

family.

2015 Yellowstone Bison Gorings

As I alluded to earlier, 2015 saw a record-breaking number of bison gorings in

Yellowstone National Park. In the summer alone, five visitors were attacked by bison. According

to Yellowstone spokeswoman Amy Bartlett, the park usually has only one to two incidents per

year.49 In 2015, however, it seems that visitors had extreme difficulty in understanding the nature

and threat of bison; every goring was caused by human error.

The first goring I discussed in this section was that in which a 19-year-old employee was

gored at night. Whereas she fell into the complacent recreator category due to her outdoors

experience, the other four people gored in 2015 are part of the comfortable consumer category,

as they were visitors who failed to grasp the notion that bison are not controlled or tamed

animals. (Those of us working in the park were continually stunned at the choices made by the

victims and, truth be told, had little sympathy for them.)

49 “5 Visitors Gored by Bison in Yellowstone in 2015.”  My Yellowstone Park. July 22, 2015. Accessed November 10, 2017. https://www.yellowstonepark.com/news/teen-gored-bison.

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On July 1, a 68-year-old woman from Georgia was hiking the Storm Point Trail on the

northeast side of Yellowstone Lake. When she attempted to pass by the bison, it charged and

gored her, and she was hospitalized for several days.50 While the park was explicit in saying that

the woman had not been provoking the bison, I nevertheless find that her actions displayed a

clear lack of knowledge about the wildness of bison and of the environment she occupied.

Anyone experienced in the outdoors is acutely aware of the importance of keeping distance from

any sort of wildlife, but especially any megafauna (in Yellowstone’s case bison, bears, elk,

moose, etc.). In other words, a person with a longer wilderness relationship would not have tried

to walk past the bison, as this woman did; he or she would’ve found an alternate route or waited

for the bison to move away from the trail. It’s not altogether surprising, from an experienced

perspective, that this visitor was attacked by the animal.

Another goring occurred on July 22, 2015, near the Fairy Falls trailhead, on the west side

of the park near Grand Prismatic Spring. A 43-year-old Mississippi woman51 spotted a bison near

the trail, and when she turned her back to the animal to take a photo with it, the bison charged

and tossed her into the air. She was brought to the Old Faithful clinic, where she was treated for

minor injuries.52 This victim made two enormous errors: she turned her back on a bison, and at

fewer than 6 yards away was entirely too close to it. (According to NPS regulations, the

minimum distance to keep from bison is 25 yards.) The woman and her family told rangers that

they had read the warnings and regulations about bison in pamphlets and on signs, but they

50 “5 Visitors Gored by Bison in Yellowstone in 2015.”

51 “Fifth Person Injured in Bison Encounter This Summer.” National Park Service. July 22, 2015. Accessed November 07, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/news/15047.htm.

52 “Fifth Person Injured in Bison Encounter This Summer.”

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thought it was okay to approach the bison because they saw other people doing so.53 This is a

perfect example of the crowd mentality inherent in the comfortable consumer relationship:

people can’t distinguish wilderness from a consumer habitat, so they take risks, and others follow

suit because of their own ignorance and assumption of safety. In this case, the victim held a

consumer mindset geared toward capturing a photo with the animal, while simultaneously

assuming her own safety in the face of wildlife, and suffered for it.

The other two gorings of the summer did not affect American tourists, but foreign

visitors: a 62-year-old man from Australia and a 16-year-old exchange student.54 It’s worthwhile

to note, however, that they shared a common cause with the goring of the Mississippi visitor: the

victims were too close to bison, and they turned their backs to the animals in an effort to take

photos of themselves--selfies, as they’re now called--with them. This is perhaps the most glaring

example of the comfortable consumer, and one that I will further discuss later on. People valued

photographic evidence of their experience to such an extent that they took enormous risks and

ignored park warnings, jeopardizing their own safety. What’s more, many of these people likely

didn’t realize that their actions were dangerous, which displays a real lack of understanding of

wilderness.

Drone Crashes into Grand Prismatic Spring

In the late 2000s, drones--unmanned, remotely controlled aircraft--became available to

the public. While originally designed for military use, drones have become increasingly popular

tools for capturing images from an aerial perspective, and many people use the devices for brand

footage and social media sharing. The National Parks Service prohibited use of any unmanned

53 “Fifth Person Injured in Bison Encounter This Summer.”

54 “5 Visitors Gored by Bison in Yellowstone in 2015.”

34

aircraft in national parks in June 2014,55 but the ban hasn’t stopped visitors from attempting to

operate drones in parks anyway.

On August 2, 2014, we heard from a ranger at Lake Village that ‘some idiot crashed a

drone into Grand Prismatic.’ The news provoked a collective grunt of outrage (as well as a few

choice words) from my employee friends; we were in disbelief, yes simultaneously cynically

unsurprised, that someone would do something so stupid and disrespectful. The someone in this

case was a Dutch visitor named Theodorus Van Vliet. He was flying a drone over Grand

Prismatic Spring, the park’s largest hot spring56 and the most popular geothermal feature, apart

from Old Faithful Geyser, when he crashed the drone into the spring. Park Service officials were

unable to recover it from the bottom of the pool.

