The U.S. has a near-infinite supply of clueless tourists such as myself, much to the dismay of our National Park Service. Yellowstone, our most famous national park thanks to Kevin Costner, welcomes 4.5 million of us each year. Like all of our parks, Yellowstone takes in tourists not only for the revenue but to remind them that the physical country they reside in is a marvel well beyond their comprehension. As such, Yellowstone is set up to accommodate these hordes. And while park officials do their best to keep tourists in line, often literally, my kind still manage to do plenty of tourist shit. We trample plant life. We get shitfaced and pick unwinnable fights with animals ten times our size. And we hurt ourselves. According to NPS data, at least 74 people have died while visiting Yellowstone in the past 15 years. I could have been one of those people. I deserve to be one of those people.
This is why Outside sent me to the park just a few weeks ago, during one of the busiest times of the year. They wanted me to observe our most basic tourists in the wild. Maybe I’d even get to see one die. Or, even better for my editors, maybe I would die while I was there. Maybe I’d look down my nose at the tourists around me only to end up as wolf food myself. Like most other Yellowstone visitors, I was not trained for the outdoors, I relish doing shit that posted signs yell at me not to do, and I often daydream about fighting bears (and winning!). I find danger tempting, which isn’t a good thing given that I can no longer swim a single pool lap without taking a break. Are people like me responsible enough to visit one of our national treasures without breaking it? Do we, as a population, know how to do national parks?
Yellowstone is an odd and awkward combination of things.
I grew up in that part of the world and, unlike the author of the linked article (and the people he writes about), I spent a lot of my time in the outdoors. In fact, in the summer, my family spent more time traveling and camping than they did at home. I don’t even remember learning about the outdoors - it’s as if I’ve just always known how to function in it.
And from that point of view, there are two distinctive facts about Yellowstone.
First, as noted and as is obvious, it’s packed full of tourists, most of whom know nothing at all about the outdoors.
The other thing though - the odd and awkward thing - is that it’s unusually dangerous - not just to ignorant tourists, but to anyone. As a matter of fact, between the geysers, the terrain and the wildlife, I’m hard-pressed to think of another place in the whole of the northwest that’s more immediately and inherently dangerous than Yellowstone. I mean - there are certainly places you can get to that are more dangerous - high in the mountains or deep in the deserts - but those all require significant effort. To just get out of a car and walk 50 feet into danger - nowhere else is even close to Yellowstone.
So it’s just sort of ironic that it’s also the place stuffed to the brim with dumb tourists.