DESCRIPTION -Story Locale: Yellowstone National Park The latest in the Crown Journeys series brings popular travel writer Tim Cahill together with one of his and America's favorite destinations: Yellowstone National Park. The mother of all parks, Yellowstone was established on March 1,1872, making it the first and oldest national park in the world. It annually plays host to millions of tourists and naturalists, serious and not-so-seri- ous hikers and campers, Cahill has been going there for most of his life, slowly covering its vast scope, making a point to explore its outer-most backwoods as only he could. Albeit, readers may want to think twice about taking even an armchair trip into the wilderness with a man who has written books titled Jaguars Ripped My Flesh and Pecked to Death By Ducks. But we can assure you no one does Yellowstone like Tim Cahill does Yellowstone. So does this mean he knows what he's doing this time? Hardly. "I live 50 miles from the Park," says Cahill, "but proximity does not guarantee competence." The author stumbles from glacier to geyser; he encounters several varieties of large charismatic mam- mal, muses on the microbiology of thermal pools, ponders the geology happening under his boots, hangs out in petrified forests, gets spooked in the darkness of the mysterious Hoodoos, sees moonbows arcing across waterfalls at midnight, figures the odds on a volcanic eruption in the Park that will end civilization as we know it, and generally has a fine old time walking several hun- dred miles while contemplating the concept and value of wilderness. "Mostly," Cahill says, "I have resisted the urge to commit philosophy. This is difficult to do when you're alone, 20 miles from the nearest road, and you've just found a grizzly bear track about the size of a pizza." A wonderful addition to a great series, LOST IN MY OWN BACKYARD will be a must-have for anyone venturing into America's favorite national park.
Description:
DESCRIPTION -Story Locale: Yellowstone National Park The latest in the Crown Journeys series brings popular travel writer Tim Cahill together with one of his and America's favorite destinations: Yellowstone National Park. The mother of all parks, Yellowstone was established on March 1,1872, making it the first and oldest national park in the world. It annually plays host to millions of tourists and naturalists, serious and not-so-seri- ous hikers and campers, Cahill has been going there for most of his life, slowly covering its vast scope, making a point to explore its outer-most backwoods as only he could. Albeit, readers may want to think twice about taking even an armchair trip into the wilderness with a man who has written books titled Jaguars Ripped My Flesh and Pecked to Death By Ducks. But we can assure you no one does Yellowstone like Tim Cahill does Yellowstone. So does this mean he knows what he's doing this time? Hardly. "I live 50 miles from the Park," says Cahill, "but proximity does not guarantee competence." The author stumbles from glacier to geyser; he encounters several varieties of large charismatic mam- mal, muses on the microbiology of thermal pools, ponders the geology happening under his boots, hangs out in petrified forests, gets spooked in the darkness of the mysterious Hoodoos, sees moonbows arcing across waterfalls at midnight, figures the odds on a volcanic eruption in the Park that will end civilization as we know it, and generally has a fine old time walking several hun- dred miles while contemplating the concept and value of wilderness. "Mostly," Cahill says, "I have resisted the urge to commit philosophy. This is difficult to do when you're alone, 20 miles from the nearest road, and you've just found a grizzly bear track about the size of a pizza." A wonderful addition to a great series, LOST IN MY OWN BACKYARD will be a must-have for anyone venturing into America's favorite national park.