Van Vliet was fined $1,000 and paid more than $2,200 in restitution for sinking the

drone.57 While he clearly paid financially for the accident, his behavior speaks to a larger issue in

the contemporary human-nature relationship of the consumer. Van Vliet was unaware of the

impropriety or risk of flying a drone--an aggressive, invasive technological device--in a national

park, over a world-famous natural spring. Either that, or he was aware of the risk but valued his

own footage of nature more than the well-being of the nature itself. The first case shows a

conception held by Van Vliet that nature is enjoyed through technology and not by simple

interface with wilderness. The second case shows flouting of the NPS mission--to preserve

unimpaired the natural resources of the country--in favor of gratifying one’s own consumeristic

55 “Unmanned Aircraft in the National Parks.” National Parks Service. Accessed October 20, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/articles/unmanned-aircraft-in-the-national-parks.htm.

56 Huffman, Mark. “Tourist fined for crashing drone into Grand Prismatic.” Jackson Hole News and Guide. September 29, 2014. Accessed November 10, 2017. http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/news/environmental/tourist-fined-for-crashing-drone-into-grand-prismatic/article_2aea910f-e8d1-562d-a356-baae6f00459e.html.  57 Huffman, 2014.

35

desires. Either case clearly demonstrates a consumer mindset mingled with ignorance about

wilderness ethics and interaction.

What’s more, Van Vliet’s consumption had consequences for the geothermal ecosystem

of the park. Yellowstone’s geysers and springs are extremely sensitive and host bacteria found

nowhere else on earth, and intrusion of foreign objects not only affects the chemical composition

of the features but potentially their temperature as well. Both effects make an impact on the

precious microorganisms living in the park. This case is yet another instance of an person’s

wilderness relationship breeding negative consequences both for the individual and the

environment with which he interacts.

Morning Glory Pool

I visited Morning Glory Pool, in the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone, for the first

time in 2014. There is a boardwalk about a mile long that starts at Old Faithful Geyser and ends

at Morning Glory Pool, and of the nearly 30 features that line this boardwalk, Morning Glory

was easily my favorite. What draws me--and nearly everyone else--specifically to this pool is its

unbelievable array of colors. Picture a circular rainbow: the edges of the pool are a rusty orange,

which gradually fades inward to a bright yellow, followed by a lime green ring, and finally a

cerulean blue center. The pool is utterly spellbinding; it’s hard to believe that it’s naturally

occurring.

36

Morning Glory Pool, Yellowstone, 2014

After doing some research on the feature (prompted by my mesmerization), I discovered

that Morning Glory is in fact not totally natural--that humans are to blame for its brilliant colors.

The pool was originally named in 1883 for its deep sapphire blue color, which resembled the

morning glory flower.58 Yet since the park’s establishment, visitors have thrown coins, rocks,

and other garbage into the spring. When foreign objects enter a geothermal pool, they sink to the

bottom and partially block the feature’s underground heat source, causing the pool to get cooler.

While one or two pennies may not make a significant difference in a spring’s temperature, years’

worth of debris inevitably and substantially impact the geothermal environment. In Morning

Glory’s case, an amalgamation of litter greatly decreased the pool’s temperature, killing off

certain bacteria (those that created the deep blue color) and allowing for the growth of new

bacteria that thrive in lower temperatures, creating the rainbow effect seen today.

58 Haines, Aubrey L. Yellowstone Place Names - Mirrors of History. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1996.

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59

Morning Glory Pool as it appeared in 1940

Morning Glory is an important and ultimately sorrowful example of American wilderness

relationships. For over a century now, people who choose to consume national parks, rather than

respect or understand them, have seen fit to litter in such a truly spectacular, fragile wonder as

this spring. Their choice to treat a national park the same as any other consumer environment

resulted in tangible harm being done to the natural environment. It’s likely that many individuals

didn’t expect their one bit of trash to make a difference. Yet their inability to recognize the

wrongness of their actions, coupled with the lack of consideration that millions of people visit

Morning Glory every year, demonstrate the ignorance of the comfortable consumer that produces

consequences for wilderness.

Yellowstone Lake Trout

The two summers I spent as a deckhand at Yellowstone’s Bridge Bay Marina forced me

to confront, in an extremely intimate way, my greatest fear: fish. I am utterly and completely

terrified of fish. I am disgusted (and freaked out, to be honest) by their gills, eyes, scales, mucus

membrane, every part of them, really. Yet at the marina, part of my job was to fillet lake trout for

fishing guides, who brought them in by the bucket every couple of hours. By the end of my

59 “Tourist Trash Has Changed the Color of Yellowstone’s Morning Glory Pool.” Smithsonian. February 12, 2015. Accessed October 16, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tourist-trash-has-changed-color-yellowstones-morning-glory-pool-180954239/.

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second season, the sight and smell of the guts and blood and creepy dead eyes of hundreds of

lake trout were forever burned into my mind. While it may seem to the fisherman a lucky thing

to be bringing in so many lake trout, it is in fact no coincidence that so many are caught; there is

a high-stakes battle being fought to get them out of Yellowstone Lake.

60

The smaller, native cutthroat trout, Yellowstone

There are two species of trout in Yellowstone Lake: cutthroat trout and lake trout. The

native cutthroat have been in Yellowstone Lake for thousands of years and are a vital food

source for more than 20 species of animal in the park.61 Lake trout, however, were not always

there. They were first intentionally introduced into Lewis and Shoshone lakes, south of

Yellowstone Lake, by the U.S. Fish Commission (the precursor of what is now the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service) in 1890.62 Both Lewis and Shoshone lake were naturally fishless, and the

commission wanted to increase opportunities for fishing.63 More than 100 years later, in 1994, a

60 “Yellowstone Lake Cutthroat Trout Threatened by Non-Native Lake Trout.” My Yellowstone Park. June 21, 2011. Accessed October 31, 2017. https://www.yellowstonepark.com/park/yellowstone-lake-cutthroat-trout- threatened-by-non-native-lake-trout.

