Yellowstone — The first National Park in the world
In the grayish white canvas of Silicious Sinter, rises the mineral rich boiling water, colored as blue as the sky itself. Yellow, orange and red microbes surround the spring in concentric circles, as if by an agreement to form the perfect set of rings. Lofty Rocky Mountains provide a backdrop along with stretches of yellow grass and lush green Douglas fir. And for the finishing touch, the Sun shines bright in the pollution-less sky to bring out the details of this perfect picture - The Grand Prismatic Lake. The one that can turn a nihilist into a believer.
Welcome to God’s own art studio — The Yellowstone National Park. A place so uniquely beautiful, it will sweep you off your feet( sometimes even literally). Molten magma boiling a few miles below pushes the ground water out in various forms. While the constrictions in the plumbing results into gushing geysers erupting every few hours, the fumaroles just have enough water to convert it all to steam. Hot spring are the lucky ones with a steady hot water supply, thus providing home to extremophiles and thermophiles which in turn embellish the surrounding surface with beautiful colors. The 8,903 square km park spreading out in 3 states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho also boasts the most diverse and abundant wild life including Elks, bears and wolves. No wonder despite the scorching sun and the rotten egg odor, Yellowstone is visited by almost 4 million tourists annually and the popularity keeps growing.
As mesmerizing the beauty of this place is, the story of its existence is no less interesting. Research shows that the human presence in this region goes back to almost 11000 years. However, the first person of European origin to venture into the Yellowstone region was a trapper, John Colter who reached the area in 1807 as part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Another trapper, Warren Angus Ferris, visited Yellowstone and was the first to use the name geyser for the hydrothermal features. Since then people kept visiting and expressing the unreal beauty in different forms of art.
And then came the night of September 19, 1870. At a campfire near the Madison Junction, where the Firehole and Gibbon rivers join to form the Madison River in present-day Yellowstone National Park, the members of the Washburn-Doane Expedition, relaxed and recalled the spectacular sights they have seen during their exploration. In an altruistic moment, they decided that the park should be protected from private exploitation and the awe-inspiring geysers, waterfalls, and canyons should be preserved as a public park. Their patron, Jay Cooke of the Northern Pacific Railway Company, took control of this initiative and with his reach in Washington DC, ensured that a government “reservation” could prevent “squatters and claimants” from gaining control of the area’s most scenic features.
A letter was written to renowned American geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden
Dear Doctor:
Judge Kelley has made a suggestion which strikes me as being an excellent one, viz.: Let Congress pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever — just as it has reserved that far inferior wonder the Yosemite valley and big trees. If you approve this would such a recommendation be appropriate in your official report?
The Judge Kelly mentioned here is William D Kelly, one of the founders of the Republican Party in 1854, and a friend of Abraham Lincoln. The cause was helped significantly by the stunning images of the area created by two members of the 1871 expedition: paintings by Thomas Moran (whose presence on the trip had been partially funded by Cooke) and photographs by William Henry Jackson(the official photographer). The US Congress acted quickly to write a bill authorizing the creation of Yellowstone National Park, which was passed and signed into law by President Ulysses S Grant on March 1, 1872 .
Thus Yellowstone became the first National Park in the world and today it is a designated UNESCO biosphere reserve and also a World Heritage site.
Yellowstone established the premise of Nature being a nation’s heritage that ought to be preserved and made accessible to all its citizens. The Yellowstone National Park Protection Act says “the headwaters of the Yellowstone River … is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale … and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” In an era of expansion, the federal government had the foresight to set aside land deemed too valuable in natural wonders to develop.
An entire week spent in its lap without being distracted by the network, I could relate with those explorers and understand how this place became the one to convince the man of its magnanimity and sowed seeds of a revolution that will help preserve the pristine existence of many other such spots later, like Mount Shuksan, Olympic National Forest and the most wonderful of all, the Grand Canyon.
But the impact of Yellowstone’s unpolluted air on me extended far beyond this revelation. Camping in the woods taught me peaceful co-existence. Gazing at the Milky Way taught me humility. Old faithful taught me to marvel at consistency and that evening dip in chilly Yellowstone lake showed me the wonders that existed beyond my fears. The time spent around the unspoiled beauty of nature brought about a tranquility and contentment in my character that made me a far better person that I ever was.
Ending the memories of this life-changing experience with the lines of Daniel Quinn, “It’s the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It’s seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can’t watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor’s tepee”. As for me, it was the magnanimity of the rising Sun that eventually brought me to my knees.
