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 […]
Yellowstone
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.
Freemasonry in the making of Yellowstone National Park
The history of Freemasonry in Yellowstone National Park coincides with its role in a larger religious history of the American west as agents and evangelists for Manifest Destiny.
At River’s Edge Beneath a Wall of Yellow Stone
The land is philosopher. It teaches through patient being that knowing is as futile and useless as believing. Things are, circumstances unfold and collapse, and reality persists.
Contested parks: recreational enjoyment or profitable development?
America has long been confused about whether nature is for us to adore and enjoy, or for us to profit from. This confusion has been painfully clear in our divisive attitudes toward national parks.
The Earliest Map of Yellowstone
The earliest detailed map of Yellowstone was likely a collaboration between Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet and mountain man Jim Bridger. ♨