\u201cI\u2019m fascinated by how we define wilderness,\u201d says Emily Noyd,\u00a0backcountry ranger\u00a0in Yosemite National Park. \u201cThe concept of wilderness is so intangible, and it\u2019s fascinating to me that to effectively govern that land we\u2019ve had to develop rules to define it.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the concept of wilderness can hold a different meaning to each visitor\u2014granite cliffs, untamed wildlife, breathtaking waterfalls, uninhabited valleys\u2014the\u00a0Wilderness Act of 1964defines the official land designation. \u201cA wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Management of congressionally designated wilderness areas is spread across four federal agencies: the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. \u201cYou can think of wilderness areas as a different layer of management,\u201d Emily says. \u201cI always suggest that people check out the\u00a0great interactive maps online. In Yosemite National Park, for example, 94 percent of the park\u2019s land is wilderness. That wilderness is where I work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her first season as a backcountry ranger was in the North Cascades in 2015, and she moved south to Yosemite for the 2016 and 2017 seasons. Since starting work as a backcountry ranger, she\u2019s also become a Wilderness EMT, a\u00a0Leave No Trace\u00a0trainer, and has done extensive search and rescue technical rope training. In the off-season, she works as a ski patroller at Mount Bachelor, which requires that she maintain an Outdoor Emergency Care certification, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That user group resonates with me, because they share my sense of curiosity and reverence. I love sharing my enthusiasm and insider tips with those visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,17],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campsites","category-reviews","tag-campsites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hero-posts.omnicom-dev.com\/main-demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hero-posts.omnicom-dev.com\/main-demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hero-posts.omnicom-dev.com\/main-demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hero-posts.omnicom-dev.com\/main-demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hero-posts.omnicom-dev.com\/main-demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hero-posts.omnicom-dev.com\/main-demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hero-posts.omnicom-dev.com\/main-demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hero-posts.omnicom-dev.com\/main-demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hero-posts.omnicom-dev.com\/main-demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hero-posts.omnicom-dev.com\/main-demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}