61 “Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout.” National Park Service. April 20, 2017. Accessed November 10, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/yellowstone-cutthroat-trout.htm.

62 “Lake Trout.” National Park Service. April 19, 2017. Accessed November 10, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/lake-trout.htm.

63 Madison, Erin. “Yellowstone lake trout suppression making gains.” Great Falls Tribune. June 24, 2015. Accessed November 01, 2017. http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2015/06/24/yellowstone-lake-trout-suppression-making-gains/29238573/.

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fisherman (in fact a fellow marina employee we call ‘Johnny Marina’) approached rangers with a

fish he’d caught in Yellowstone Lake, as he had never seen one like it before. Ranger biologists

identified the fish as a lake trout, and immediately ‘knew they were in trouble.’64

65

The much larger, aggressive, non-native lake trout, Yellowstone

Lake trout are highly aggressive predatory fish, and since their illegal introduction (by

whom, no one knows) into Yellowstone Lake, they have gravely endangered cutthroat. They eat

up to 41 cutthroat a year, and the female lake trout can produce 9,000 eggs per year during the

autumn spawn.66 Together these factors have created something of a crisis for the ecosystem of

Yellowstone: cutthroat are in danger of dying out, and, as previously mentioned, they are an

incredibly important part of the food web, as more than 20 species of animal rely on them for

food.

64 Madison, 2015.

65 “Cutthroat enemy: Dreaded lake trout.” The Denver Post. April 17, 2010. Accessed November 01, 2017. http://www.denverpost.com/2010/04/17/cutthroat-enemy-dreaded-lake-trout/.

66 “Lake Trout.”

40

The park, along with the private sector, has taken drastic measures in attempting to

suppress the lake trout population; both NPS and The Hickey Brothers (a private gill netting

operation) have vessels entirely devoted to netting thousands of lake trout each summer, all

summer. In 2016, NPS and The Hickey Brothers managed to capture more than 366,400 ‘lakers,’

as they’re called, from Yellowstone Lake.67 While the number may seem astounding, the reality

is that even the best efforts are hardly making a dent in the laker population. What’s more,

Yellowstone has a stringent policy for public fishing. If anyone catches a lake trout, they must,

by law, either keep it or kill it and throw it back in the lake. Conversely, if one catches a

cutthroat, it is mandatory to release it alive, and there is a $500 fee for bringing a dead cutthroat

to the marina. Even the combination of this policy and the gill netting operations is not making

serious headway in the fight against cutthroat endangerment.   

The Yellowstone lake trout crisis is a heart-wrenching example of the potential impact of

the comfortable consumer on entire ecosystems. The members of the Fish Commission, though

they seemingly should’ve been responsible recreators, were tragically and regrettably (and

frustratingly) unaware of the potential consequences of their introducing lake trout to

Yellowstone. Rather than making paramount the ecological future of Yellowstone, they chose to

act in such a way as to achieve immediate consumer satisfaction for the sport of fishing, placing

the thrill of the chase above the quiet, understated habitat of Lewis and Shoshone lakes. Their

decision has monumentally changed the fate of wildlife in Yellowstone and affects thousands of

lives, both human and animal, over 125 years later.  

 

67 “Lake Trout.”

41

Conclusion

The comfortable consumer is probably the most discussed, most exposed type of

wilderness relationship, as the actions of this group of people are generally what make headlines.

I find it reasonable to claim that consumers create problems more frequently than complacent

recreators, because they combine two problem-causing factors: a lack of knowledge or

experience and a risk-taking, consumer mindset. (The complacent recreator only holds the latter

quality.) From an ethnographic point of view, they are also the most frustrating group of people,

as most of them don’t seek to educate themselves before interacting with wilderness in a

disrespectful way.

In a Nutshell

In this section, I have proven the overarching, pervasive types of wilderness relationships

held by the American people through ethnographic consideration of multiple case studies. The

responsible recreator/wilderness enthusiast holds an intimate connection and a high level or

experience with nature and maintains an ethical, respectful attitude toward wilderness itself and

the threats it presents. The complacent recreator/wilderness enthusiast is also highly experienced

in the outdoors, but while he/she respects the beauty of wilderness, he/she loses respect for the

dangers of wilderness and takes unnecessary and imprudent risks. The enthusiastic window

shopper chooses to vacation in national parks but never truly connects with or experiences with

nature face to face, as he/she spends most of the time experiencing parks through present

infrastructure, i.e. roads, visitor centers, and overlooks. Finally, the comfortable consumer lacks

experience in nature and cannot distinguish a wilderness environment from a controlled,

consumer environment.

42

While it can be difficult to break the habits ingrained in each of these groups, I should be

clear that these categories are not stagnant. It is entirely possible for a responsible recreator to

become a complacent recreator; for a window shopper to become a comfortable consumer; for a

comfortable consumer to become a responsible recreator; and so on. While there is potential for

someone to become part of a group that causes problems, there is also always potential for

someone to improve his/her behavior through the a mix of education and wilderness ethics

training. Ultimately, people’s behavior in national parks comes down to individual choice. As

people make choices based on their knowledge and perception of what is right or appropriate, it

is crucial that people learn more about the natural environment of the national parks in order to

join the responsible recreator category.    

43

2

Ethnographic Interview Data, 2017

Introduction

Thus far, the data I have presented was collected solely by observing Americans in

national parks over four summers. While this information is frankly irreplaceable and valuable

due to its organic, unprovoked nature, I also wanted to give people the opportunity to express

their experiences and opinions verbally for the purposes of this study. Plan II Honors generously

endowed me with a research grant, so in October 2017 I made the trip to Rocky Mountain

National Park, about 2 hours northwest of Denver, Colorado, in order to conduct in-person

interviews with visitors.

