Outside Ourselves: Landscape and Meaning in the Greater Yellowstone

In 2015, long-time wilderness ranger and award-winning writer Todd Burritt spent two months walking across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. His account represents a survey of the state of wildness in one of the world’s premier natural areas. Despite visiting several of the most remote areas in the lower 48, Burritt never managed to escape the modern paradoxes invading our timeless landscapes; the most bedeviling of them all were those he carried in his own head. As much a cultural critique as a sharp-eyed tour of natural and human history, Outside Ourselves offers a singular illustration of the power of landscape to both illuminate and challenge.