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Posted by Doug Ammons (69.144.19.210) on 10:10:12 11/29/11
In Reply to: you came back posted by Hoot
Hoot:
Sorry if this ends up a duplicate. I posted it yesterday but it didn't appear for some reason.
Hoot, your post is the kind of exchange that makes things worthwhile! Thank you;
I agree with everything you said - Yellowstone is ground zero in the collision of modern urban civilization with nature. The park administration has to contend with that impossible task, made ever more impossible by technology and people's changing attitudes, and their ever-more distant relationship with wilderness and the natural world. The park attempts to solve one set of problems, and there is bizarre fallout across other sets.
I liked your examples and your balance across some awkward (and funny) human-natural terrain. What you write is great - yes, people as photographers, hikers, tourists, bear-feeders, elk-riders, wolf-paparazzi, kayakers, bikers, overzealous park rangers, etc., etc., are the root, source, branch, and symptom of all evil. It's the old Pogo principle: we have met the enemy and he is us. If we just left the park to the griz, geysers, elk, bison, mountains and forest, and didn't have roads or trails and locked everybody out completely, all would be well... but, it will never be so. The park's purpose and use won't allow it. WE wouldn t allow it. If it were off-limits, that would be reason enough for some people to go in.
As you point out so well, understanding this kind of weird convoluted reality is essential. Everything we do has an effect, but not necessarily the one we intend. Whether a righteous insider, eco-photographer, zealous rule-follower, rebellious rule-breaker, or a standard tourist well-meaning or phenomenally clueless, all create problems. The issue is how best to balance things, and that is an ongoing issue because people's interests and behavior changes, technology changes, and our values change.
When we write about or photograph something wonderful that is hidden there, it becomes an enticement for others. That's the Backpacker syndrome, or the Outside magazine syndrome ("The 10 most beautiful places that nobody knows about, and here s how to get there!").If we choose not to write it, that helps by keeping it off the radar. But somebody else comes along later and the whole thing starts again. Guidebooks showing scenic off-trail waterfalls and articles like the Backpacker one with GPS coordinates, invite this abuse-by-love. Photographs that well-meaning passionate conservationists take can do the same. Potentially, so do articles about kayaking the illegal rivers.
If the park exists to allow people some view into spectacular nature, then you have to let people in, and you have to allow them to know what s there. And, you have to circumscribe their behavior so the whole circle goes round and round in lumpy ways.
That sounds approximately like your choice here on this forum, to not give specific descriptions of places you find in the Yellowstone backcountry. You folks must go off-trail, you have an effect, and also love the place and feel responsible for it. But, you leave certain places only for the people who take the effort to figure it out. Problem is, one of them WILL describe it like the fly fishing columnist in a newspaper describing the timing of obscure fly hatches on the local rivers, what fly to tie, how to present it secrets previously known only to a few locals. There is an incentive for people to do this, even if it s only a celebration of the place. Secrets have value, and many times we can't foresee what that value might be.
I think one larger issue is this: the story describes a controversy our culture wrestles with in its changing relationship to nature, and specifically the places where nature and wilderness are formalized by our man-made rules. That oxymoron is a modern reality. Most of the places I've ended up going are still far beyond the reach of such rules, and I value them for that. Rather than grappling with man-made arbitrariness, you come face to face with nature's power, with only your own skills and judgment. She is honest, fair, and beautiful. She is powerful, complex, and can kill you. She doesn't care about humans, even when in the short term they can bulldoze, dam, poison, and pollute her. She is the north country of Canada and Alaska, the Arctic, Antarctica, the Amazon jungle, Siberia, the Andes, the open ocean. Close to home, she also is Glacier, Yellowstone and the Tetons encroached on all sides by people, and she'll take everything over again once we humans have run our quixotic course.
In the time being, we need places like Yellowstone to remind ourselves of what she was across the mainland US, of the amazing gestures of geology, wildlife, and forest and rivers the park shows us. And we do have the power to upset the balance around and within the park. So we're left trying to figure out what the balance should be, and how to maintain it.
The story opens up the problems in what I'd hoped would be a nonthreatening, humorous way. Maybe some reasonable solutions can come out of that, even if only acknowledging there is this ongoing problem of mutual contradiction. Or maybe we'll all just keep trashing around. Nature is patient, even if we civilize Yellowstone for now, fill it with roads and overlooks and kayak all the tributaries, she'll take it back. One thing I hope we can agree on, is that ignorance, righteous indignation and knee-jerk judgments will never help any of us. They reflect our humanness more than they reflect Nature.
Thanks again for your hospitality and patience. It's much better to have a discussion than to be a target :)
Doug
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