Relevancy in the Parks Today

   In Sequoia National Park there's a short hike from the Lodgepole Campground that leads not quite two miles along the boulder-crowded Marble Fork of the Kaweah River to a tumbling stream of water known as Tokopah Falls. It's a pretty easy hike along the river's edge, fairly level, perfect for young kids exploring nature.
    Now, most times when you think of a waterfall you conjure a vision of a free-falling stream of water. But that's not Tokopah Falls. No, while the water pitches and leaps out of the Sierra, plummeting 1,200 feet, it does so mostly by slipping, sliding, and plunging down the face of a granite cliff. Still, it's a wondrous destination.
    I found myself at the base of the falls in the summer of 2000 while researching a national parks guidebook. It was a gorgeous summer day, with few clouds in the blue sky. It wasn't too hot, and the mist from the falls was cooling. The only sound was from the plunging water the filled the Marble Fork.
    Though I was less than two miles from the campground with its picnicking families and bounding, laughing children, lying there on a flat-topped boulder near the base of the falls I might have been deep in the backcountry.

    It's a scene that national park visitors repeat time after time after time year-in and year-out. It's one that comes with countless backdrops. You might find yourself across from Cathedral Peak in Yosemite National Park, or at any one of the numerous waterfalls that tumble off the wooded-flanks of the Appalachian Mountains in Shenandoah National Park, or strolling the cobble-covered beaches of Olympic National Park.
    And the beauty of these outings....is the intrinsic beauty of nature.
    Spotting birds, marveling at the scenery, watching wildlife. True, some hikes require more effort and more time than others, but that's part of the lure of the national parks. You can push yourself as little or as much as you want.
    You can relax with a picnic beside a backcountry lake or spend weeks hiking the John Muir Trail. And you don't give a thought to whether the Park Service's prime mandate is protecting these landscapes, or allowing folks to enjoy them. Because at the moment, that's not what's relevant. It's the setting and how you've inserted yourself into it that's relevant.
    The other day I broached the question of whether we were losing sight of the relevancy of the national park system. It was a post that generated some discussion on this site, and much more on a private listserve. On this site, two comments stood out, for their very divergent viewpoints.
    Random Walker talked  of her nephews and niece and their love of the out-of-doors, enjoying, as Aldo Leopold once said, "...adventure, without regard to prudence, profit, self – improvement, learning or any other serious thing.”
    Conversely, Sally ridiculed "unbathed hippies/leftists" and 'treehuggers." She evidently finds her glory not in a backcountry campfire beneath a starry canopy but rather in a "big gas-guzzling SUV."
    In my original post, I worried that we as a society are losing our collective mindset of the significance and vision of the national parks movement, that we're confusing the purpose of the national parks.
    A companion question that went unasked is why have we come to this crossroads, how did we get here? Why do some seem to believe that parks can only be enjoyed with motorized accessories, be they snowmobiles, personal watercraft, ATVs, or other off-road vehicles, that interpretation should be multi-media and downloadable onto your iPod or cell phone?
    I'm pretty sure national parks were never intended to be theme parks, places where you "pay to play," where you look for instant gratification, whether it be found in the thrills of a roller-coaster or a ride that mimics a white-water raft trip.
    As he neared his retirement from the National Park Service, where he last worked as chief naturalist for Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Bill Tweed pondered the differences between theme parks and national parks and, in my opinion, succeeded in explaining why today's theme parks are more popular than national parks.
    I've reprinted what he's said before, but believe his words are so valuable in this discussion of relevancy that they deserve another shot. Here are a few of them:

    In a society where entertainment is a huge national industry, and where most citizens expect to be entertained most of the time, one has to ponder the role of national parks. Why do we need to protect and sustain places that are difficult or sometimes demanding to visit?  The answer, for millions, is that national parks offer something that is truly missing from the entertainment world.
    Unlike amusement parks (and TV for that matter), national parks offer experiences based on genuine, unpredictable reality. In national parks we explore and experience a world beyond our immediately control. We seek animals, and we may or may not find them. We hike the trails, and the weather simply is what it is; no guarantees.
    Sometimes our efforts are rewarded and sometimes our patience is tried. When things come together, the results can change our lives. Nothing compares to the first time you see a bear in the wild.          
    It is significant, I think, that America invented both national parks and amusement parks. Around the world today both types of parks take their inspiration from the United States. Perhaps these two visions reflect the opposing poles of the American mind.
    We seek adventure both in the human realm of designed entertainment and in the  unpredictable world of nature. The choice falls to each of us to find our own balance between these extremes. For some of us, however, unmanaged, wild reality remains the ultimate "entertainment" and far more compelling than anything the human mind can invent."

