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Acknowledgments

This book has been more than a few years in the making. It would not have been possible without the assistance of many generous and talented people—just the sort of people Yosemite seems prone to attract. Space will not permit a complete listing of all who deserve acknowledgment, and I apologize to those whose names do not appear. I am no less grateful to them for having been unable to include them here.

The field research for this study required support both inside and outside the park. I am indebted to climbers Alan Moore and Darrell Logan, who volunteered to lead the climbs in Yosemite and who offered technical advice and assistance throughout my practice. This project literally would not have gotten off the ground without them. I am also indebted to climbers Ariel Bohr and Charlotte Tonnies Moore, who volunteered to serve as partners and coaches in gym training and who also accompanied me on climbing trips to Yosemite, as well as reading and responding to early drafts of various chapters. Both were key figures enabling the development of my climbing practice. Thanks are also due to climbers Doug and Sarah Jo Dickens, Drew Hecht, Shannon Moore, Young Hoon Oh, Amna Shiekh, John Vallejo, and Lyn Verinsky and to my climber/colleague Derick Fay, all of whom provided much appreciated information and in many cases climbing support and assistance as well.

In addition to the support given by climbers, my practice was also enabled and strengthened by Pilates trainer Kathryn Scarano, as well as by Drs Mary Ann Magoun, Melinda Ogg, and Hee Chul Kim and nutritionist Mary Sullivan. All of these individuals played essential roles. Their expert care is humbly acknowledged.

I am also thankful for the field research assistance of Katherine “Katie” Manduca, Deirdre Sklar, Katherine Kendrick Graham and Robert Graham, Justine Lemos, Celia Tuchman-Rosta, Jun Ginez, Patrick Alcedo, Shyh-Wei Yang, Robert Finch II, Channing Carson, and Ernesto Carlos, who accompanied me into Yosemite on various visits and/or provided every kind of field support imaginable (really). While visiting the park, I am especially grateful for the assistance generously given to me by Yosemite assistant superintendant Scott Gediman, Yosemite research librarian Linda Eade, and Yosemite park rangers Joy Sellers Marschall and Mark Marschall. These individuals are living proof that the “service” in the U.S. National Park Service continues to mean something very real and admirable.

With regard to the field research process, I also would like to acknowledge the late Steven P. Medley (1949–2006), who was serving as president of the Yosemite Association when my ethnographic research began, Christy Holloway, who chaired the Yosemite Association’s Board of Trustees during the years when my research in the park was most active, and the many members of the former Yosemite Association (now reorganized within the Yosemite Conservancy) who either served as volunteers in the park during the times that I myself camped there or who agreed to serve as interview subjects of the oral historical Yosemite Visitors Project I conducted, or both. What I learned from “YA” and its membership forms the backbone of my understanding of what it means to be a visitor in the Yosemite landscape. The greater part of that learning and the findings of the oral historical research await publication in a future volume. However, while there are too many individuals to name them all here (although every single one merits recognition), I would like to acknowledge especially Kathy Hopkins, Nancy Ornee, and Helen Brohm, who acted as extraordinarily helpful, exemplary YA members in support of my research process.

With regard to the writing process, I am grateful to colleagues David Crouch, Mark Franko, Gary Fuhrman, Justine Lemos, Shakina Nayfack, Young Hoon Oh, Jonathan Osborn, and Paul Ryer, who read and commented on earlier drafts of various chapters. Sincere thanks are due to Steve Coleman and the attendees of the Anthropology Department Seminar of 25 April 2012, at Maynooth National University of Ireland, for their comments and responses to what has become the volume’s introduction. Members of Temple University and University of California, Riverside Dance Departments also provided helpful comments and suggestions in response to portions of the introduction read during lectures presented on both campuses in 2014. Some ideas in the introduction concerning the rhetorical branch of Peirce’s semeiotic and its relation to ethnographic research also took their initial form in comments made in the “Presentation” of the 2012 special double issue “Anthropological Inquiries,” written for the journal Recherches sémiotiques/Semiotique Inquiry. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the journal’s editor, Martin Lefebvre, in this regard. The participants of the 2008 “Transmissions” working group of the American Society for Theatre Research provided helpful comments on very early drafts of chapter 1. Thanks are also due to Nell Quest and Fran Mascia-Lees, who included an early version of chapter 2 on the panel “Sensing the Political: Materiality, Aesthetics, and Embodiment,” organized for the 2012 AAA Annual Meetings in San Francisco. Naomi Leite did the same with regard to chapter 3 on the panel “Touring Publics, Global Interconnections, and Interdisciplinary Engagements: Whither the Anthropology of Tourism,” organized for the 2013 AAA Annual Meetings in Chicago. In addition, grateful acknowledgment is made to Sharon MacDonald of the European Center for Cultural Exploration at York University (U.K.) and the participants of the 2013 invited lecture “Where the Scenic and the Obscene Meet: Ethical Subject Formations in Yosemite National Park,” who provided helpful commentary on an earlier version of chapter 2. Chapter 4 benefited greatly, if indirectly, from a “slow read” of Joseph Ransdell’s work that took place on the Peirce listserver after Ransdell’s death in 2010. Sincere thanks are due to Jon Awbrey, Jerry Chandler, Gary Fuhrman, Eugene Halton, Gary Richmond, and Benjamin Udell, among many others, for the roles they played in that read. I am also grateful to the individuals solicited by Berghahn Press to review the manuscript. Their comments and suggestions were very much appreciated and useful.

Finally, on a personal note, I would like to acknowledge five colleagues, who are also the dearest of friends: J. Lowell Lewis, Carrie Noland, Christina Schwenkel, Eberle Umbach, and Carla Walters. Their support for this research and their faith in my abilities, in sickness and health, have been essential to this book’s completion. I owe them more than I can ever name or repay. Likewise, I am indebted to my husband, Erich Reck, and to my daughter, Anna, who have borne with me through the many years and strains of research and writing. Their patience, loyalty, love, and compassion have meant the world to me. Words fall very far short of the mark in expressing my gratitude to both.

This research was made possible in part by grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (2007) and the Huntington Library (2006) and by the continuous support of the University of California, Riverside. It should, perhaps, be mentioned that the study was undertaken without any financial or material support having been sought or received from either the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) or Yosemite’s concessionaire at the time, Delaware North Companies. The NPS did issue a permit for the field research process that allowed entry into the park for research purposes. However, the views presented here are in no way sponsored or otherwise associated with either entity.