Warren Angus Ferris visited Yellowstone in 1834 as the first tourist to experience the thermal features, and the first person known to use the Icelandic word “geyser” to describe them.
Sacred Wonderland
Canary in the coal mine: national parks and the future of the earth
As the parks go, so goes the future of the earth. The sad state of national parks predicts an ominous outlook for the earth and the communities that rely on it.
The National Park Service is more than parks
If your looking to explore national parks, the National Park Service’s “Electronic Resources” page is a good place to start.
The ambivalent legacy of Horace Albright
As I continue working on the religious history of Yellowstone National Park, I have considerable ambivalence about Horace Albright. On the one hand, he is a much lauded figure in national parks history, to some degree the brains behind the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916 and an early leader of the agency […]
The spiritual experience of nature in the national parks
The National Park Service’s management of nature offers America’s wild places as contrived experiences to meet the spiritual expectations of the consumer public.
Waiting for a ride with the hitchhiker’s blues
I composed a song while hitchhiking to Cooke City, standing alone in the vast quiet amidst a sagebrush land empty of the summer crowds.
Reflections on a first encounter
Reflections on our first encounter in Yellowstone National Park, written on a bitter cold night in Ohio more than 15 years later.
Romance in Yellowstone: remembering the best day of my life
Recalling a magical day in Yellowstone National Park that changed our lives and sent us on a journey that we are still traveling forty years later.
The end of the season in Yellowstone
The end of September was a quiet time in Yellowstone National Park, and beautiful beyond words. Warm days, cold nights, golden aspen mixed among the dark ridges of pine.
The many Yellowstones: a simultaneity of places
Even though it is a national park with all of the complicated and historically shifting meanings associated with parks, Yellowstone is also (simultaneously) many other places as well.