My methodology for this data collection was as follows: I visited several popular hiking

trails in Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), including the Bear Lake Trail, Adams Falls

Trail, and East Inlet Trail, and interviewed as many people as I could along the trail. I made sure

to interview people both closer to the trailheads, in order to capture what was perhaps a less

active population, and farther along trails, to capture the opinions of more voracious hikers. I

asked every interviewee the same questions and hand-recorded their responses with their

permission. I’ve organized this section by interview question. I will provide the question and

44

subsequently discuss various responses in an attempt to identify patterns and trends in the

opinions and experiences of interviewees, and ultimately of a diverse American population.

*While I will only be discussing in this paper the questions and responses I found most

significant, I have included the other questions and responses in the appendix.

Why do you choose to vacation in national parks? Why choose a national park over another destination?

The vast majority of respondents said that they choose national parks for the scenery,

wildlife, and natural beauty they present, and they expressed satisfaction at the pristine nature

that can only be found in national parks. Upon asking people this question, I found most of them

to be quite enthusiastic in their description of the natural beauty in national parks; there was a

genuine excitement and respect for the lands.

The response of a group of three middle-aged women from St. Louis, Missouri, stood out

from the rest. They said that they enjoy supporting the national parks, and uttered this

specifically: ‘to us, the National Park Service is government at its best. Despite all the other bad

stuff going on in government, the national parks are still great.’ I was struck by the powerful idea

pertaining to American wilderness relationships I found in this answer: that even if these women

lost all hope in the goodness of most of American government, they would still find refuge and

happiness in the part of it that created and now protects national parks. This speaks to a deep and

poignant connection to land that transcends other political issues and matters of unrest in modern

life.

The final answer I found quite interesting was from a 22-year-old woman, who said that

she’d seen ads for national parks on television that made her want to visit them. To be frank, I’d

never expect that answer, as I’ve never seen a commercial for parks, but I think it’s important to

note. According to a Nielson Company survey from 2011, 96.7 percent of American households

45

own at least one television.68 If NPS is running ads for parks on television, they have the

potential to reach almost every American house and to expose people to the idea of national

parks who otherwise wouldn’t consider it. It would be interesting to find data on the percentage

of people who are inspired by television to visit national parks, as such an impetus would display

a connection between modern media and wilderness.  

Do you perceive that there is a sense of national pride or identity in America’s national parks?

The answer to this question was a resounding ‘yes.’ Based on people I interviewed,

American identity and natural identity are deeply intertwined, both today and historically. A

middle-aged woman on the East Inlet Trail put it like this: ‘There is absolutely pride. It’s

unspoiled. This is what our ancestors would’ve seen...it’s our history. I love the transcendental

idea about it too, that it’s a place where it’s spiritual. It’s spiritual getting back to the land and

having a connection to the land.’ While not every interviewee shared her perspective on the

spirituality of wilderness, most shared her deep cultural pride in that fact that we have left land

unspoiled for generations. A man in his 60’s averred that we ‘have a deep appreciation as a

country for preserving wilderness and parks.’ The most common words and phrases were

‘preserve,’ ‘set aside,’ ‘preserve beauty,’ and ‘tradition.’ It seems that people feel a collective

pride in America’s ideal of preservation, in the act of preservation. They want to stay connected

to America’s cultural and geographic history, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the massive

technological advances and industrialization that are manifested nationwide today. That longing

to preserve the land reflects a longing to preserve the past, and I ultimately found that most

people did in fact share in a pseudo-Transcendentalist mentality: even if they don’t find

68 Stelter, Brian. “Ownership of TV Sets Falls in U.S.” The New York Times. May 03, 2011. Accessed November 15, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/media/03television.html.

46

unspoiled nature sacred in a religious sense, they deem it a treasure, a sort of mystical connection

to both the naked earth and to the American past.

Many parks, including Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier, have tourist infrastructure like hotels, restaurants, and guided tours. How do you feel about the presence of tourist infrastructure in national parks?

This was perhaps the question that provoked the fewest concurring answers. Some

interviewees demanded that there should be absolutely no tourist infrastructure in parks, as it

spoils the otherwise pristine nature therein. One couple unwaveringly asserted, ‘tourism

infrastructure is inappropriate in national parks. The intent of parks wasn’t commercial use, it

wasn’t privatization. We should put more government money toward funding the parks, not

commercialize them.’ Herein lies a populist ideal of parks being for the ordinary man, not for the

profits of corporations.

Others, including the women of the St. Louis group, take advantage of and quite enjoy

the tourist infrastructure in parks, saying that ‘it makes for a perfect vacation, if it’s done right.’

By ‘done right,’ they meant that it oughtn’t ‘compete with or invade the park.’

The majority of respondents disliked the idea of infrastructure, as they argued that it

inherently invades the park by being unnatural. Yet most of them agreed that infrastructure does

have a place in the parks because, first of all, it generates revenue for the parks, and second, it

makes parks accessible for people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to experience them. This

group’s response to this question demonstrates an ever-present tension in national park

management: accessibility versus purity. The national parks were intended to be accessible for

the benefit and education of all, yet that cannot be feasibly achieved without impinging on

wilderness. And that matters to people; they feel conflicted about it. This in itself is telling of

47

American attitudes toward wilderness, as it shows that many people truly value the ideal of

preserving land unimpaired. Yet they are also reluctantly willing to concede the importance of

accessibility for all people, which demonstrates their valuing equality and neighborliness. It’s

entirely possible that people could’ve demanded the overriding importance of completely

untouched land over accessible land, yet ultimately, people were ready to give up some

unspoiled land for the sake of ubiquitous accessibility. That is, of course, with the caveat that the

infrastructure affect the wilderness as little as possible, and that it doesn’t spread. I found real

personal pleasure at the genuine simultaneous commitment of people to their land and to their

fellow Americans. It speaks well of those I interviewed.

