Quotes from Lee H. Whittlesey

On many occasions animals are not so much trying to hurt us as giving us a mere rebuke or warning. The trouble is, a mere rebuke or warning from a bear can put a human in traction.

Dangers and wilderness go hand in hand. That is part of the attraction of wilderness, and danger is part of the allure

To develop a national park is to not have one.

Some folks require the park's wildness and yet deny its right to exercise its wildness upon them.

Frank Welch was literally sleeping on a slab of bacon at the time of the event.

Of course, collaring and tracking all bears is illogical, unreasonable, and unnatural from the point of view of park managers, regardless of one judge's opinion. It can traumatize the bears, make the bears look artificial instead of natural, cost a lot of money in radios and monitoring personnel, and give the public the perception that a national park is like the movie Westworld (all mechanical) rather than a natural preserve.

Correct in his later assessment of war in general, Sherman was decidedly incorrect in this statement. The Nez Perce had both just cause and provocation for going to war. The whites were in the process of stealing their ancestral lands and had cheated, robbed, and killed some of them.

it is impossible to "safety proof" a national park, and those parks are often more akin to Jurassic Park than to Disneyland.

Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned honor by the locks. —William Shakespeare, King Henry IV

The worst possible situation is a person hiking alone who surprises a bear that is feeding (as on a carcass) and also has cubs. If this last situation happens to you, we will not expect to see you back at the trailhead.

Don't do that!" said Welch, and Kirwan responded very tiredly, "It doesn't matter." Near the spring, rangers found two large pieces of skin shaped like human hands.

Oils from its body later made the hot spring have small eruptions.

Without hesitating, he said, "Can you tell me something? These animals that are just running around out here . . . they couldn't be wild, could they, or you wouldn't just have them running around loose?