Below, I’ve included the original introduction I wrote to my field notes. I composed this to give some context to the overall writings which followed. The photo included with this post is from the Beartooth Mountains, from a backpacking trip taken therein while I was going to college in Wyoming. The text, begins below:
So, I guess the question is, “Why Yellowstone?”. Why choose this area as the topic (or muse) for these writings? Everyone with a connection to the Park comes to know it in their own way. There are those drawn to the environment within the official boundaries of the Park; the hot springs, the mud pots, the waterfalls, and the wildlife. They bond deeply with the “frontside”, treating the interior as non-existent and the surrounding area as pleasant scenery, standing between them and their ultimate goal. The abstract notion of a Greater Yellowstone may be present, but usually not extending beyond Grand Teton National Park.
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is the backdrop for most of my life, and my experiences. It extends west, carrying into the mountain heart of Montana, north along and aslope the fall line of the Continental Divide, east toward the plains, and south to Utah. This expands beyond the traditional ecological definition of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, but considering wolves from the Park have been tracked to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, I think this expansion is justified. There are no borders. The bison do not stop at the edge of the Park, held in by our political boundaries. The environment expands, ballooning in size, as we understand the interwoven nature of the American West ecosystem.
My experience in understanding the Park is different from that of a visitor. I grew up next to, and have lived most of my life in, the shadow of the Park. It is home. I have lived on all sides, and consider it familiar, comfortable. It fundamentally informed the development of my worldview. I spent years exploring and observing the Park’s environs. I came to know its animals and geography intimately, personally. I feel a certain obligation and duty to the places I know and love. My connection with the area and my part of history gives me unique perspectives, aside from a simple enjoyment or brief encounter. This country is in my blood, and defines me.
This allows a deeply biased, but organic understanding of human structuralism. The Park would exist without humans; the environment would not disappear. But it is the value we give its idiosyncrasies (now on a global scale) which inform what it means to us, personally and socially. Our culture, and by extension our history, dictate why we value the Park. In the course of our history, those values have shifted and metamorphosized to where our values currently reside. Without knowing the history, we can’t understand fully how we arrived at our current understanding and values system.
The naming of these places is one of the interesting aspects of attempting to discuss the European, non-native history of this land. The indigenous must not be ignored, but in the colonization of the Americas, we must realize that the expansionists, the colonizers, held sway. Therefore, we have names from the Spanish, the French, and the English, but few from Natives, speaking in generalities. My efforts are not aimed at examining the “discovery” of the Yellowstone Ecosystem and the West in general, but rather the colonization of the area by non-natives. In doing so, my hope is to avoid the very real problem of the subjugation of Native voices to the colonizing paradigm. I can indicate the Native naming and history superficially, but better, far more educated work directly addresses these issues.
As the history of the Greater Yellowstone is still being written, current naming traditions help us understand the deeper history, as names revert to accepted Native conventions, tribe and region dependent, as they should. The names the colonizers brought speak to what they valued at the time, or the whims and fancies of their minds, based on locality or panorama. The Native nomenclature is not as familiar as the image conjured by “Two Ocean Creek”, but the colonized name is almost as intriguing. The local knowledge of these place names brings the whole process to a proletarian level of “doing” history. We are not very old in the West, allowing a very deep bond to develop with locality, and a very personal understanding of its history, tailored by experience, emotion, and wind.
This is, at its source, a history of the land. History, in this sense, consists of human interaction with the environment. It is an ongoing process, building upon itself. I find this dynamic what makes environmentalism and history meld so well in the West. We are still living the outcomes of many decisions made in regard to our relationship with the land. Mines. Logging. Dams. Policy stems from learning.
Ideally, we learn more about a particular issue and adjust our policies accordingly. We constantly evolve on this, most strikingly realized by the control policies affecting wildlife, especially predators, and culminating with the reintroduction of wolves in 1995. We are now twenty years removed from this event. Attitudes and tempers still boil over, even during civilized conversation. But how do we go from point A, through point B, arriving at point C, while trying to anticipate where point D will lead? It is as much a sociological study as an historical analysis.
JFL