Released in the fall of 2019, Voices of Yellowstone’s Capstone: A Narrative Atlas of the Absaroka-Beartooth is a 338-page, coffee-table-sized book that explores the cultural and natural resources of this treasured wilderness area north of Yellowstone National Park.
The book includes essays by a variety of writers, accompanied by illustrated maps and colorful photographs. Serving as a fundraiser for the Absaroka – Beartooth Wilderness Foundation, the book was edited by Traute Parrie and Jesse Logan.
Some of the contributors to the book include John Clayton, Ed Kemmick, Gary Ferguson, Hank Rate, Dan Aaland, and Dan Tyers.
The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Area consists of more than 920,000 acres of public land that includes the Absaroka and Beartooth mountain ranges. Within its forested scope are 700 miles of trails, hundreds of lakes, and dozens of streams in a landscape that is preserved under the highest level of protection for public lands in the U.S. The foundation is a nonprofit that’s dedicated to protecting this vast wilderness, what they refer to as “one of the true crown jewels of the entire Wilderness Preservation System.”
The project leader for the atlas is Traute Parrie from Red Lodge Montana. She worked for the US Forest Service for over 31 years, most recently as the Beartooth District Ranger on the Custer Gallatin National Forest, out of Red Lodge. She retained her red-card qualification as a Firefighter throughout her entire career. Now Traute hikes as much as she can throughout the West, volunteers on fund raising projects for the Absaroka Wilderness Foundation and in spare time does repair work on fire lookout restoration projects.
Kayhan Ostovar is a wildlife biologist whose career has taken him to the far corners of the earth: studying wild cats and howler monkeys in Costa Rica, parrots in the West Indies, and has guiding safaris in Africa. Kayhan is currently an assistant professor of environmental science and fish and wildlife management at Rocky Mountain College, He graduated from graduate school in Bozeman where he conducted the first radio-telemetry study of Bighorn sheep in Yellowstone National Park.
For more information, visit www.abwilderness.org