Read from Chapter One of Yellowstone Autumn: A Season of Discovery in a Wondrous Land by W. D. Wetherell:

"Yellowstone is purest America, Wonderland, the country's least-known best-known place. Millions go there, but very few see it; the normal park stay is less than twenty-four hours, and only 2 percent of visitors ever leave the park roads. People know about the geysers, remember their parents' stories about feeding the bears, have heard horror stories about the crowds, and most seem content to leave it at that; in the contemporary American imagination it's become a place that was long since tamed, Jellystone National Park, with photogenic bison, adorable rangers, and Old Faithful.

The Yellowstone I had come to know is entirely different—a place where with only the slightest amount of effort you can be alone in one of the most magnificent and unspoiled landscapes in the world. For Yellowstone even now is the classic American place—and a shot of pure, classic America is something I badly needed after the year we lovers of the country had been through. With all that happened, ever since . . . and you can insert your own favorite atrocity here . . . I'd still managed to cling to an unreasoned, instinctive, gut-level patriotism that makes the manufactured, flag-waving version seem puny. In my genes, in all our genes, is a chemical signal that is not quite extinct, a pulse that awakens in us, give it half a chance —the original awe and wonder our ancestors felt when they first came face to face with the continent's splendors. Every new outrage, every new shabbiness, each new instance of aggression, and the gene grows fainter, yet in Yellowstone the wonder comes alive again, the love for the land that can be so overpowering it makes me want to sob.

Yellowstone has always been one of the places where writers go for meaning, as in, What is the meaning of Yellowstone? Yes, I told myself, in planning all the details, I'll take a crack at that—and maybe there will be enough meaning left over that I can apply some to myself."

To read a longer excerpt or to purchase Yellowstone Autumn, visit http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Yellowstone-Autumn,674022.aspx.