Why YOU should Find Your Park

The first time I realized how much I appreciated my country was when I set foot back on US soil after a semester abroad in the UK, sophomore year of college. Don't get me wrong, I very much loved my time in London. But four months abroad completely opened my eyes to something I had never seen before -- something that truly sets America apart from any other country in the world: Our public lands.

Yosemite, 2002 (throwback to age 12!)

Coming back to the US, I couldn't wait to be in nature again, to soak up the hot Florida sun, to summit mountains, to paddle rivers, to hike the trails. The concrete canyons of London had certainly taught me many things, not the least of which was how lucky we are in the US to have some 640 million acres of federal land at our disposal, most of which is available to the public (that's about 28% of our entire landmass). Of that, 84 million acres are managed by the National Park Service.

But it wasn't always that way, and had it not been for some very forward-thinking wicked-awesome dudes back at the turn of the century, America might not be boasting the pristine wilderness and celebrated history that it does today.

Here's the lowdown:

To keep a very long story short, basically in the early 1800s these wicked-awesome dudes realized that the New World had a scenic beauty they thought far surpassed anything they had ever seen in Europe (guess they hadn't been to Norway... but I digress). Especially as people started moving west and harvesting the natural resources, a few were like, "Hey Congress, this place is pretty freakin' sweet! Can we like, not destroy these mountains?"

Yosemite, 1865, photo by Carleton Watkins (PBS)

Interestingly enough, the folks who had the first big influence on convincing America to preserve some of its land were artists and photographers. In the 1830s, George Catlin was painting images of the the western territories and Native American culture, and a couple decades years later Albert Bierstadt awed the public with his depictions of Yosemite Valley and the geisers of Yellowstone.

Nice beard, John Muir (PBS)

And then came the writers -- Yes, I'm looking at you, John Muir. In the late 1860s, our man Muir was working at a sawmill in Yosemite and exploring the wilderness in his free time, becoming a stronger and stronger advocate for protecting the land. He wrote that Yosemite was  "by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter...the sanctum sanctorum of the Sierra." As you can imagine, this kind of talk REALLY sparked the interest of the people back in New England.

Well, all these collective writings and photos and paintings paid off, and in 1872 Yellowstone became America's first National Park. Forty-four years later, the National Park Service was officially created 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."

This puts us at August 25th, 1916. We can thank good men like Theodore Roosevelt, Stephen Mather, and Horace Albright for being our champions of the National Park Service, for without them, the system would neither have been created nor ever gotten off the ground. I could spend a whole other blog post telling you how wicked awesome these dudes were, but since I told you this would be short, I'll spare you the saga.

Fast forward 99 years later 

That's this year, 2015, if you didn't want to count. A lot has happened in those 99 years of the National Park Service, and a lot has changed about the way we manage our public lands and history, some for the better, some not.

Celebrated author and park ranger Edward Abbey was perhaps one of the Park Service's biggest critics in as much as he was also a supporter. I'm reading his book Desert Solitaire right now, and in it he laments the changes that the parks were undergoing, even in the 1960s. He writes, "...wilderness is a necessary part of civilization and that is the primary responsibility of the national park system to preserve intact and undiminished what little still remains." Basically he was saying the NPS has itself in somewhat of a catch-22: in its mission to conserve the scenery and natural and historic objects for the enjoyment of future generations, these very things can be diminished precisely by the fact that they are made accessible to the masses.

So what are we to do? Shield off these special places to protect them from the motor cars and industrial tourism that Abbey so stalwartly opposed? We can't exactly enclose Yellowstone in a glass case to admire from afar, or cover Grand Canyon in bubble wrap to keep it safe.

Besides the obvious and with all silliness aside, our greatest hope for conservation is actually to connect everyone with these resources, for each and every person to see how wilderness and history really are necessary parts of civilization and that we all have a role to play in the existence of these things. As Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn."

Let's party! No, really!

What I'm getting at here is that next year, 2016, the National Park Service will be turning 100 years old. That's a pretty big deal, and a great opportunity to invite everyone to the birthday party. And that's exactly what the NPS has done: they just released a campaign called Find Your Park, aimed at utilizing social media and technology to connect a wider audience to the national park system.

Find Your Park! (NPS image)

The intent is to re-inspire people to go out and experience our national parks, in a way, just like the writers, artists, and photographers did over 100 years ago. Except now we are all writers, artists, and photographers in some way, and we all have the power to inspire each other to take care of these important and special places throughout our country.

I really like the "Find Your Park" idea, not only because it speaks so well to the millennial generation (and our inexplicable obsession with finding and expressing our identities), but also because it hits on that ever so important fact that we need to be able to relate to something in order to care about it. And with 407 national park units to choose from, there are certainly enough to go around.

Found my park! (L to R: Me, Ranger Nic, and Ranger John)

Finding your park is about finding that place that speaks to you, that makes you feel most alive. For me, it wasn't hard. Though I've been to many of the big national parks -- Everglades, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon as a child -- Bering Land Bridge National Preserve will always hold a special place in my heart, as the park where I first donned my own flat hat. I feel very much a part of all the national parks I have been to and worked at, and will work at in the future, but forgive me if I hold Bering Land Bridge most dear! I left a part of my heart somewhere out on that desolate tundra, and there it will stay.

So what's YOUR park? 

Returning to our friend Edward Abbey, it's important to note that he wasn't against people visiting the national parks -- he just didn't entirely agree with the way it is often done, viewed through the car window or in massive tour groups. He argued that we ought to regard our public lands with the same reverence we have for cathedrals, museums, and other "sanctums of our culture." He wrote, "...we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places."

Just something to consider as you think about which park might be yours. Abbey felt that we should be exploring our parks on foot, by pedal, or by paddle, and experiencing them truly in person. Anticipating a surge in National Park visitation over the next year or two with this big centennial initiative they're doing, I hope this spirit of reverence for our parks stays alive, and that the park service's 100 year anniversary marks a new era of appreciation for our public lands.

Ya know, just my two cent's worth.

__________________________________
SOURCES:

Some NPS history: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42346.pdf
Some more NPS history: http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/history/