We would all do well if we were to heed that lesson. From the largest animal to the smallest, Yellowstone lives that lesson every day. It is the fundamental nature of the world to embrace itself and live every moment of life to its fullest. An elk does what it does because it must. It eats, it sleeps, it runs and it reproduces the next generation of elk because that is what evolution has bred it to do. Just as the predator, wolves, cougars and others kill to eat, sleep and breed because they must do so also. It is the balance they have been created to maintain. They cannot survive otherwise.
Of all species, only the human animal deliberately goes outside those boundaries. We have built our world to exclude the natural and in doing so we are in danger of losing a part of ourselves. That part is a vital essence and its absence in our lives may destroy us in the end. If we can't see ourselves as a part of this world, then we are doomed. We will break down our world into pieces and systematically kill it until we have eventually killed ourselves. Yellowstone is able to remind us that we are a vital part of nature, and that we cannot survive without the natural world.
Do we reject our world or embrace it? Love our world, preserve it, or kill it and therefore kill ourselves? Does Yellowstone inspire great passion in me because of who I am? Or does it help define me as a human being, bring forward in me those passions, the best of myself, the most spiritual side of my being? I choose to believe the latter.
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