Do you share pictures you take in national parks on any social media platforms?

In truth, was eager to ask this question in hope of substantiating a conception I’ve held

since working in a national park for the first time. As I expected, every single person or group I

interviewed said yes, with the exception of one elderly woman. People mostly share their photos

on Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram, and most people responded that taking pictures is

important to them in the parks. What’s more, in a separate question about dangerous behavior in

national parks, most respondents averred that a large portion of dangerous behavior they’d

witnessed involved people trying to capture pictures. One respondent stated blatantly that people

do ‘stupid things’ for the sake of a picture. This corroborates my theory that social media is, in a

large way, detrimental to people’s behavior in national parks. The positive effects of social

media on wilderness should not be discounted; seeing photos on Instagram, for example, often

inspires people to engage with public lands, which for the mission statement of the park service

is a good thing. Yet I argue that the desire for a good picture to share on social media often

48

drives people to behave dangerously, or to behave in a way such that they hardly engage with

their surroundings at all.

The woman who discussed dangerous behavior involving photography cited the multiple

occasions on which she’d seen people get too close to wildlife, including elk and bison, in order

to get a good shot. I myself have been witness to countless, seriously dangerous encounters in

which people approach wildlife (even bears) with their cameras out, desperate for a photo. It’s

also common for people to get dangerously close to the edge of a precipice, such as a cliff or

canyon, to get a picture of themselves. Examples like these highlight the mania for capturing

wilderness moments on camera. People want to show something noteworthy, daring, or likeable

(referring here to Facebook and Instagram likes) to their friends and the Internet, and this

obsession prompts wildly irresponsible wilderness behavior that can produce serious

consequences, such as the bison gorings previously discussed.

Besides causing dangerous behavior, the desire to capture pictures for social media also

produces disconnected behavior. It is impossible to count the number of times I’ve seen people

hiking in national parks who don’t put their cameras away for one second of the experience. It is

unbelievably common for people to reach the summit of a mountain or the view at the end of a

hike, to take pictures the entire time they’re there, and to turn around and head out without ever

looking at their surroundings sans camera lens. It makes one wonder, in the words of my friend

and former co-worker Gabriel, ‘would you even be hiking if you couldn’t take pictures of it and

put them on Instagram?’ The issue of social media’s effect on behavior in national parks is one

completely unique to our time; until quite recently, there was no such thing as a smartphone, and

cameras were few and far between. Now, practically everyone has access to a digital-quality

49

camera, and I argue that this has a generally negative effect on the American wilderness

experience and will continue to do so, to the same if not a greater extent in the future.

In recent years, visitation to national parks has skyrocketed, and overcrowding has become a large topic of discussion. Some parks are now considering implementing a reservation system that limits the number of yearly visitors to a given park. Could you see yourself being in support of such a system?

The issue of overcrowding in parks is all over the news recently, from New York Times

articles to the nightly news. I was eager to gauge public opinion on something that would

directly affect their interaction with wilderness, such as the potential reservation system, and I

found that people showed something of a consensus to this question: a qualified ‘yes.’

I encountered a few exceptions in which interviewees were unequivocally opposed to a

reservation system. An elderly man with grandchildren at Adams Falls asserted that a reservation

system immediately and starkly takes away from the parks’ purpose of being open to all people.

He argued that ultimately, problems created by high visitation numbers are outweighed by the

education people receive upon visiting national parks, saying that ‘you still want people to come

and see what we have here and learn about our overall environment, some of the history of this

country, and if you start limiting access, I think that would be a bad thing.’ As he put it, the

‘uplift’ from education that people encounter in parks sparks future generations to take care of

lands, and restricting access would be detrimental to that opportunity.

Another woman’s unbending objection to the concept of limited access took form in a

nationalist argument: she confidently and insistently contended that we should ‘limit Europeans’

access to [national parks] because it’s our country and we should have first access to it.’ At first,

I was struck by the seeming harshness of her opinion; the idea of keeping people from a whole

continent out of our national parks sounds rather hostile. Yet after attempting to empathize with

50

her point of view, I understand it better (although I personally do not agree with it.) From her

perspective, if national parks are to preserve American history and American land, and American

access is threatened because of an overabundance of visitors including international visitors, the

solution is simply to take international visitors out of the equation. It’s interesting to note here

that the sense of national pride discussed previously is quite significant, in that it can very well

affect people’s other opinions on topics surrounding national parks. National pride with regard to

parks does not exist in a vacuum, especially when it comes to public lands policy issues. For

some, including this woman, it produces a nationalism that is revealing of the nature of people:

throughout history, when trouble arises, everyone, whether it’s a tribe, nation, or state, puts the

privilege and wellbeing of their identity group first. It’s a trend that has stood the test of time,

and it’s one that is also reflected in wilderness behaviors, interestingly. Wolf packs fight to

defend their territory and kills; grizzly sows do anything to protect their cubs; bison vigorously

defend their young and their herd. This woman (and presumably other Americans) reflects such

deep, jealous, and instinctive love displayed by wildlife in an intense love and sense of

ownership of national parks.

