Missoula Notebook

A Field Guide to the Yellowstone Tourist

By Sutton Stokes, 9-22-08

	Steam and boiling water aren't the only things that are reliably dispensed at the Old Faithful Inn. Photo: Amy Stokes.

It was our second and final night in Yellowstone National Park.

We had just put the last log on the campfire and were beginning to think about how nice it would be if we could magically transport ourselves from the warmth of the fire into our sleeping bags without all that bothersome and nipple-hardening changing into pajamas, etc., when the people in the camp site next to us opened the doors of their car and switched on the stereo.

For a few seconds, it was possible to imagine that this might be some mistake, that the intrusion would only be temporary, but soon enough it became clear that we were going to be forced to listen to Tech N9ne’s “I’m a Slacker” in its entirety, complete with drunken mumbling-along on the refrain:

“I don’t do enough, I just fool around,
y’all can go to hell, how does that sound?”

Rather apt, actually. Thanks for asking.

At such moments it is possible to grow downright uncharitable toward humanity. It is even possible to feel a slight tinge of disappointment if you reflect, just then, on the USGS’s opinion that the super volcano pointed like a 45-mile-wide cannon up through the center of the park is unlikely to erupt for at least a few thousand years.

Of course, if the volcano were to erupt at its full potential force later in the evening, you’d be vaporized instantly — not to mention that everyone in the western U.S. would be burned to death in the following minutes, a five-inch layer of lava would spill across the entire country, the world would be plunged into epochal winter, and almost every other living thing on Earth would die within a few years of ice, drought, starvation, and turmoil — but does this really sound so bad when you consider that the alternative is sharing the world with the kind of people who prefer Tech N9ne to the bugling of rutting elk?

At least nature still exerts a powerful effect on some humans. You don’t have to spend long in a place like Yellowstone before you’ll observe a condition I call Wildlife Derangement Syndrome (WDS).

You’ll notice its early onset in the man who brusquely interrupts a park employee at the Fort Yellowstone visitor center as she uses a map to point out the location of a campground to another guest.

“Where are the grizzlies?” the man asks.

“We don’t really keep track of them that way,” the ranger replies, haltingly, her finger holding her place on the map.

“How about the elk?”

“Do you mind if I finish helping this woman first?”

The elk, of course, are right out the front door, browsing the grass in the picnic area, shadowed by weary rangers whose job it is to stay between the excitable animals and anyone suffering from such an advanced case of WDS that he is inspired to pose for a snapshot with his arm around a bull’s neck. The current edition of the park newspaper features a blurry photograph of a man dodging an elk’s antlers at close range. (PDF here). It seems unlikely to have been mere coincidence that a camera was pointed at him when the situation arose.

You’ll recognize the syndrome for yourself when a trio of old women pours out of a silver SUV at the head of a line of cars that have stopped near Alum Creek in the Hayden Valley to let a herd of bison cross the road. Notice in particular the woman sheltering behind her open door as she aims her camera at a hoary beast not ten feet distant, and consider — as she obviously has not — what will happen to her legs if the old bull even brushes that door with his shoulder. You’ll see an acute case when her male companion, who has set up a camera on a tripod out in the open, turns his back on the same animal to focus his lens on another.

WDS often leads to unfortunate decisions while driving, such as when the Mitsubishi Montero in front of you suddenly slams on its brakes somewhere between Craig Pass and the Kepler Cascades — ignoring three feet of paved shoulder to the right and thus forming a perfect roadblock with the Toyota Matrix stopped in the oncoming lane — apparently so that a passenger can dash across the road and snap an underlit picture of an elk at a range of 500 yards.

Study the faces of the drivers who force you to inch past them on blind curves at dusk, and you will learn the physical signs for yourself: confused, darting eyes; open-lipped half-smiles; camera flashes firing behind closed windows. It is no use to gesture to these drivers that they should pull over to the side of the road. They will only wave excitedly at you, assuming you are sharing in the pleasure of the moment.

One temptation is to read in this behavior something about the sense of power and entitlement that people feel in their cars. If it’s true, as Tom Vanderbilt argues in his new book, Traffic, that the way we drive is an expression of our essential natures, it should be no surprise to find selfish behavior anywhere on the highways of a country whose citizens have moved in such large numbers from baseball to self-worship as the national pastime.

Yellowstone is a magical place, though, even if — as a friend of mine recently complained — “the animals are almost tame and there are too many people.” Not for a cubicle dweller from Passaic, New Jersey, I would guess; just because that Montero has Idaho plates doesn’t mean it’s not a rental.

Maybe this night is that family’s last in the park, maybe all the other pictures they’ve taken this week perished in a hard-drive crash last night. The light may be failing, but so is their vacation time, and cubicles have a way of looking bigger from across the country than they ever do when you are sitting in them. And if your four-year-old were clamoring “elk, elk!” in the backseat — if you’d never before seen quite that intensity of wonder in her eyes — perhaps you’d be tempted to stop, too.

I mean, I like to shake my head at this kind of behavior as much as the next guy, but, if I am so superior, why did I feel such a strong urge to strip off my clothes and run screaming out into the middle of the first herd of bison that we saw?

For more like this, read the rest of the Missoula Notebook.

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