    Now, I do believe the biggest mistake we as a society could make is to try to make national parks imitate theme parks. And yet, there are some who are trying to do just that. Their argument? That national parks, with experiences that are, as Bill put it, "based on genuine, unpredictable reality," are too boring, are not relevant to today's entertainment seekers.
     "The tourism industry and, to a lesser extent, the NPS itself is saying the parks are no longer relevant," says Scott Silver, the executive director of Wild Wilderness. "They are pointing to changing demographics, changing social conditions and other items to which I drew attention to in that 1999 article.
    "There is an enormous effort under way today to transform the parks into something different -- something that is said to be relevant to what we are told is a totally NEW society," he continues. "We are being told that (Stephen) Mather is IRRELEVANT, that the Organic Act is IRRELEVANT ... because society today is different than society was then."
    The 1999 article Scott refers to? Written by Scott and titled "Is Relevance Irrelevant," it was published that year in EarthFirst! Journal. Now, you can read the entire article here, but let me give you just a snippet, one that is incredibly "relevant" to the point I was trying to make with my first post:
    "I feel even more compelled to ask whether relevance should even be considered as a management criterion for the protections and preservations of our public lands. Should we be making public lands relevant to a nation of people who have become increasingly disconnected from nature, or should we protect nature because we believe 'in wildness is the preservation of the world,' as was stated by Thoreau.
    "I offer the following as a partial explanation of the motivations behind the 'relevance' issue. The current Industrial Strength Wreckreaction and Tourism agenda depends upon recreating nature and turning it into a vast array of readily consumable products. In today's popular culture, there is nothing more relevant than commercialism and consumption. To make wild lands more relevant is to make them more commercial. Or, as the other side might say, 'to make wild lands more commercial is to make them more relevant.'"
    Who's behind this push, to morph national parks into theme parks where you can race your snowmobile or ATV across the landscape, where you have all the electronic amenities of downtown Las Vegas? Many point to the American Recreation Coalition, a major lobbying group keenly interested in refocusing the Park Service's best intentions.
     ARC's past positions have included pushing through the recreation-fee demonstration program that has put more and more financial roadblocks in the way of enjoying our public lands and a desire to see the land-management agencies become more involved with for-profit organizations (aka big business).
    Too, this is the group that last September wrote Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to complain that the Park Service "is not fulfilling its mission with regard to enjoyment in the parks.
    "The creators of the National Park Service understood the value of visits to our parks and sought to encourage and provide infrastructure designed for memorable visits. We find this understanding and action lacking today," reads the ARC letter (my emphasis).
    Provide infrastructure? What would they have the Park Service do, put in more roads, some motocross courses, Zip-lines, more lodges?
    Now, if you read ARC's literature, you'll note that the group is extremely careful not to state exactly what it wants. But the group's actions reveal those intentions, and they're not simply to introduce more children to the woods.
    "It seems to me that we have to be real careful when we talk about 'relevancy' because, in a sense, we are falling into the trap of letting others frame the debate," says Rick Smith, who spent three decades working for the Park Service in a variety of administrative functions, from park superintendent to appointments to regional offices and the Washington headquarters. "As Scott Silver has often pointed out, the ARC's push for expanded RV access to parks, RV-friendly campgrounds, showers in the bathrooms, higher fees, Internet hookups, cell phone towers, etc., is cloaked under the premise of making the parks more 'relevant' to today's consumers/visitors.
    "Maybe the answer is to make visits to our parks authentic. Parks can no longer provide the kinds of visitor services -- walks, talks, campground fire circles, personal attention at Visitor Centers -- that they used to be able to provide," he adds. "I have observed visitors just standing around, not knowing where to get guidance, not knowing where to discover the truly compelling stories about the place they're in. There are no rangers, only volunteers and cooperating association employees. Mind you, I am not denigrating their efforts or their commitment to serve. I am simply saying that they are not authentic in the same way that your friendly flat hat was."
    If we have to resort to games, gizmos and gasoline to make our national parks relevant, to get children interested in stepping into nature, to enjoy spotting a herd of elk in the soft evening light or giggle as the mud squishes between their toes when they step barefoot into a stream, then we surely will have made the national park concept irrelevant.