The vast majority of respondents conceded that while the idea of a reservation system is

aggressively off-putting, they would support it if it truly meant the difference between the parks

suffering or prospering. A 25-year-old man summed it up in saying, ‘if visitation really is taking

a toll on the ecosystems themselves, then I’d support a reservation system.’ A main concern

people showed were the potential for socioeconomic disparities to influence who would be able

to make a reservation to visit a park; if it was fee-based, less affluent people would inherently be

at a disadvantage for visiting parks. In essence, people very much care about equal opportunity

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for visitation, if it comes to that. Another overarching concern, as mentioned before, was that a

reservation system would detract from the parks’ mission to be available to everyone.

Interviewees provided several crucial caveats to go along with implementation of a

reservation system:

1. The system should only be imposed if it is scientifically clear that reducing

visitation will benefit park ecosystems.

2. NPS should advertise and present other options for wilderness visitation to people

who can’t visit a park. The government should provide ‘plan B, C, D’ for people,

such as referring them to a state park or national forest, so that they can still enjoy

the natural beauty of the country.

3. NPS should present the reservation system in a relentlessly positive light and

emphasize the benefits of the system rather than the restriction it presents. If PR is

negative, there will likely be intense backlash from the public.

4. The reservation system should be ethically sound by giving equal opportunity to

people of all socioeconomic statuses to visit parks.  

In summary, people are willing to sacrifice their own visitation to national parks if doing

so will protect the life therein. This is of great import in discussing American attitudes toward

wilderness, in that some Americans so esteem natural beauty and life that they will sacrifice their

own enjoyment for it. And if visitation is to be restricted, they prioritize alternative options for

wilderness exploration, a positive presentation to the country, and social equality in chances for

visitation.

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Conclusion

The answers to questions I posed were as diverse as the people I interviewed, yet I was

able to parse my data and find common currents people expressed. I found an overarching

authentic appreciation and respect for wilderness, and most people averred that national parks are

important to Americans as a whole. A keen sense of respect for natural beauty and cultural

history pervaded the interviewees, and people felt pride in a uniquely American identity that

comes from the parks. Most were willing to give up some of their preferences surrounding parks,

whether it be allowing for tourist infrastructure that helps people access parks, or even their own

visitation rights for the good of the parks themselves. Ultimately, whether the people I

interviewed were avid hikers and backpackers, day hikers, or neither, they expressed a deep

concern for the welfare of America’s wilderness—a concern that transcended their own desires

to experience that wilderness.

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3

Why It Matters: ImplicationsIn this paper, I have demonstrated the overarching, pervasive types of wilderness

relationships held by the American people through case studies and ethnographic consideration. I

have also examined American opinions and experiences of national parks through first-hand

interviews. These relationships have important ethnographic and policy implications that are

critical to the future of wilderness in North America, and should be analyzed and understood,.

For the purpose of brevity in this analysis, the responsible recreator, complacent

recreator, window shopper, and comfortable consumer can be labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively.

The relationships exist on a continuum of experience from 1 to 4, with 1 being most experienced

or settled into a wilderness relationship, and 4 being the least so. It is interesting to note,

however, that they do not exist on an analogous continuum of destructiveness: 1 and 3 typically

do not cause problems, while 2 and 4 frequently do. This dissonance demonstrates that an

individual’s wilderness experience and trouble encountered or caused in wilderness are not

necessarily positively correlated; a person’s level of experience does not determine his/her

success in interacting with nature.

This non-parallel construct of the different groups’ effect on nature is important to

understand in terms of the acuteness of effect. However, none of the groups described are

harmless to wilderness. No matter who is visiting national parks, people will inevitably create

problems and affect the natural environment. For as long as people have interacted with

wilderness, they have affected it; it is in their nature. Even the earliest civilizations with the

smallest ecological footprints, such as Native American tribes who adapted to extreme

54

wilderness environments, nonetheless affected the environment by relying on it for food and

harnessing its resources for shelter. The very archeological record sought by scholars of ancient

history is nothing less that the record of human environmental impact. It is impossible for

humans to enter into wilderness and not, in some way, have an impact on it. This truth has, of

course, historically shifted from describing people using nature out of necessity to describing

people’s exploitation and destruction of land (i.e. the practically immediate and continued

industrialization of American land by European settlers), and, most recently, in seeking

wilderness for the purpose of recreation and entertainment.

At the apex of this process of expansion and technological development, during the

Industrial Revolution, there were consistently dissenting voices, such as those of Ralph Waldo

Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir, who argued for the importance and necessity of

preserving natural land. Their philosophies are the foundation of the Transcendentalist

movement, which in large part inspired the establishment of the first national parks. They

asserted that wilderness was the last great bastion of innocence, of the sublime, untouched by the

corrupting hand of man, and that in it lay hope for redemption. While I tend to share the

sentiments of the Transcendentalists and continually argue for the importance of preserved lands,

I also find reason in the arguments of William Cronon, a renowned environmental historian.

Cronon, in his essay entitled ‘The Trouble With Wilderness, Or, Getting Back to the Wrong

Nature,’ argues that the concept of wilderness in fact cannot exclude humans. ‘Far from being

the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity,’ he claims, ‘it is quite profoundly a

human creation – indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular

moments in human history.’69 In other words, wilderness is itself anthropogenic, as it is humanity

69 Cronon, William. “The Trouble With Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Environmental History Vol. 1 (1996): 7.

55

that decides to create wilderness areas. What’s more, Cronon argues that once people enter into

wilderness, it is no longer wild; human presence inherently corrupts the nature of nature.

