Last night we watched part three of Ken Burn’s epic documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The whole series is very impressive and informative, and I don’t feel the need to do a full scale review here. Many other have more adequate done so already. However it got me thinking about how the national parks, both here and in Canada, as well as many other public lands, have shaped my life and made me who I am today.
When I was a child, from the age of four until I was eighteen, every summer my parents would pack up the car or the tiny RV we owned in later years, and we would head off to a different part of North America for 6-12 weeks of camping, hiking, and exploring. While we did visit any number of cities and man-made attractions, the vast majority of the time was spent in wilderness or near-wilderness, in national parks or national forests. This very much shaped my personality, my love of nature, and my worldview and I would not be the same without it.
Some of my earliest memories are in Acadia National Park in Maine, at the age of four years old. I scrambled over rocks to see the waves crash and explode out of natural blowholes, poked at sea urchins in tide pools, made fast friends with a little girl who spoke only French and hosted tea parties in my parent’s tent with her, picked wild blueberries from the slopes of the hills, and climbed Cadillac Mountain to see the sunset. I remember my first big hike, when I was five, at Sequoia National Park – 14 miles round trip to Twin Lakes, and my mom had to carry me over the snow fields at the end which were up to my waist. My first time on a horse was in Bryce Canyon. As a sulky teenager I would escape from my parents campsite in Banff and hike to a teahouse where I could get a pot of Earl Grey Tea and a scone for $2, brood over the mountains, and read angsty fantasy novels until sunset. And on, every summer of my life marked in some way by one or more national parks or public lands. I could literally write a book about my experiences there.
All these memories got me thinking of how fortunate I was then. Most kids, particularly those raised in places like New Jersey which are crowded and urban, do not get to spend whole summer in nature, exploring these wonders and being taught by them. Most are lucky to have a single one-week trip to Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon in their entire lives. And yet when I am there, I am annoyed by the less initiated. There is the family from New York City who are clearly afraid of everything wild and natural. There is a teenage boy who thinks petting a bison would be a great idea. A mother who patiently explains to her child in a voice of great authority that what I know to be a female elk is really a male mule deer. A Japanese couple so intent on getting the perfect picture of that they scramble off the trail and over an area where one wrong step could break them through the earth’s crust and scald them to death. And several spoiled teenagers with clothes that cost more than my yearly salary spending hours texting, their heads down, next one of the last great glaciers in the U.S.
I look at them and resent them. They are cluttering up my National Park with their noise and their cursing and their pushing and shoving and littering. I feel superior and smarter too. They don’t really understand the deep geological processes at work to form the magnificent features of Arches, so how can they appreciate them? They haven’t been to the backcountry of Jasper and been 10 feet away from a mountain goat and her kid, so what business do they have blocking the road to look at one high above us on a rock? Why would you come to a park to be loud, inattentive, or rude? Oh sure they admire the color of the lake and the height of the mountains because they are backward and haven’t seen such things before. And then they will go back to their hotel rooms and have a fancy dinner in the lodge, and forget about it. They will be the same as ever.
This is ugly of me. But I know I am not alone. Among “true” campers and hikers, those who backpack, and sweat and eschew clean linens and room service, there is an elitism. A very selfish kind of elitism. We love the wilderness, we think everyone should experience it…but only as we do. If you aren’t going to be as hardcore, if you aren’t going to be in a state of complete awe constantly, if you are going to carry a cellphone and not have your life changed by your first glimpse of Mt. Ranier or Bridalveil falls, then you have no business cluttering up our trails. Your experience doesn’t count because it can’t possibly be as deep as what we experience when we go to these places.
Many of us feel this way sometimes, even though we try not to admit it. But this is in direct abrogation of what the national parks, forests, and wildernesses were designed for. It is my park. And your park. And that snot faced kid from the Bronx’s. And that rich preppy mom’s. These wonders are for us all. I have no way of knowing what inward thoughts are going in those people’s head, what emotions stir in their hearts. I have no right to invalidate their experience when I don’t know what it is. If they are ignorant, the only way they will learn is through the education provided by the parks. If they have no appreciation, it may be because they have never had a chance to appreciate before.
I’m sure there are people who go to these places and manage be unaffected. But who am I to judge who they are? And maybe, just maybe the experience has changed them even if they don’t realize it. That is the genius of the National Parks. They are equality at its finest. We don’t have to change anything to visit them, but when we do we are given the opportunity to allow ourselves to be changed by them. Not everyone will take it. There are people who are stupid, reckless, and selfish and will always be that way. But it’s not for me to turn them away, to deny them access to what I have been freely given because they disrupt what I think my experience should be.
There is a lot to be said for solitude, and even more to be said for respecting the rules that are put in place for the safety for human, wildlife, and to protect the park. I’m not suggesting that those who break those rules and endanger themselves and others should be indulged or ignored. Or that the desire to be alone in nature is wrong. The equality of the parks means that those who create dangerous situations or destroy the enjoyment of all the other visitors should be restrained from doing so. And part of the gift of these spaces is that there is room enough for us to be alone in them, when we may not ever have a chance anywhere else.
However, I am suggesting that we reexamine our annoyance when we see a child on a PSP or a man pontificating on park facts he knows nothing about. I am not better than these people just because I feel like I am more at one with nature than they are, or because I have been here more often, or know more about biology or history. There are plenty of situations in which I would be completely out of my element that some of the other park visitors take to like a fish to water. My pride mars the landscape more than their seeming apathy or ignorance. I need to remember that my experience is no more valuable then theirs, and I have been blessed to have the time to see the things I have and the parents who introduced me to wild places early and enthusiastically.
Whatever the reason, they have come to nature and these places receive them, and me, without judgement. That is the magic of these public spaces, that they are for all of us. And that they bring together people who might never otherwise meet, who would never think of socializing under other circumstances. And perhaps, standing with these people who I feel are so different from me, experiencing the same geyser, the same lake, the same sunrise, is part of the gift of the parks too. Perhaps the people I think are interrupting my experience are part of it. Instead of being annoyed at their presence, maybe I should be in awe of the power of these places to draw so many different kinds of people to one spot, to feel the same emotions. The national parks provide more than scenery and solitude, but also a kind of unity, if we can accept it. And maybe the lesson of these places is really humility – before nature and before each other.
