Reflections on “Wolf Tales: A student perspective on a week’s journey through Yellowstone National Park”
by Lucinda Boyle
The chance to travel to America’s National Park was an opportunity and a privilege that I did not take lightly. When The Oregon Stater, OSU’s Alumni Magazine, asked me to write about my experience in their Fall 2023 issue, I wanted to make sure that I documented as many aspects of the trip as possible. During our days in the park, I took notes on my phone, trying to capture the personalities of both the landscape and my travelling companions. In the evenings I would dictate events into a document on my computer while they were fresh in my mind. This document was incredibly useful to me throughout the writing process. It helped me to capture the moments of wonder, awe, surprise, and often hilarity, that make trips like this one so special. Below are a couple of my favorite sentences from the article and a behind-the-scenes look at how they made it to the page.
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“A herd of bison is grazing high on a snowy ridge, arranged so artistically that I mistake them for a sculpture.”
This was inspired by a trip we took to the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Wyoming which overlooks the National Elk Refuge. Outside of the museum are a series of bronze statues depicting elk and other wildlife which, when they are backlit, almost look alive. This reminded me of the herd of bison we had seen earlier on the trip on the ridge, which would have fit perfectly into the museum’s collection. In the beautiful photos provided by Dick Evans, ’69, the sun gives the bison a bronze cast which further strengthened their resemblance to the sculptures.
“By the 1970’s, wolves had exchanged their home in Yellowstone for one on the endangered species list.”
Much of our trip revolved around wolves. We searched for them in the snow from the window of our bus and paid close attention to suspected sightings reported by other tour guides. On the drive from West Yellowstone to Jackson, Wyoming we listened to an interview with Rick McIntyre, a park biologist who has spent years documenting the activities of Yellowstone’s wolf packs. At the National Museum of Wildlife Art we saw a featured photography exhibit on arctic wolves by Ronan Donovan. However, for all the awe and joy our group derived from the images and stories of wolves that we explored together, there was a shared sense of loss and concern over their diminishing numbers. With this in mind, in this sentence, I tried to contrast their historic presence in Yellowstone with their current status on the endangered species list.
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“As tourists, we could have ignored the conflicts surrounding the park, and limited our perspectives to the perfectly framed photograph.”
Going into the trip I anticipated learning a lot about photography and how to take good photos. However, I think that we were all surprised by how much we learned about the complex history of Yellowstone National Park. There were several passionate discussions surrounding wolf management, elk, bison, and habitat fragmentation, and we spent the majority of the time between photographing soaking up the stories of the iconic landscape. Consequently, while one half of the trip was spent looking through the frame of a viewfinder, the other half was spent learning about the factors outside of the frame. It was these moments of learning that most stuck with me and gave our photographs context and meaning which is what I was hoping to express in this last sentence.
