The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [323]
Burroughs understood that America had a lot of weather-vane politicians, but Roosevelt, particularly when it came to conservation, wasn’t one of them. He understood that natural resource management was the imperative! He understood why species needed to be saved, if only for aesthetic purposes! And nobody Burroughs had ever met knew more about birds. “Surely,” Burroughs wrote, “this man is the rarest kind of a sportsman.” When it came to conservation, Burroughs understood that Roosevelt was “the most vital man on the continent, if not on the planet, today.”43
One of the oddest aspects of Roosevelt’s trip to Yellowstone was the vigorously enforced ban against journalists. The president wanted sixteen days off from work to study the abundant wildlife without being pestered by reporters. Both Roosevelt and Burroughs wanting to be like old antelopes, straying from the herd of humans. Their headquarters were at Major Pitcher’s house, but several U.S. Army camps were also set up deep in the wilderness (but not too far from established roads) so Roosevelt and Burroughs could commune with the outdoors without signs of irritating civilization. Only matters of utmost national importance would be conveyed to Roosevelt through his personal secretary William Loeb, Jr. (whose railway car, Elysian, the “rolling White House,” had been unhitched in Cinnabar, Montana). Burroughs was suffering from a head cold, coughing and sneezing, but he gamely trooped onward into the wild with Roosevelt, sleeping in the springtime snow a few miles from Major Pitcher’s house.
On April 11, the Times, in a mistaken rush to judgment, ran a bogus story under the headline “President Kills Lion in Yellowstone Park” (presumably, he had killed it with his pistol).44 Because cougars weren’t protected in Yellowstone, the Times concluded that the president hadn’t violated any regulations; he had merely blasted a feline varmint. But the entire story was fabricated: a scoop-hungry reporter had used an unreliable source. When he heard of it, President Roosevelt was livid, because he had worked so hard to avoid giving the impression that he was hunting in Yellowstone. Instead, with Burroughs at his side, Roosevelt had hoped to emphasize his preservationist side. But he could hardly go after the New York Times. It was his hometown newspaper, and it had long promoted his political and literary careers. In an article titled “President on the Move,” the Times clarified the earlier story, explaining that Buffalo Jones—the apparent source—had offered to go cougar hunting with Roosevelt but the president had “declined the offer.” 45
Nearly every day thereafter, the Times, covering Roosevelt as best it could from Cinnabar, Montana, would assure readers that the president had “shot no game.” By not hunting, Roosevelt was showing that he was a reformed sportsman, that nature could be enjoyed for its own sake. In fact, all Roosevelt and Burroughs hunted for in Yellowstone were voles for the Biological Survey. They also explored the Yellowstone and Lamar rivers; analyzed the shaped balconies and terraces of porcelain-like travertine at Mammoth Hot Springs in the northwest corner; camped near Old Tower Fall Soldiers Station; pondered the great assemblage of petrified wood; rode sleighs to the Upper Geyser Basin; and even tried skiing around the Norris Hotel. What surprised Burroughs was the bizarre erosion to be studied in this patch of Wyoming: aeolian, biological, fluvial, lateral, and sheet were just some of the conditions. You needed a geological textbook to decipher the cycles of erosion, and to differentiate between piping (badlands erosion) and residual boulder (weathered in place). It was a little too much, so he turned to flowers. “I even saw a wild flower,” Burroughs wrote, “an early buttercup, not an inch high—in bloom. This seems to be the earliest wild flower in the Rockies. It is the only fragrant buttercup I know.” 46
Spending so much time