Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park

by Lee H. Whittlesey | Travel |
ISBN: 1570980217 Global Overview for this book
Registered by wingGoryDetailswing of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 6/28/2004
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This book is in the wild! This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by wingGoryDetailswing from Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Monday, June 28, 2004
I believe I owe this book to the "you might also like" spell - er, recommendations - from Amazon. Wherever I first heard of it, it's definitely a "gory details" kind of book. At first I'd expected a schadenfreude experience, with lots of Darwin Awards being handed out to the folks who thought it would be cute to pose their little kids on the backs of wild bears for photo opportunities - and it's true that there are plenty accounts of people whose foolhardy behavior pretty much earns them the fates they get. But the very first chapter deals with some of the most appalling and tragic deaths one could imagine, so much so that even when the victims got in trouble through their own foolishness, the punishment seems far worse than they deserve. That chapter? "Hold Fast To Your Children: Death in Hot Water." It describes a number of severe injuries or deaths resulting in the park's hot springs from as early as the 1870's - though it's likely that there were previous incidents, unrecorded and possibly unwitnessed. The descriptions of the incidents suggest the unimaginable horror of the experience, whether it's seeing a grown man dive into a boiling pool in a (futile) attempt to rescue a dog, or seeing a child jump or fall into the scalding water... {shudder} Some of the accounts here will stay with you indefinitely, and should be a warning to everyone who plans to venture into a thermally active area to, as the title says, "hold fast to your children". [And keep those dogs on leashes; if they're used to diving into pools at home they might do so in the park, and if they happen to hit a hot spring the result will be terrible.]

By comparison with this thoroughly harrowing first chapter, the rest of the book feels almost casual - even though more lives have been lost from causes other than hot springs. Park hazards include wild animals (primarily bears), poisonous plants, noxious fumes, lightning, avalanches, cave-ins and falling rocks, falling trees, forest fires, and drowning - and that doesn't even get into the man-made fatalities. The author draws the conclusion that too many people see the park as a sanitized Disneyland and simply don't realize that the whole point of preserving a huge chunk of nature is to show it in all its natural glory - and hazard. Despite signs and pathways and brochures warning people not to feed the bears or get too close to the thermal pools, accidents still happen...

Released 18 yrs ago (5/4/2005 UTC) at Commonwealth Ave (see notes for details) in Boston, Massachusetts USA

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

RELEASE NOTES:

I'm attending an event at the Harvard Club of Boston (374 Commonwealth Ave) this evening, and hope to release this book somewhere in the building or just outside at about 6 pm. [The event is a benefit for the New England Wildlife Center featuring a talk by the author of Beast in the Garden, another book about the interactions between humans and the wild...]

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