The Wild Excellence provides a personal look at an extraordinary landscape. Living on the edge of Yellowstone National Park, Leslie Patten weaves myth and science with history. She vividly relates her experiences as she digs out her clogged spring system, hikes and explores, copes with weather and isolation, and grows an intimate relationship with a place that her heart recognized on first sight as home. The author's curiosity leads her to investigate ancient Shoshone Indian sheep traps, help on a local wolf study, as well as learn about her wildlife neighbors--grizzly bears, elk and deer, coyotes and badgers. Patten speaks with scientists, land managers, archeologists and ordinary folk. In the doing, Patten poses valid questions about how we inhabit this earth, about the role of big expanses of wild land with intact populations of predators and other wildlife, and about what is really important in our lives.