Cronon’s arguments, while seemingly counterintuitive or perturbing to some, are very

much consistent with my experience in national parks. The point is this: first, that wilderness and

humanity are inextricable, in that without human intervention, national parks would not exist.

Second, as soon as people interact with wilderness, it is tarnished. While I do not contend that

this contamination makes ‘wilderness’ any less worthy of preservation, I do argue that it is

incredibly important to recognize for the sake of the National Park Service and for contemporary

understanding of national parks.

The mission statement of NPS is as follows: ‘The National Park Service preserves

unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the

enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations. The Park Service cooperates

with partners to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resource conservation and outdoor

recreation throughout this country and the world.’70 In my observation of park culture, including

the large number of park employees in various positions with whom I have worked, this mission

is very much taken for granted. Yet if a mission statement is intended to be a formal declaration

of an organization’s intent and a way to focus and direct that organization’s operation, it is

imperative that it be carefully examined. There is a single word in the NPS mission statement

that renders the whole statement paradoxical: ‘unimpaired.’ The entirety of the ethnographic

evidence I’ve presented thus far has proven that it is impossible to preserve national parks

unimpaired if people are allowed into them. And yet the very purpose of national parks,

according to the mission statement, is to provide for the enjoyment of people. The statement is

70 About Us.” National Park Service. Accessed September 04, 2017. https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/index.htm.

56

thus inherently flawed, and it is so due to the perennial misconception that people can be perfect

stewards of wilderness.

The idea of ‘wilderness’ is immensely attractive, even sacred, to many Americans,

especially since the Transcendentalist movement rose to prominence. Many people, including

those I interviewed, believe that wilderness is the purest form of existence: it is untainted,

untarnished, peaceful, sublime. People inevitably wish to keep something so perfect in a perfect

state, to keep it unimpaired. Both research and my experience show this to be impossible. As

people, it is difficult to confront or acknowledge the impossibility of something we deeply

desire; if the writers or stewards of the NPS mission statement were willing to consider it as a

perfect logical construct, ‘unimpaired’ would not be in the mission. It could simply be that the

word is included in order to set a high standard for preservation of parks. Even so, a mission

statement is intended to be an accurate portrayal of an institution’s practices. The current

statement, with its internal paradox, is potentially confusing as a guide to current practice and

future policy.

The NPS mission statement is flawed; human nature renders it so. So what, then, is the

solution? The government could, in theory, preserve land entirely unimpaired by discontinuing

all visitation to national parks, but this would completely subvert the purpose of said parks.

Conversely, government could continue to allow visitation but completely protect land from

human intervention by erecting infrastructure that would create barriers between people and

wilderness; yet this would nevertheless impair wilderness by developing it. How can NPS work

to reconcile its desire for immaculate preservation with the reality of human-nature interaction in

national parks as shown throughout this thesis? I offer the following steps not as a perfect

remedy, but as measures that have the potential to resolve in some way the disparity:

57

1. NPS should delete the word ‘unimpaired’ from its mission statement, as it does

not reflect the reality of park usage, nor set an attainable goal for parks.

‘Unimpaired’ could be replaced by a word or phrase that strongly connotes near-

perfect preservation. An alternative could sound something like, ‘...preserves to

the highest standards the original integrity of natural and cultural resources...’   

2. NPS should increase, through concrete phrasing in its mission, public relations,

and programs, its emphasis on the education component of its mission. It should

stress education as the way to bridge the gap between ‘this and future

generations,’ as educating younger generations about ecology, policy, and

management is the only way to ensure that parks will be well-maintained in the

future.

a. Increasing education in national parks also has the potential to move

people to the responsible recreator category, which would get NPS closer

to achieving its mission and improve American wilderness by better

protecting both people and wildlife/ecosystems.

3. NPS should implement more stringent regulations for visitors’ wilderness

training. Currently, in order to go backcountry camping, people have to attend a

small training session that teaches backcountry safety, technique, and ethics.

Programs like this could be feasibly used for backcountry hiking or for visiting

specifically fragile or dangerous areas of national parks. Having training

requirements could greatly decrease the likelihood of visitors making ignorant

mistakes or behaving inappropriately.

58

The national parks will never be without tensions, tragedy, or consequences of human

behavior. However, the National Park Service has ample opportunity to educate people better on

the dangers, elements, and fragility of wilderness in the hope of prompting better behavior in the

parks. Ultimately, what happens in national parks comes down to human choice and assumption

of risk; NPS can only hope to affect people’s choices by educating them.

 

In Conclusion

It is my foremost hope that this thesis has illuminated 21st century American interactions

with wilderness and national parks. Ethnography is an invaluable academic resource for

achieving this understanding, as it allows one to observe and analyze cultural behaviors on a

personal, individual level; for this reason, I chose to use an ethnographic observation and

interview process.

For the sake of the wilderness we so treasure, it is imperative to observe and understand

human interface with that nature, as we are constantly both interceding on its behalf and

affecting it. It is clear, from visitation statistics alone, that millions of Americans support

national parks. What’s more, the interview data I’ve collected shows that the constituency that

supports national parks is deeply connected to the land on a cultural and instinctive level. Yet

what happens in national parks, as demonstrated through the ethnographic accounts herein, does

not always constitute the behavior of a responsible recreator. The reasons for this are manifold,

and include lack of education, assumption of safety, consumer attitudes, and unnecessary risk-

taking. While human-nature interactions in national parks are as diverse as Americans are

themselves, it is clear that the American people hold a profound desire to preserve the natural

and cultural resources and history found in the parks, and are even willing to abrogate some of

59

their own visitation rights for it. The support for and interest in national parks is there; what NPS

will have to do presently, for its own longevity, is to confront the tensions within national parks

in order to achieve a better balance between preservation and use. It will not be an easy or

straightforward process, but with the deeply rooted love for wilderness exhibited by the

American people, there is an abundance of hope for more successful wilderness interactions in

the future.  

