I’m a couple of posts behind here because this issue, which focuses on Yellowstone National Park, has an unusual structure. There are pictorials and things punctuating several pretty long articles, rather than larger and smaller articles. So I guess I’ll treat the photo essays and things as if they were articles as well.
America’s Wild Idea, by David Quammen
America’s Wild Idea is the first photo essay, which is accompanied by photos by several photographers. The text isn’t unified but complements the photos that are near it — a blurb about the prismatic springs near a photo of the springs themselves, a statement about interactions (and conflicts) between humans and grizzly bears near a photo of a man who was attacked by a bear, and so forth.
The Paradox of the Park
No writer is credited on this section. We start out talking about, once again, conflicts between grizzlies and humans, and then go into the history of the park. One of the points that the (to the best of my ability to determine) makes is that originally Yellowstone wasn’t supposed to be about establishing a truly wild place. It was more of a place designed to protect prey species from predators. To this end, nearly every carnivore in the park, from grizzly bears on down to otters and skunks, were hunted. Then they discovered that bears could be a draw. The problem with this was that the bears in the park were habituated to humans and would eat out of garbage receptacles.
We kind of end this article on a cliffhanger — “But the grizzlies of Yellowstone were never tame,” and that’s it. I think that perhaps this was intended to be kind of artistic, wrapping around to the conflicts at the beginning of the article, but I was left less than impressed. I think that maybe this was because the article ends in 1929, but begins in 2015. That’s a gap of nearly 100 years. I guess that the attack could prove that the grizzlies weren’t tame, but it could also well indicate that something changed in the interim.
Other Pictorials and Things
Back when I made my posts on Yellowstone, I said that I’d read something where the superintendent of the park, Dan Wenk, said that they need to limit the number of visitors to the park. I found it. It was on the next page after The Paradox of the Park. I still think that limiting cars would go a long way towards the goal that Wenk espouses.
The rest of this part of the issue are more pictorials, It All Starts with Heat, The Fire Within, and For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.
Next up: More Chicago pictures and then we go onto the next article, Into the Backcountry.