The face of an “American” is not something so easily defined as a singular color or accent, yet we are unified by something infinitely deeper and more valuable: the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness while wandering among the hallowed green halls and twisting trails of our nation’s great parks.
As the government shutdown chews through the federal workforce with debilitating ruthlessness, we must not let our few precious acres of protected wilderness suffer irreversible damage in the process. Our public lands are the last wilderness in which we can still find vestiges of goodwill, gratitude, and harmony amongst strangers, despite our differences.
We must ensure our national parks remain fully protected as the president works to erase the parks’ federal support. No amount of potential private wealth should overshadow the very real public legacy of our nation’s parklands, protected by previous generations for not only us but also for those millions who will come after. No individual payout is worth the cost of all of our national inheritance.
This was a deeply held tenet of President Teddy Roosevelt, who bestowed on us more than 230 million acres of public land. In 1908, so the story goes, Roosevelt toured the Grand Canyon knowing several industries wanted to mine its riches. Outfitted in a bowler hat and riding boots, Roosevelt was one of the first public figures to ride a mule to the canyon floor. Afterward, Roosevelt proclaimed the canyon off limits to development.
“Leave it as it is,” he said. “The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children and your children’s children and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see.”
The National Park System now has 433 sites where all Americans can “relax, recreate, and reflect in our shared natural inheritance,” according to the National Parks Conservation Association.
Yet our current president finds no such value in nature, be it in the White House Rose Garden or our dwindling wilderness. He has cut critical park staff, cut safeguards for endangered or threatened species, cut crucial park funding, and threatened to open public lands to private industries.
This is a blatant attack on one of America’s greatest treasures and national heritage. “There is nothing so American as our national parks,” said President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “The fundamental idea behind the parks ... is that the country belongs to the people, that it is in the process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us.”
In this spirit, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians recently stepped up to help fund the daily operating costs of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park during the shutdown. The tribe joined a coalition of local and state agencies to fully fund the $60,000-plus needed each day to keep the national park fully operational.
Despite our government’s decimation of their tribes and tribal land, the Cherokee are still willing to work with the U.S. to protect the nation’s parklands. Their determination and foresight should be our rallying cry as well. “Making America great again” should include saving her sacred, scant wild places for future generations so they, too, can find a respite from the world’s ills.
Recently, I stumbled up the Appalachian Trail in the Smokies with a bum knee and a deep distrust of my previous sunny outlook about hiking. Side trails had seduced me into taking on extra milage, and the trip had become more trial than triumph.
Yet at the precipice, strangers shared their coconut cookies with me while chatting about trails we had in common. College kids arrived with a burst of noise and energy, one plucking happily on a ukulele, of all things. A retired couple sat in comfortable silence, sharing a tangerine. A young couple sat closer and talked quietly of their dreams. I tried not to eavesdrop.
A family of mixed heritage approached, laughing and holding hands. Their daughters were still exuberant and greeted me warmly, despite the miles of incline in getting there. The mountaintop began to feel more like a gathering of friends than hiker happenstance.
On my way down, a young family of five asked for directions and helped me lighten my pack by sharing my snacks. The ukulele player and his crew trotted past, strumming minor chords now as the evening fog rolled in. A little boy in scuffed Crocs hopped up over rock and root with ease as his grandpa followed behind, indulgently.
“Where are you headed?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Up,” said the boy confidently, and I believed him. He was determined to experience the Appalachian Trail, said his grandpa. So up they went, adventuring among the growing shadows. Both were equally happy.
Purposes, paces, and points of view varied as wide and far as the trees around us, but on the trail, however briefly, we found community. This is the blessing of our parklands – not the view, the exercise, or the adventure. The true value of our nation’s protected natural spaces is the way in which it can unify us in those wide open places, larger than our own petty and passing grievances.
In the end, we all gain more from our walks in wild places than we could ever get by tearing them apart for fleeting profit.
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