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Appendix

Selected Interview Questions and Responses

Do you share pictures you take in national parks on social media of any kind?

1. We don’t have social media accounts.2. Yes, I share pictures on social media.3. We share pictures on Facebook.4. I do share pictures I take on social media, but I never say what it is, like the location

or the name of the site. I don’t want to overadvertise places because people should discover their favorite places on their own.

5. People do share photos they take. For instance, people in Yellowstone last year who put a bison calf in their car took pictures of it.

6. Yes.7. We share on Facebook and Instagram.8. I don’t have social media.9. We share on Facebook.

Do you think it’s becoming more fashionable or trendy to be outdoorsy in America?

1. I don’t know my answer to that.2. It’s not really fashionable to be outdoorsy. In some places, like Colorado, yes, but if

you’re in New York and you’re into the city, people don’t care. It depends on the subculture you’re in.

3. It’s hard to say because cultures are all different.4. It is becoming more fashionable to be outdoorsy because people think it’s glamorous to

go out and hike now. Most people are just doing it for a picture though, or to say that they did it.

5. We don’t know.6. I’d definitely say it’s becoming more fashionable to be outdoorsy. Within the past 5

years, it’s become a lot more prevalent. People invest in really expensive shit just to go take pictures in the woods.

7. It’s definitely becoming more of a trend. When I was a teenager, almost no one went on hiking trips, but now almost everyone does. It’s all related to a health-conscious/organic movement.

8. It’s still more of a fringe, it’s probably always going to be just a percentage of the population that comes and takes advantage of this. But that percentage sure does enjoy it.

9. We’re older, we’re almost 60, and when we started hiking, you almost didn’t need backcountry passes, but now you have to take tour busses to popular places. You’ve definitely seen a massive increase in people’s interest, so I’d think that’s the reason. But when we go backcountry, it’s still about the same population, it’s pretty low.

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Have you ever witnessed someone doing something inappropriate/dangerous in a national park?

1. I see people carving their initials into trees, having dogs where dogs aren’t allowed, and driving through meadows to get to elk.

2. In RMNP, people are taking pictures of the elk in the fall, they’re walking all over the tundra, they’re getting super close to elk, they’re stopping in the road to take pictures of the elk. It’s really common that when people are doing something dumb, they’re taking pictures.

3. People get too close to wild animals. We saw an elk and a person within 10 feet of each other. Most of it involves wildlife and trashing parks.

4. I’ve run into people who are not prepared for hiking/camping at all, like they’ll head into the alpine at 3 pm with no water, while weather is rolling in.

5. People don’t have any wildlife awareness or education. They get caught up in the moment and do dangerous things, especially for pictures.

6. People have their dogs off a leash, and they do dangerous things just to get a picture, they do it for the Gram.

7. Absolutely. I was at Observation Point in Zion, and kids were on the edge on one foot just to take a picture. It made me feel sick.

8. On the dangerous side, you see climbers, especially free climbing, which is really dangerous, but it’s what they do. It’s an at your own risk thing. Then you get some people who come and are totally unprepared and ignorant about the dangers. That’s why every month someone is having to be rescued. Mount Capital has had four or five deaths this year because they weren’t prepared. Even if you’re not climbing a summit, if you go out there and get lost, you’re gonna be out there for a while.

9. I’ve seen kids chopping down trees with their hatchet or whatever they have. I’ve seen kids throwing rocks at animals. In Glacier, a ranger had to pull a kid away from throwing rocks at a marmot, and he actually killed the marmot, and then his parents got mad at the ranger saying why are you mad at our son? What are you doing? People throw trash around.

Do you perceive that national parks matter to Americans?

1. National parks are a secondhand thought for Americans. If the park system wasn’t put in place however long ago, people wouldn’t care as much.

2. It’s hard to see that national parks matter to Americans. People who have experienced it want to be there, but city people don’t even know about them. Id’ say about ⅓ of Americans care about national parks.

3. National parks matter to most Americans, yes. People are from all different states, young and old, we have avid hikers and people who just stay in their cars. Most types of people are represented.

4. Yes, they matter. A lot of people take pride in natural beauty, but I would say it’s more of a mob mentality where one person is like, save the parks! And everyone else is like yeah, I love nature! Even if they don’t do anything nature related. Parks provide a little bit of hope for future generations...it’s like we’ve made it this far, so maybe we’ll have it in the future too.

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5. We don’t think it matters to most people. About 70% of people I saw in Zion weren’t even American. Most Americans just aren’t physical. It’s a socioeconomic issue as well; many people can’t afford to take advantage of national parks.

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About the Author

Anna Jane Floyd was born May 11, 1995 in beautiful Austin, Texas, where she has lived her entire life. She matriculated at the University of Texas at Austin in August 2013 to pursue a double major in the Plan II Honors program and in European Studies with a history minor. A lifelong lover of language, Anna added to her pre-existing fluency in Spanish by becoming fluent in both Portuguese and French while at UT, and she spent the fall of 2016 studying abroad in Lisbon, Portugal. During her university career, she spent every summer working on federal public lands, including Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and Arapaho National Forest, and in so doing solidified her passion for conservation. After graduating, Anna plans to pursue a non-profit conservation internship and subsequently attend graduate school for a degree in environmental policy.

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