There Is Nothing So American As Our National Parks

October 5, 2009.

Of course I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” (Haven’t you?) Living at the gates of Yosemite National Park and owner of a National Parks Pass nearly every year of my adult life, I feel it almost sacrilegious to miss this television event.

It is somehow fitting that my first transcendental wilderness experiences occurred at our country’s first national park – Yellowstone. Between my junior and senior years at college, a friend and I headed west for a two-month long road trip that took us to Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Badlands National Parks, as well as such unforgettable places as Devil’s Tower National Monument, the Oregon and California coastlines, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Mojave Desert.

I grew up in a small Ohio industrial town, where our rivers and streams were murky chocolate brown-red-gray in color, and nobody I knew dared eat the catfish caught there. We were discouraged from swimming in our streams. The Cuyahoga River, not far from my hometown, caught on fire in the summer of 1969. Clearly I grew up with a distorted concept of wilderness. At night, our town was typically shrouded under an eerie pinkish-orange glow, whether from the steel mills or shopping mall parking lots, I don’t know.

Imagine my delight, at the age of 20, to discover the West’s clear rivers and streams full of fish and a night sky so vivid and chock full of stars that I didn’t want to sleep for fear of missing a shooting star. For the first time in my life, the Milky Way was something other than a chocolate bar.

Mary McNamara, L.A. Times television critic, recently said of the Ken Burns special, “Here, the parks are presented not just as places of beauty and refuge but as the soul-saving antidote to the ruthless nature of capitalism and American ambition. Which is certainly true.”

I agree wholeheartedly. Our nation’s wild places continue to inspire, heal and re-awaken my soul. Many thanks to the men and women who preserved the land so that we can all enjoy inspiration and regeneration. Indeed, a good idea!