A Young Woman's Death, and Our Uneasy Truce With Wilderness

On Tuesday afternoon, a young Toronto singer-songwriter named Taylor Mitchell was walking the beautiful Skyline Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park when two coyotes attacked her.


A nearby hiker heard her cries and came to her aid. Mitchell was airlifted to a hospital, but she died the next morning, on Oct. 28.

Had she lived, in three weeks Mitchell would have found out whether she won a Canadian Folk Music Award. She'd been nominated in the category of Young Performer of the Year. She was 19 years old.

Cape Breton officials insisted an attack by coyotes is highly irregular, since they usually shy away from humans.

I couldn't help but think of The Latest Ken Burns Public TV Series, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," and the way it addressed the central tension underlying the whole concept of national parks: Where do you draw the line between commerce and preservation?

Night after night, that question was asked and answered: Preservation, fool! As if you had to ask.

And to make sure we got it, Ken Burns takes us behind the scenes as a bureaucracy struggles to be born and thrive. See the bobbing professorial head express an opinion! See the author's eyes glisten as she describes her special moments in a national park! Watch as President Carter signs a bill!

Volcano, waterfall, glacier? Oh sure, they throw some in. Geologic history? Yeah, some of that too. Fatalities in the national parks? Certainly! In 1928 a honeymooning couple boated down the Colorado, and then disappeared. And an Alaskan bush pilot said on camera that nature isn't kind or cruel, just unforgiving of mistakes.

Sounds like the preface to an interesting story. But no, that's all.

What about 1967 in Glacier National Park? Since the park's founding in 1910, there had not been a single death by bear, but one August night, two 19-year-old women -- strangers, 10 miles apart -- would be killed by two different bears.

No, nothing about that, or any of the other animal attacks in the parks.

It was almost as though Burns was deliberately sidestepping the other central tension embodied in national parks: Where do you draw the line between natural and safe?

And it's not just the animals that pose a danger to visitors. There are lots of ways to die in the wilderness.

You can be crushed in an avalanche. You can drown in rapids or a flash flood. Freeze on a mountain. Be scalded in a hot spring. You can die of dehydration or heat exhaustion during a day hike in a canyon. Lightning can strike while you climb a granite wall.

And every year people fall. Breathtaking views mean breathtaking drops.

Since the 1870s in the Grand Canyon alone, some 600 people have perished -- 53 from falls. One was a 20-year-old tourist taking a picture, not of the canyon but of Bright Angel Lodge. Trying to get the best angle of the lodge, he climbed over the rock guard wall and continued backing up toward the rim edge. And fell.

"A lot of tourists approach the Grand Canyon like a ride at Disneyland or some other amusement park and think it's idiot proof," said Tom Jensen, former executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust. "The Grand Canyon wasn't built by attorneys and engineers."

Sometimes fatalities are caused by innocent mistakes. Or, as in Taylor Mitchell's case, no mistake at all. Just bad luck.

Sometimes an act of heroism will prove fatal. In 1981 at Yellowstone, a 24-year-old man jumped into a hot spring to rescue his friend's dog, which was yelping in pain. Despite efforts to pull the man to safety, within minutes he was dead.

Sometimes fatalities are caused by misguided policies, like the (now discontinued) nightly feeding of the Glacier Park bears. Tourists loved it, but the practice played a part in the deaths of the two young women in 1967.

It's an uneasy truce we have with nature. We love it. But we also fear it, as we should.

Humans lack claws, fur and armor, so no doubt they were once-tempting targets for predators. Some researchers believe REM sleep is an adaption tied to our historic status as easy prey. Dreaming kept minds active, so a sleeper might have a chance to wake up and fight back or escape.

The Canadian park service already shot one of the coyotes that attacked Taylor Mitchell. Officials are looking for the other, which will be "destroyed."

Taylor's mother has gone on the record in protest: "She wouldn't have wanted their demise, especially as a result of her own. She was passionate about animals, was an environmentalist, and was also planning to volunteer at the Toronto Wildlife Centre."

Ohhh, Taylor might say if she could. Do you really have to?

If we were honest, we'd reply: We don't know. We don't know what to do anymore. But your death is a loss beyond measure, and this line we will draw. If that makes us more like our pragmatic pioneer ancestors than we'd prefer, so be it.