As our exploration of nature continued we arrived at Yellowstone National Park. Today was more physically active than the others spent in national parks had been and so we began the day stocking up on some food at a local co-op. With stomachs satisfied and bodies eager, we made our way into an area of town where our scheduled white-water rafting excursion was to begin. I felt a rush of excitement as we signed waivers incase of injury and then were handed wetsuits and life jackets. Once we all strongly resembled seals with vivid orange vests we were given helmets and then taken by bus to the edge of the river. The raft guide ran through some preliminary instructions, rules and illustrations of what and what not to do while careening down the river, and then the twelve of us carried our raft into the river and spent a couple hours racing through 8 miles of waves and splashes. During the slower portions of the ride the raft guide detailed some of our surroundings. As I looked at the Devil’s slide – a steep, red slope that ran from the top of a mountain to near the ground I began to reflect on the idea of the American wilderness.
Wilderness, as defined, is “an uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region,” and as I read this definition I became curious about the last piece of the definition and its applicability to the places we’ve visited thus far on our trip. I quickly realized that we often apply the term to places that are more natural than necessarily inhospitable. For example, while our experience white-water rafting and then going to the hot springs later in the day may have been considered wilderness by most, I feel that some of the extremely impoverished communities that I’ve witnessed would more truly be defined as the wilderness due to the difficulty of actual survival that people in those regions face.
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