Tim Cahill - Lost in My Own Backyard: A Walk in Yellowstone National Park

Contents

To my father,
Richard J. Cahill

Introduction

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK AND VICINITY IS THE largest intact temperate-zone ecosystem in the northern hemisphere. It is a vast area of earthly riches almost beyond imagining, a natural playground complete with geysers and thermal features so strange that early white visitors referred to the area as Wonderland. There are herds of bison and elk, there are beaver and wolves and marmot and osprey and eagles: there is the whole complement of North American fauna. It is not an amusement park, however, and its a good idea to pay attention. Yellowstone is a place where the unwary or unlucky can get mauled by a bear, gored by a bison, stomped by a moose, or bitten by a rattlesnake. People also fall off cliffs, freeze to death, and die in avalanches. Death in Yellowstone, a book by Lee Whittlesey, chronicles all manner of mishap, but it seems that the easiest way to die in the park is to fall into the water some distance from shore. The temperature of Yellowstone Lake, for instance, averages about 41 degrees. You dont last long in that kind of water.

I bring this up at the beginning because it is important. Part of the joy of walking in Yellowstone is that it is still, for the most part, a wilderness, which means that it is untamed, which in turn means that it is not impossible to get hurt, even if you follow all the rules. Thus the wilderness that is Yellowstone Park affirms our mortality. That is why walking its trails makes us feel so damn alive.

I have not tried to write a guide to the park. Others have done that and done it so well that anything I say would be redundant. I invite you to turn to A Selected Yellowstone Bookshelf at the back of this book for a list of great guidebooks. You will want to know about where to camp, how much things cost, what sorts of accommodations are available, and such like. Books in the back present all this information.

I have also listed a number of trail guides. I use every one mentioned because each is a little different from the others and excellent in its own manner. Youll find books on the list about the history of the park and about the biology and the geology of Yellowstone. I hope my own idiosyncratic little book will spur you to explore the park, to enjoy it, and to begin doing your own research into those areas that most enthrall and charm you. The books Ive listed are only a start. My friend Tom Murphy has an entire room devoted to books on Yellowstone, to his wifes immense annoyance.

Tom and I both live in a town about 50 miles north of the park and therefore consider Yellowstone to be our backyard. Tom, who is best known for his photography in Yellowstone, is also a guide in the park. When not shepherding clients, he likes to bushwhack off trail and poke around. I once asked him if hed ever been lost. No, he said thoughtfully, but there were times I didnt know exactly where I was.

Thats happened to me as well. Ive spent entire afternoons not knowing exactly where I was, which is to say, I was lost in my own backyard. This shouldnt happen if you stay on the major trails. But you may find yourself lost in thought, or in sheer astonishment. And heres the big idea for Americans: Yellowstone was the worlds first national park. It was established, by an act of Congress, on March 1, 1872. The park was expressly put aside for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. That makes Yellowstone Park Americas backyard. Your backyard.

So lets go take a walk in the backyard. Lets get lost together.

The Trails

Day Hikes

Mount Washburn

A QUARTER CENTURY AGO I MOVED TO A SMALL town just north of Yellowstone Park. I didnt know much about wildlife back then and honestly couldnt tell a mule deer from an antelope. I wasnt certain why Yellowstone contained more geysers than anyplace else on earth. I was unaware that there was a huge lake, one of the largest alpine lakes on earth, up there in the pines. I didnt know much.

But I wasnt a tourist. Oh, no. I was much too cool for that. I never went to Yellowstone specifically to look at, what?mud pots, or Old Faithful, or various thermal springs. It always seemed to me like that had somehow been done, and that serious persons, like myself, went into the backcountry, and we did that specifically to avoid all those other persons who didnt know that gaping at geysers or giggling at the flatulent-sounding mud pots was forwell, for tourists, who were somehow inferior.

In fact, the places where tourists customarily go are supremely worth seeing even if you have to share the wonder. That is the conclusion Ive come to after a quarter century of puttering around in the park. Oh, Ive been out in the backcountry quite a bit, and Ive seen the tourist attractions, all of them, several times. I just didnt know how to look at them. I was lost in my own backyard.

I wish someone had just slapped me early on. Well, perhaps I could have done without the slap, but it would have been okay if someone wiser in the ways of the park had just shown me certain things and told me to shut up and listen. Stop being so damn superior. Youre acting like a jerk.

I have, in fact, a long-standing fantasy in which I take the younger version of myself up to the park and show him the one thing he truly has to understand. It would probably be a hassle getting him through the entrance and up to the summit of Mount Washburn. Hed be asking questions and trying to stop for a walk every time he saw a backcountry trailhead. This young guy would be distracted. Id have to talk with him in a severe manner.

I imagine it would go like this:

Okay, shut up, were going to the park, and its going to be a couple of hours of driving, and Im not going to let you talk about anything at all because you are just going to get all enthralled with this or that and lose the central theme. So here we go, and you might just as well be blindfolded, because we are not going to talk about the mountains that run on either side of Paradise Valley as we rise up Yellowstone River toward the entrance to Yellowstone Park. Oh, those are antelope over there.

Look, stop complaining. Im taking you twenty-five years closer to figuring out the geological essence of the park. You dont care about geology? How about the end of civilization as we know it? No, Im not kidding you. The end of civilization as we know it! Sure, right, make fun. Just another damn thing to worry about. Dumb butt.

Heres the north entrance the park. Well stop, Ill show my National Park Pass to the ranger in the little guardhouse. Yeah, shes attractive, I agree. Some of these lady rangers, I have to admit: I mean, if youve got a thing for women in uniform...

Wait. See how easy it is to let things distract you from the central point? Now were passing the forty-fifth parallel, right at the sign therehalfway between the equator and the north poleand those are elk emerging out of the steam, which comes from thermal springs dropping into the river, and yes, you can bathe in the hot pots there, where the thermal water drops into the river, but thats not why weve come to the park today. Dont those elk moving through the steam look like theyre in some kind of movie about supernatural beings?