In honor of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America, I am keeping my eyes open for clues about America’s gun cultures as Sandy and I travel from our home in North Carolina to Yellowstone National Park and back. My inaugural post on this series can be found here.

Sandy and I just finished our last National Park stop on this journey and are headed back home to North Carolina. Hopefully, I will have more time and internet throughput in the coming days than in the past week to get caught up with posts about our travels in search of America’s gun cultures.

We spent days 5 through 14 of our trip in various parts of Wyoming. I’ve already posted about the Wyoming Territorial Prison, Matthew Shepard, the University of Wyoming Firearms Research Center, and serendipitous encounters with friends near Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.

The land here is beautiful to observe from a distance but can be unforgiving close-up. I already noted the display in the Wyoming Territorial Prison suggesting that the Western frontier was “a challenging and dangerous place” and that three essential survival tools were “the ax, the plow, and the rifle.”

This was evident as we continued on toward Grand Teton, stopping for lunch in Pinedale. There we saw a statue called “Working the Line” in which artist Jerry McKellar depicts a “mountain man” who worked wildlife trap lines on the frontier. Of course, he carried a rifle across his shoulders.

At the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center in Grand Teton National Park, not exactly a haven of American gun culture, we found a statue in the exhibit area depicting a pioneer woman with a baby in one hand and a lever action rifle in the other.

Of course, things are not nearly as dangerous for today’s visitors to Wyoming as it was for these settler-colonists. But that does not mean there is no danger for those exploring the wilderness. This was evident in the many signs warning visitors about the danger of bears and the amount of bear spray sold in the park stores.

One bit of advice I received about handling bears was as follows:

• If you see a bear, back away.
• If a bear approaches you, stand your ground and deploy bear spray.
• If a bear attacks you, play dead.
• If the bear persists, fight back.

No advice was given on when and how exactly to fight back, but I know when I went on a long hike through the Flagg Canyon on a trail between Grand Teton and Yellowstone, I was sure to cover all of my bases by carrying bear spray and other essential wilderness survival tools.

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