“Yellowstone is a better park
than Glacier because you can see more animals,” so announced one
hiking client as I guided us through dense old-growth cedars. I
didn’t know how to respond.
Was I puzzled by the
implication that our national parks should be rated on the same
scale, even though each was set aside for unique features found
nowhere else on earth? Was I dismayed that seeing wildlife seems to
mark the parks’ “real” value? Or had my client nailed something in
all of us — that desire to pursue the wild?
Viewing
wildlife presents us with the remarkable. Fur, talons, keen vision
and four legs of other creatures bring us face to face with our
humanity and what makes us unique as a species. I’ve had my
close encounters with grizzlies and wolverines, each producing a
mixture of wonder and panic. But deep inside, I longed to see them
even more closely, where I could safely examine the length of their
claws and gaze into their eyes to discover what “wild” really was.
But in our desire to comprehend “wild,” we skew off in
crazy directions. Modeling Wild Kingdom’s Marlin Perkins, we race
through our parks grabbing what sightings of wildlife we can.
Frequently at a trip’s beginning, my clients
announce what wildlife they hope to see. Many long to spot a
grizzly, whereas those who have read Night of the
Grizzlies are petrified about spying a bear even as a
brown dot in a high meadow. Bear-scared folks prefer to see stately
Roosevelt elk, bighorn sheep or gray wolves. In most cases, the “I
want to see” wish lists usually focus on charismatic megafauna; no
one asks if we’ll stumble upon Columbian ground squirrels or
boreal toads.
It’s as if visiting the wilds
requires a check list for “been there, done that.” Somehow, life
takes on a certain completeness when one can check off a wild big
boy: check, I saw a moose; check, I saw a mountain goat; check, I
saw a big silver grizzly. Most parks even provide fauna and avian
checklists for visitors to track their sightings. Few people care
if their list fails to show a check for a pygmy shrew, the tiniest
carnivore.
On an excursion I guided through Glacier
National Park, we joined a bear-jam where a ranger blared her siren
to scare a black bear off into the brush. The bruin simply ignored
the ruckus for a while before meandering away. Once it did, my
disgruntled clients vented their anger at the disruption to their
wildlife viewing.
I explained the ranger’s actions:
The bear’s behavior indicated prior experience with the
siren, most likely because it had been frequenting the roadside, a
prelude to trouble. The ranger aimed to protect the bear, trying to
teach it that the road is not a safe place. Too much involvement
with humans can end in the bear’s destruction.
Disgusted, one of my clients responded, “Then how are people
driving the road supposed to see bears?”
I wanted to
yell, “Go to a zoo!”
Yet we can’t totally blame
urban neophytes for not knowing the difference between a zoo and a
national park. Many parks brag about their animals — their
bears, birds, wolves, especially any species that is endangered or
threatened. And rightly so, as increased public consciousness about
the status of these creatures serves to make people want to protect
them.
Even if it is a roadside bear viewed from the
relative safety of our vehicle, it is still a wild creature
we’ve seen. It’s as if once we’ve spotted an
animal in the wild, we’ve survived its fangs and claws. The
blood of our ancestors still runs deep through our veins, from a
time when fear of predation ruled the country’s wild corners
and Darwinian laws drove our actions.
Now, a big-beast
photograph travels home as a trophy to surviving an encounter with
wildness. I understand the impulse: When a golden eagle drops out
of the sky, I find myself instinctively grabbing my camera, and
swear under my breath as it stays just out of photographic range.
Something drives me to record the moment, as if catching the King
of Birds on film will help me define “wild.”
With
checklists and photographic electronic marvels at our disposal,
we’ve lost the moment of magical awe, that moment when wild
is just wild, and we’re there to breathe its mystery.
Wait…where’s my camera? There goes a Canada
lynx!
Becky Lomax is a contributor to Writers
on the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org). She writes from Whitefish, Montana, where she works as a
guide in Glacier National Park.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
