Lost in My Own Backyard: A Walk in Yellowstone National Park (Crown Journeys)

Lets get lost together . . .

Lost in My Own Backyard brings acclaimed author Tim Cahill together with one of hisand Americasfavorite destinations: Yellowstone, the worlds first national park. Cahill has been puttering around in the park for a quarter of a century, slowly covering its vast scope and exploring its remote backwoods. So does this mean that he knows what hes doing? Hardly. I live fifty miles from the park, says Cahill, but proximity does not guarantee competence. Ive spent entire afternoons not knowing exactly where I was, which is to say, I was lost in my own backyard.

Cahill stumbles from glacier to geyser, encounters wildlife (some of it, like bisons, weighing in the neighborhood of a ton), muses on the microbiology of thermal pools, gets spooked in the mysterious Hoodoos, sees moonbows arcing across waterfalls at midnight, and generally has a fine old time walking several hundred 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 youre alone, twenty miles from the nearest road, and youve just found a grizzly bear track the size of a pizza.

Divided into three partsThe Trails, which offers a variety of favorite day hikes; In the Backcountry, which explores three great backcountry trails very much off the beaten track; and A Selected Yellowstone Bookshelf, an annotated bibliography of his favorite books on the parkthis is a hilarious, informative, and perfect guide for Yellowstone veterans and first-timers alike. Lost in My Own Backyard is adventure writing at its very best.