In a blast of media exposure that just must rival, if not surpass, Ken Burns' documentary on the national parks, Oprah Winfrey is about to devote two shows to her visit to Yosemite National Park.
The talk show host, who wonders why more African-Americans don't visit national parks, went camping at the invitation of Yosemite Ranger Shelton Johnson, an African-American who has worked both to preserve the memory of Buffalo Soldiers and to lure more African-Americans to the parks.
On Friday and next Monday Ms. Winfrey will showcase the visit she made to Yosemite earlier this month.
Ranger Johnson, who was featured in Ken Burns National Parks: America's Best Idea, invited Oprah to visit the park several years ago. During her trip to the park the ranger, leading an evening campfire program at the Lower Pines Campground in the Yosemite Valley, told the story of a detachment of Buffalo Soldiers -- African-American Army cavalry troops -- patrolling the Yosemite backcountry on horseback.
The two shows will feature Oprah's visit and activities such as fly-fishing and a mule ride. Oprah also questions why there aren’t more visitors of color in national parks. Ranger Johnson has been working on this issue for a long time.
"All Snoop Dogg has to do is go camping in Yosemite and it would change the world," said Ranger Johnson in a San Francisco Chronicle article last year. "If Oprah Winfrey went on a road trip to the national parks, it would do more than I have done in my whole career."
The ranger was clearly excited by Oprah's visit and called it a seismic event. See his youtube interview.
In a memo published in Outdoor Afro, a blog that strives to reconnect African-Americans with nature, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said that, "Ms. Winfrey’s visit and the popularity of her show offer the National Park Service an unprecedented opportunity to reach a vast audience of potential first-time visitors and to start a conversation with them."
Oprah's shows will reach more than 30 million viewers and many more on her website, Oprah.Com.
Watch the show on Friday 29, read a review on the Traveler this weekend, and join the conversation.
Comments
Must agree with the Traveler and other comments supporting restoration of the campsites in Yosemite Valley removed after the 1997 flood. Roughly 60 % of the campsites were removed w/o any public input, just "management discretion". While the campsites were being removed, plans were already drawn up to upgrade Yosemite Lodge to 500 plus expensive motel rooms, at 200-300 hundred a night, as well as extensive plans to upgrade Curry Village motel rooms comparable to the Lodge. This also by "management discretion" Yosemite, in my view, has done a terrible job with the campgrounds, many reasons for it, but primarily, the local counties (bed taxes) and the park (franchise fees) make a great deal of money on the hotels/motels/cabins, but little on the campgrounds. In fact, Mariposa County derives 60% of their discretionary budget income from the bed taxes. Hate to sound a little negative about this, but it needs to be said. In fact there has been 12 years of litigation over the Yosemite post flood recovery planning effort and the parks failure to complete a Merced Wild and Scenic River before they decided to move ahead with all the construction. The park was 7 years behind in this effort. A young climber, Mr. Greg Adair, in 1998, wrote a wonderful little brochure titled "Campsites not Hotels" for Yosemite and was part of the environmental team that filed suit against the NPS in federal court. We are now 13 years into the litigation and the Merced River Plan is still years away from completion. Perhaps that is a good thing. The hotel/motel /cabins already out number the campsites in Yosemite Valley by 3 to 1. In my own view, this is a sad commentary on the environmental planning ethic for Yosemite National Park.
It's worth an applause to Yosemite Ranger Shelton Johnson and Oprah for what they are doing. My sister and I have started a business that focuses primarily on introducing the outdoors (i.e., camping, fishing, hiking) to those that lack participation in outdoor activity, primarily targeting African Americans and Hispanics. We're hoping to add a little of what Ranger Johnson and Oprah are aiming to do into our local communities as well. Way to go and it's great to read all the comments about others' joys and experiences of the outdoors.
I was able to watch a little of Oprah's show today and found it extremely disappointing. (It was the first time I've ever tuned in to one of her shows.)
What I found was two minutes of Oprah mixing some sort of vodka booze followed by five minutes of commercials. She was haunting a campground instead of enjoying the park's wonders. (Maybe she had done that earlier and I missed it.)
But then, given our national fascination with celebrities and our extremely low standards of TV programming, maybe this is best we can expect.
Velma Melmac lives on!
I had the chance to see the Oprah show, it was a delight. Oprah and her very nice friend did a great service for America today, they went on a camping trip to an iconic National Park, and did it with fun and good humor. Yes, it is hard work to go camping, but you get the hang of it after awhile, provided of course that you can find a campsite in our more popular parks. Ranger Sheldon Johnson was excellent, he is an exceptional Park Ranger. I want to support Tarsha Scovens comment, I reacted to Oprah's show much as she has. Just a few years ago I was invited to testify at a Congressional Parks Sub-Committee hearing held in Yosemite on the very issue of camping and weather to restore the sites or not. Most of the testimony revolved around contracting out the campgrounds, those few citizens that wanted to speak on behalf of the camping community were last on the list and were pretty much cut-off. But what struck me the most was all there congressmen in attendance, spent most of the three days they were there, at the Ahwahnee Hotel, $400.00 a night. To Oprah's everlasting credit, she went out in the campground, experienced the thundershowers, mosquitos, etc. I have now become a fan of hers and will be watching Wednesday.
Oprah could have done more good by visiting a park that is closer to home - Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Yosemite is a great place, but if you want to encourage people to visit their national parks, don't pick one that is remote and hard to get to as your example. Indiana Dunes is in view of Chicago, it's free, you can get there on public transportation, and it is visited by lots of African Americans!
Oprah Winfrey made this trip after a direct invitation from Yosemite park ranger Shelton Johnson.
I guess Everypark USA is either close to or remote from SOMEbody.