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AMERICA’S FIRST NATIONAL PARK TURNS 150

Friday, February 25, 2022

In today’s newsletter, we look at an expanded Ukraine flight ban, a Greek river that lures adventurers, Scotland’s rugged coastline, a safe space for Muslim hikers … and how Tara Roberts came to find healing in diving.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL NICHOLS

By George Stone, TRAVEL Executive Editor

A “paradox of the cultivated wild.” That’s how National Geographic Explorer David Quammen characterized Yellowstone National Park in a celebrated edition of National Geographic. In that issue, an epic ecosystem—it’s the biggest complex of mostly untamed landscape and wildlife within the lower 48 states—received epic treatment.

“Yellowstone is a wild place, constrained imperfectly within human-imposed limits. It’s filled with wonders of nature—fierce animals, deep canyons, scalding waters—that are magnificent to behold but fretful to engage,” wrote Quammen. And yet the park is also a paradox: “wilderness contained, nature under management, wild animals obliged to abide by human rules.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY SAM ABELL

On Tuesday, Yellowstone will mark 150 years since its founding in 1872, an event that also marked the birth of the U.S. National Park System. (Images of sites like the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, pictured at top, helped inspire Congress to create the park.) This vast panorama—spread across some 3,472 square miles, mostly in Wyoming, but with portions in Montana and Idaho—is still replete with wild sights, and it remains wildly popular among travelers; it received 4.9 million visitors in 2021.

It’s been called America’s “Wonderland” for good reason. Generations of travelers have explored its marvels. (Above, visitors along the Fountain Paint Pots trail, home to hot springs, geysers, mudpots, and fumaroles.) So, too, have National Geographic contributors. The magazine’s first feature on Yellowstone was published more than a century ago. Since then, our coverage has included a multitude of articles on the region, as well as articles, books, and atlas entries.

PHOTOGRAPH BY RONAN DONOVAN

National Geographic’s vast photographic archive includes images from the pivotal 1871 geological survey of Yellowstone, photographed a year before the founding of the park. “What I see in the early historic photos is grandeur, vastness, the bounty of wildlife, the sheer power of Earth. Humans are almost always tiny specks in these images,” says Julia Andrews, photo editor of the National Geographic Image Collection. “Now photographers show just how vulnerable this ecosystem is to the impact of humans.”

That observation echoes Quammen’s central thesis: “Can we hope to preserve, in the midst of modern America, any such remnant of our continent’s primordial landscape, any such sample of true wildness—a gloriously inhospitable place, full of predators and prey, in which nature is still allowed to be red in tooth and claw? Can that sort of place be reconciled with human demands and human convenience? Time alone, and our choices, will tell. But if the answer is yes, the answer is Yellowstone.”

We invite you to celebrate Yellowstone’s sesquicentennial “through the lens” in these images from National Geographic’s photographic archive. (Pictured above, a wolf pack in Yellowstone’s Pelican valley; below, a visitor is greeted by a brown bear, one of the two species of bear at the national park.)

PHOTOGRAPH BY DEAN CONGER

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM RICHARDSON, @JIMRICHARDSONNG

Windswept: Looking for some of the most rugged coastline in Scotland? Mangersta, on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, has that—and stunning beaches. It’s a great place, photographer Jim Richardson says, to feel the power of the Atlantic and the power of ancient geology. “It’s remote but secluded,” he says. “You can count on having the place to yourself much of the time.” Scotland also is a destination for those searching for warrior queens, fairies, and castles, Nat Geo writes.

STORIES WE’RE TRACKING

Euro flight ban extends from Ukraine to Moldova, parts of Russia (WSJ)

Photographs of Ukraine under attack (Nat Geo)

The tangled history that connects and divides Russia and Ukraine (Nat Geo)

4,000-year-old skull in Sweden gets new face (Nat Geo)

See Valencia, the design capital of 2022 (Conde Nast Traveller)

4 research-backed ways to enjoy family travel (Nat Geo)

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

PHOTOGRAPH BY HARRIS DRO, LOOP IMAGES/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY IMAGES

A river runs through it: Nature-loving daytrippers flock to northwest Greece for a glimpse of rare wildlife and a float (or a zipline) down the 32-mile Acheron River, which flows through many picturesque villages (pictured above, Glykí, Greece, where the river cuts through a stunning gorge). But pandemic crowds have been leaving behind trash, damaging flora, and disturbing bird habitats, Nat Geo reports. Officials in the river’s tourist towns are looking for ways to balance the uptick in visitors with sustainability.

PAID CONTENT FOR VISIT WALES

PHOTOGRAPH FROM ADOBE

Discover the magic of a road trip along The Wales Way

From stunning coastline and pristine beaches to mighty castles, The Wales Way offers adventures for every traveler. Learn about the three different touring routes—The Coastal Way, The Cambrian Way, The North Wales Way—then book a trip of a lifetime to uncover Wales, a country on the western edge of Great Britain.

IN A FEW WORDS

QUOTE

The lure of the arctic is tugging at my heart. To me the trail is calling! The old trail, the trail that is always new.

Associate of Robert Peary, who believed he was the first person to reach the North Pole

See historic photos celebrating pioneering Black explorer

INTO THE DEPTHS

PHOTOGRAPH BY WAYNE LAWRENCE

Healing: “In scuba diving, we wear masks and sometimes they get foggy but mine got wet from tears. I opened up my mask and washed the tears out.” That’s Kamau Sadiki (pictured above in Virginia) talking about finding a shackle on a dive to salvage shipwrecks from the slave trade. How does a group of Black divers uncover this difficult history from slavery without retriggering trauma? On episode five of the Nat Geo podcast Into the Depths, host and Nat Geo Explorer Tara Roberts begins to understand the healing potential of diving when she learns of a ritual held in Mozambique and South Africa that honored Africans lost aboard a Portuguese ship. Read her cover story in the March issue of National Geographic.

HEAR THE PODCAST

LAST GLIMPSE

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ACTIVE INCLUSION NETWORK

Welcome to nature: With brown skin and head coverings, these solo travelers often drew unwanted stares. Other hikers asserted that they didn’t belong. Now, Muslim Hikers, a grassroots initiative by British marathoner Haroon Mota, has created a more inclusive hiking community and a better way to enjoy the outdoors, contributing editor Heather Greenwood Davis writes. (Pictured above, a hiker on Muslim Hikers’ inaugural trek in Wales takes in the views along the Llanberis path.)

Subscriber exclusive: Find coastal adventures and loads of sheep on a hike in Wales

BUILDING A COMMUNITY

Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter transposed two letters in the formal name for the great false vampire bat. The binomial nomenclature for the fascinating carnivorous (but not blood-sucking) animal is vampyrum spectrum. Thanks to reader Patti Shafer for catching it.

This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, Monica Williams, and Jen Tse. We’d love to hear from you at [email protected].

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