Author Description

When Stanford Demars arrived at the Arch Rock entrance to Yosemite National Park in June 1968, he found something more akin to an urban amusement park than pristine wilderness: crowding, noise, drag racing, rock concerts, even pot parties, and all within sight of Half Dome and the Merced River. How, he wondered, could the National Park Service permit such a travesty? Weren't national parks supposed to be protected? The simple message of this book is that nature has no terms except for those we as human beings assign it. Wilderness as a condition of nature is as much a human conceit as is its exploitation and development.