My mother had countless photos of me as a toddler visiting America’s national parks with her and my father. I can’t say for certain that those early intersections with the beauty of our nation influenced me to love the outdoors later in life. Still there is something mystical about the feelings of reverence that I have always felt whenever I revisited the majesty of places that my parents first showed me. In my mind the national parks and monuments of the United States are spiritual. I feel the hand of a force far greater than anything human when I am wandering along the roadways and trails of our national treasures.
I can’t even think about places like Rocky Mountain National Park, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, or Glacier National Park without becoming emotional. I have cried tears of joy in each of those places. I have been overcome by their beauty in the same way that I celebrate the glories of humanity. I feel my own presence and duty to preserve and honor the planet on which we live whenever I have the privilege of viewing the natural wonders of our nation.
I married young and from the onset my little family was plagued with problems that demanded our attention and finances. Not even a year into my marriage I found myself caring for my mother who was sidelined by bipolar disorder. At the age of twenty five I watched my husband being treated for a fungal disease that was often fatal. Somehow he overcame his illness with many weeks of chemotherapy that reduced him to skin and bones.
With two children and not a great deal of money my husband and I purchased a tent and some sleeping bags that allowed us to visit the most wonderful places in the United States on a strict budget. We became the camping family who sat under the stars at night cooking on a propane stove. We gazed at the stars and felt a connection with the beautiful environments that embraced us with a sense of awe. At the end of the day we crawled into our tent and slept on the floor feeling as though we were the luckiest and wealthiest people on the planet.
We have awakened to the sound of a moose passing by our tent. We have stayed safe and dry during raging storms. We have watched the geysers in Yellowstone National Park venting their steam just the way they had done when Teddy Roosevelt was president. We found ourselves in canyons where it felt as though we were the only people on the earth. We became one with the spirits of the first people who walked on our continent and saw the ruins of their pueblos and works of art. We hiked to the top of mountains and told stories by campfires. The joy that we experienced was immeasurable.
When our daughters were grown we took our grandchildren to the same places that we had shared with their mothers. We saw how much they loved the journeys just as we always had. The simplicity of those trips when we were pared down to simply surviving and appreciating the glories of nature were part of the spiritual inheritance that we passed down in our family. Somehow our grandchildren understood just as we had how important it is to protect our natural resources not as ways to make money but as the sources of connection to our oneness with the world. We understood in those places what a gift they were and how it was up to us and all Americans to protect them.
We are older now. We cannot lie down on the floor of a tent without fear of never being able to get up again. We graduated to a trailer and then to staying in motels and cabins but our love for the natural wonders of the United States has never faded. We are the most at peace in such places and they continue to call us just to wonder at their beauty. Sadly our president does not appear to share our concern about preserving our parks and monuments for all Americans for all time. He is a business man who sees everything as an opportunity to garner wealth. He does not appear to understand that some places are far too sacred to mar with drilling or mining or cutting down. Perhaps his parents never showed him how to spend quiet moments revealing in the beauty of falling water or an endless vistas at the top of a mountain. Maybe he never walked among the ruins of native Americans who lived in this land centuries before the first Europeans came. Maybe he never experienced the sheer joy of sitting under the stars with only the sound of the wind and the calls of the animals interrupting the silence.
Since the last few decades of the nineteenth century our presidents and our Congress have mostly supported the idea of preserving much of the natural beauty and history of our vast continent. They have set aside places of incredible value for our very souls. These places tells us our story in ways that no words might ever do. They burrow into our hearts and help us to understand the enormity of our roles in caring for them so that future generations will experience what we have. Doing anything less than preserving them from the greed of those who only view them as sites of resources and income should be anathema to us all.
We have seen the tacky destruction of our monuments in Washington D.C. that Donald Trump has defaced. His propensity for covering nature with concrete and faux gilt has destroyed much of the essence of our capital. Now he is quietly eroding the protections of our natural heritage in the parks and monuments that have heretofore been free from monetized industries. Bit by bit he is imposing his belief that there is a buck to be made in every corner of the earth. As a result he is taking land and allowing it to be used for profits rather than to provide us with a glimpse of the glories of the United States.
Woody Guthrie said if well. “This land is your land. and this land is my land. From the California to the New York island. From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters. This land was made for you and me…”
Let our lawmakers know that we don’t want Trump to destroy our land. It belongs to all of the people, not to those who would gut it and leave it ruined.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 