America's Best Idea

I told everyone I know to watch "America's Best Idea," the National Parks Series by Ken Burns on PBS this week. I have watched every night so far and it brings back so many memories and reinforces my commitment to continue working toward saving the parks for the rest of my life. Some people have complained that the series is a little boring, with all the black and white photos of people. I’m learning a lot from that, but I too wish there was a lot more color footage of the parks today. I hope there will be further segments, whether by Burns or others, that get the message into the heads of every voter, every school child, every visitor to this country that these are monuments to the natural history and natural habitats of North America which must be protected, expanded where possible, supported monetarily, and promoted as OUR property, our heritage, our responsibility.

I fell a little in love with John Muir the first night. He was my kind of eccentric, sitting next to a plant new to him for an hour or a day to see what it had to tell him, spending a stormy night in a tree to feel how trees experience weather, standing behind waterfalls to relate to how the rocks lived, looking at the world upside down, between his legs, to see the “upness” of things. I would happily have followed him anywhere. A couple of nights later, I fell in love with Steven Mathers, a tall, prematurely white haired, blue-eyed manly man who worked and thought and depressed himself into nervous breakdowns more than once, but always bounced back to the beauty and the cause.

Thanks to my parents, the national parks are part of my personal history. They piled three kids and three dogs into rented motor homes and dragged us on thousand-mile trips, kicking and screaming and fighting the whole way. If we weren’t bickering, we weren’t speaking to each other, so my parents wouldn’t know until later how much I enjoyed—no thrived on—those journeys. I kept journals and took pictures and wrote letters to friends and relatives that revealed the impact the scenery had on my pre-teen and teenage brain. In those pre-digital days, I took hundreds of pictures that are stuffed into shoe boxes and grocery bags, tucked away or stacked up throughout my house. I vow to dig them out, scan worthy ones into the computer, and share them over time.

Millions of people visit the National parks each year, amazingly, considering how little air time they get, yet millions more have no idea how important and beautiful they are, how tenuous their existence is, or how many of us, and I can count my family and many friends, have fought to keep them clean, safe, and free of development and industry. I’ve signed countless petitions, written Congress, and donated lots of money to preserve these places. I am or have been a member of every organization you’ll hear about on this series. My Congressmen and Senators hear from me almost weekly, begging them not to open these areas to oil, coal, and gas drilling, sport and aerial hunting, ATV and snow mobile riding, new roads, and to protect them from poachers and vandals and mean-spirited people. You want to know why?

As John Muir’s writing and several of the commentators expressed on the show, you felt like you had gone home when you arrived in these places. There is a natural affinity that can only be explained by déjà vu, by having been there before in your unconscious memory, your past lives. Sometimes it almost hurt. We’d come around a bend, maybe it had just stopped raining and everything was sparkling and wet, misty mountain crags created shadows and rainbows and sun shafts created contrasts in light. It was an achy, haunting feeling; actually a little scary and confusing sometimes to be distracted by this sense that I’d been there before, or this was where I belonged. Even the camping out rang bells. Riding under the stars on dude ranches felt natural, not new.

Campgrounds echoed with children’s voices, dogs’ barks, and the sounds of axes cutting through firewood. The trees creaked, the wind whispered stories, the chipmunks took cherry Lifesavers from my steady hand. I could be a reincarnated pioneer, itinerant tinker, range rider, or park guide. (According to my high school aptitude test, I should have been a mounted ranger. If I’d followed that path, how different life would be.)

My family got trapped in Glacier National Park by a flashflood. They said the bridge was out, but it was still there, in the middle of the river with 50-yard gaps of missing road on either side. We were staying on an Indian reservation and they didn’t have the money to repair the road, which they couldn’t do until the water level went down on its own schedule anyway. We spent four exciting days (for me; I’m sure my mother was having one long panic attack) exploring the areas we could reach on foot. They helicoptered supplies to us. We huddled around the radios and park rangers for updates. I fell in love with a dark-haired boy whose name I’ll never remember. I pined for a glimpse of him, or a flirty walk. Finally, the Indians came up with enough cash to rent heavy equipment that could drag motor homes across the fields and meadows to the nearest road. I still remember the fear, excitement, remorse, and thrill of my dad gunning the motor, the motor home bumping and bucking its way free of the camp ground. I ran from the front window to the back, my emotions alternating between the elation of freedom and regret of lost puppy love, waving goodbye to what’s-his-name. Those extra days at Glacier cost us. We ran out of time to experience the Great Salt Lake, so that’s still on my to-see list.

Speaking of lists, these are the parks I’ve been to. I didn’t know there were 58 of them until this week, even though I’ve been a member of the National Parks Conservation Association for years, and I didn't realize how many I'd been to until I went to the National Parks link (above) and clicked on each state. This list leaves out hundreds of state parks, state forests, national historic sites, and remote wilderness areas I’ve been lucky enough to spend time in here in the US, or in Canada, Mexico, and Europe. I’ll list more of those in another post. And write about my Rocky Mountain National Park concussion, my Grand Canyon meningitis, and my underaged Acadia beer drinking days.

My National Park visits:

Glacier

Little Bighorn Battlefield

Yellowstone

Grand Teton

Lake Mead

Golden Gate National Recreation Area

Muir Woods

Bryce Canyon

Grand Canyon

Canyonlands

Continental Divide Scenic Trail

Rocky Mountain National Park

Badlands

Mount Rushmore

Chimney Rock Trail

San Antonio Missions

Mississippi National River Area

Trail of Tears (several states)

Indiana Dunes National Lake Shore

Automobile National Heritage Area

Father Marquette National Memorial

Keweenaw National Historic Park

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Appalachian National Scenic Trail (several states)

Acadia National Park

Hudson River Valley

Delaware and Lehigh Valley National Heritage Corridor

Delaware Water Gap

Valley Forge National Historic Park

Manasses National Battlefield

Everglades

Florida National Scenic Trail

Dupont Circle

Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site

George Washington Memorial

Lincoln Memorial

National Mall and parks

Rock Creek Park

Jefferson Memorial

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Korean War Memorial

Washington Monument

White House