Consisting of land located within Yellowstone’s Upper Loop Road system, the Lava Creek-Washburn Range Wilderness is an area which the National Park Service recommends 122,500 acres be designated federal wilderness. Tucked away off the beaten path, this area remains exceptionally wild largely due to bear management regulations as well as a shortage of designated backcountry campsites and a lack of trails leading into the remote interior. This interior, which contains areas like upper Lava and Tower Creeks, the Washburn Mountain Range and the southern part of Blacktail Plateau, is a seldom-seen part of Yellowstone which provides solitude and habitat for many of the Park’s more sensitive wildlife species.
In the course of photographing this work I came into the company of a particular Gardiner, Montana resident who knows Yellowstone Park very well. When I mentioned plans for hiking into Arrow Canyon, a remote section of this proposed wilderness area, he quietly proclaimed Arrow Canyon to be the “wildest” part of Yellowstone. He then related a story about an old poachers cabin in the canyon, which he knew for a fact was still standing before the fires of 1988. Why it had never been dismantled, he believed, was because the National Park Service Rangers had no idea it was there. He then drew me a crude cocktail-napkin map showing where the cabin was.
In discussing plans with Park Service Rangers to photograph this region, it was pointed out to me that the area receives very little of what they referred to as “disturbance”. I thought a lot about this as I traveled the forests, meadows and mountains seeking photographs. To think of myself as causing a “disturbance” was uncomfortable, yet I knew somehow it was true. No bear would graze near where I stood. No eagle would perch on the branches above my head. I couldn’t help but notice the pristine quality of the land and could sense the special, wild isolation of the place. I truly felt as if my footsteps, my breathing and the occasional branch I broke were sounds that reverberated into the forest like ripples on a pond. My presence was but a passing event, planned to look but not take, yet on some level it was obtrusive. Animals HAD to avoid me, no matter how innocent my intentions, because I wasn’t one of them. I was foreign and didn’t speak the language. I was an outsider with a portable stove and a water filter.
With this in mind I consciously tread more lightly upon the land. I minimized the time spent in this special place, aware that every minute there only intruded more on the natural scene. I worked hard, fast and quietly, respecting the silence. I never made it to the old poachers cabin.
