Status Updates From Letters from Yellowstone

“Jessie, why is it that some men in this world so despise women? What have we ever done to them as a sex that makes them feel they must dominate and suppress our good natures and willingness to contribute equally to the world? Why do they feel the need to demean us, belittle us, make us fear for our lives?”

"you would be hard pressed to recognize her...she has become more sinewy, roughened or perhaps even toughened...There seems to be an air of detachment, too, from common courtesies and civilities...It is as if she has been held captive...while living in the East and now that she is here in the Park, she has been released from civilization, and has returned to her true, wild nature."

“As you can see, it is the human dilemmas, not the field work or science, which puts me at a real disadvantage here. People are not my strength.”

Dude, RELATABLE! Although…having struggled with this and even gone into burnout once or twice, I’d like to reassure Dr. Merriam that it appears caring enough to stress about it goes a long way in how those people feel.

“Regardless, there isn’t a very same plant was there in my hand, full of potential life, just as it had been in the hand of Meriwether Lewis…I was so overcome by the richness of the story resonating in that slip of a plant in my hand that I was tempted to hold it high over my head, an offering to the sun, to somehow appease the gods of botany…I am losing all sense of scientific protocol.” 😂

"The railroad is indeed a stoloniferous organism, sending its tentacles out across the country with wanton disregard for soil, climate, or water...Pity the poor families who follow this mechanical messiah so far from human habitation in search of the elusive promised land."