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Meredith Rohn
David Maxson
Rhetoric and Civic Life
15 October 2015
Wild Places and their Meaning Today
With a bang the shotgun goes off. The wolf shudders, but does not fall. Another bang and
it staggers away with holes in its sides. The pain must have been extraordinary, but it was
nothing compared to the collective pain of the community when it learned that Romeo, Juneaus
friendly wolf, was dead. Shot out of season, out of bounds, and with an illegal handgun.
Nearly 140 years beforehand, a group of lawmakers set a precedent for the protection of
such wild animals in the creation of a public park near the headwaters of Yellowstone River. This
was on March 1, 1872, and this was Yellowstone National Park. On this day, Congress incited a
global movement towards the establishment of national parks and preserves that reaches even the
most remote and undeveloped nations today. With such a history, it is no wonder that
Yellowstone has become a civic artifact for the values and ideals of a free American landscape.
The people of Juneau created their own civic artifact, albeit on a smaller scale, in reaction
to the tragic fate of their beloved wolf. For six years the townspeople and wolf had coexisted
peacefully. Affectionately dubbed Romeo for his flirtatious personality, the wolf habitually
approached the town dogs and their owners, but all of this was shattered when one
Pennsylvanian hunter decided to shoot Alaskas famous black wolf. But no hunter could destroy
what the wolf inspired in the community, and they fought back, advocating justice and honoring
Romeo with a plaque, mounted in one of his favorite suburban haunts. It reads: Romeo. 20032009. The spirit of Juneaus friendly black wolf lives on in this wild place (Jans 205).

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To be civic is to have engagement and responsibility within society, a delicate balance of
personal privilege and responsibility to the community and future generations. It is passed down
through generations and nurtured through communal practices. It is not just the responsibility
towards one person, but to all people and all creatures within the larger, global community. In
this light, both the Juneau plaque and the grander Yellowstone National Park are noteworthy
civic artifacts that act rhetorically to urge the creation of a better world, the first through a defiant
and powerful message about communal spirit and the latter through a landscape and history that
draws one into the spirit of preservation.
Imagine Congress coming together in 1872 with the purpose of creating the first national
park, and a similarity emerges to the founding fathers a century earlier, uniting America under
the promise of a better future. We all love this idealized version of patriotic America, values that
are instilled in us from childhood onward. It is our pride in country and our belief that we are
building a better world for future generations that are manipulated so expertly in places like
Yellowstone National Park. The National Park Service, responsible for maintaining Yellowstone
and places like it, was created when Wilson signed the Organic Act in 1916 with a purpose to
conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide
for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired
for the enjoyment of future generations (Dilsaver). This ideology, characterized by a sense of
responsibility to the future as well as pride in our nations past, plays a large role in how effective
the message of Yellowstone is.
As one of the last remaining truly open spaces in America, Yellowstones message to the
world can be interpreted as a plea to protect and conserve what is within our power for pride in
our national heritage and for the enjoyment of current and future generations. Many miles away,

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the remote Alaskan town of Juneau feels the same responsibility, apparent in the Romeo Plaques
similar message for the preservation of the natural world alongside the community. The
memorial to Romeo delivers this message through its rhetorical nature, relying on shared
ideological values and elements of style such as imagery, diction, and tone.
The wolf that captured the hearts of Juneaus residents is heavily personified in the
memorial. Not only is his name and the dates of his residency inscribed in imitation of a grave
or memorial to a human being, but imagery surrounds him, depicting his friendly nature and a
sense of his belonging to the town. The inscription refers to the wolf as Romeo, appealing to
pathos in the way that naming our pets inspires affection. Calling him the friendly wolf further
details his so-called personality, making him more human and therefore more relatable. In this
way, the plaque makes Romeo a kind of member of Juneaus community, and a further sense of
his belonging comes from the possessive use of Juneaus. This choice in phrasing and diction
indicates a possession of the town for Romeo, without giving any one individual ownership or
control. A sense of responsibility, therefore, settles on the townspeople for this darling member
of their community.
These elements of rhetoric effectively further the message of Juneaus plaque, but the
tone of defiance gives power to it. There is a sense of disdain for those who seek to change or
destroy natural places through the emphasis of the spirit of Romeo. Spirits cannot be changed
or destroyed, so the use of spirit indicates that no outsider has the right or even the ability to
change the values of the community their affection for Romeo and respect for natural life. The
memorial further challenges its opponents through the use of wild place in reference to the
park, demonstrating a critical piece of the plaques message that we have a responsibility to
preserve but not change the wild that we live alongside. The defiance of calling it this wild

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place indicates that Juneau is and will always be a custodian of its environment, challenging any
who oppose this ideology by indicating that it is the civic duty and responsibility of the
community to protect the world in which we will raise future generations of Americans.
As we hold such a critical civic duty, so too does the National Park Service that protects
parks like Romeos Alaskan home and Yellowstone National Park for the purpose of the
enjoyment of future generations (Dilsaver). Yellowstone achieves its purpose to inspire the
preservation of the natural world through its appeals our emotions and ethical values. Like the
patriotic image of Congress coming together for the benefit of all Americans, Yellowstone relies
on the American ideal for Westward discovery and pride in our Western Frontier. Through
mysterious and unpredictable geyser eruptions and colorful hot springs, a litany of wild creatures
as diverse as anywhere on the planet, and mountain ranges that stretch onward seemingly
forever, the park calls upon emotional awe and respect for such wonders and an innate curiosity
for the untamed. Pride and love for this scenery dominates the community feeling at Mammoth
Hot Springs and other places where residents and visitors gather. With such an intense emotional
response, the beautiful features of Yellowstone function to encourage preservation and protection
for those same natural wonders.
Furthermore, the purpose of the park, as stated in the Act of March 1, 1872, is to be a
public park or pleasure-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people, whose lack of
possession and forceful tone leaves no room for interpretation (Dilsaver). Yellowstone National
Park is owned by the people and as such must be maintained for the future enjoyment of such
people. Even the signs found throughout the park warning visitors to maintain that 25 yard
distance from bison or bears are laden with this rhetorical message. From messages like you are
in bear country to these animals may appear tame but are wild, unpredictable, and dangerous,

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these roadside signs point out that visitors are in the wild, not the other way around (Smith and
Ferguson 312). Yellowstone is a place we cannot and should not attempt to tame, and as a
civic artifact Yellowstone delivers the message that the natural world deserves preservation. Yet
it has not always been so and, prior to the mid twentieth century, wolves like Romeo were
purposely hunted to extinction within the park. It has only been in the last twenty years that the
value of apex predators in the ecosystem has been realized through the sort of trophic
cascade their removal and later re-introduction triggered (Smith and Ferguson 16). Juneaus odd
little plaque would have been unimaginable even in Yellowstone fifty years ago, demonstrating
how far we have come from the ideologies of the past.
Thus, these civic artifacts have contradictory histories yet they serve a similar purpose: to
enact preservation of the natural world throughout their community, the nation, and the globe.
One friendly black wolf, and one fateful meeting of Congress, made all of this possible. There
may be a long uphill battle before that Pennsylvanian hunter and those like him learn the true
value of the natural world, but Juneaus memorial to Romeo and the awe-inspiring Yellowstone
National Park work through rhetoric to do their civic duty to protect all creatures and wild
places on our Earth for the sake of the global community.

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Works Cited
Dilsaver, Lary M. Americas National Park System: The Critical Documents. Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 1994. Web. 15 October 2015.
Jans, Nick. A Wolf Called Romeo. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1 July 2014. Print.
Smith, Douglas W. and Gary Ferguson. Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone.
Lyons Press, 17 April 2012. Print.