Walking Down the Wild: A Journey Through the Yellowstone Rockies

In Walking Down the Wild Gary Ferguson offers a good-natured account of a 500-mile hike through the mountains and valleys and geyser fields that make up Yellowstone National Park and its environs. Anyone who has made a long trek will appreciate Ferguson's catalog of moleskin patches, fungicides, and mosquito repellents, but not many folks have had to figure out how to ward off bears every night (pee around your campsite, he advises), steer clear of the occasional cantankerous bull moose, and avoid stepping into steel- jawed traps. It's clear that Ferguson loves his self-appointed mission to protect the Yellowstone ecosystem, and he has a lot to say. "The horizon of the American West," he warns, "is framed more and more not by wild, ragged patches of stone and timber, but by clear-cuts and mine tailings, by housing developments, by oil derricks blazing in what only yesterday was a dark and secret sky."