The Way it Was Last Week: An Island of Beauty in a Sea of Conflict

We got back from a long journey across the harsh and beautiful lands across the American Southwest, but we had an out-of-state visitor, so with a whole day's rest, we felt compelled to go and see the incredible valley that lies just 90 miles uphill from my home. It's Yosemite Valley, one of the most unique valleys in the world. It's simply stunning, and despite the drought conditions that prevailed during much of the (un)rainy season this year, it was surprisingly green (the late season rains kind of saved the water-year).

I am truly horrified by the developments of today and of the last few weeks. My entire identity as an American has come into question because of things done in our name as citizens of this country. I'll save the politics for another forum, but as I thumbed through my images of the trip from last week, I was reminded of at least one aspect of what being an American is: a preserver of the wild places. The National Park system has been described as America's best idea, the idea that some places, some landscapes are so unique, so sacred, that we proposed to preserve them for all time. Yosemite Valley was set aside in 1864, more than a decade before the first national park was established at Yellowstone in 1876. It became an official national park in 1890.

Visiting on a weekday, and seeking out some of the quieter corners of the valley floor, one can still get a sense of the majesty of Yosemite Valley without feeling like one is waiting in line at Disneyland. Get out and walk the trail that winds around the edge of the valley. Bring or rent a bicycle. Get away from the stores, the visitor centers, the standard viewpoints, and experience the valley, if you can.

If you can't get to Yosemite, check out these pictures and realize that this is your land, your valley, a place that no one can be allowed to take from you. But also realize that there are hundreds of units in the national park system, many of which may be near you. Visit them, learn about them, and be ready to protect them from those who would use bad laws and corrupt courtrooms to develop strip mines, drill oil wells, or cut down forests. These are your lands. Fight for them. They are precious.

There's No Place Like This: Celebrating 100 Years of America's Best Idea

"There's no place like this".

It's something that you hear once in awhile in a crowd of people seeing Yosemite Falls for the first time. You'll hear it from people seeing a geyser explode from the ground in Yellowstone, or gaping at the vast expanse of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. There are other places where you won't hear those words, because you won't be standing in a crowd of people. It might be while standing in a grove of 4,000 year old Bristlecone Pines at Great Basin National Park, or in an isolated slot canyon cut through the Navajo Sandstone in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, or watching California Condors from a windswept ridge in Pinnacles National Park. You won't hear it, but you will think it. Because there is no place like this, our national heritage of parks and monuments in the United States. It was our best idea as a nation, the idea of saving in perpetuity the unique landscapes that are like no other place on Earth.

I was out there in Yosemite Valley yesterday along with tens of thousands of other people, conducting a field class on the geology of the park. The traffic jams recalled the worst of our cities, and people were everywhere, taking in the best waterfall show in nearly half a decade. The four year drought has taken a toll, but there was enough of a snowpack this year that even the unnamed cascades were booming with water.

One can argue the particulars, but the idea of a national park began here, in 1864. The valley was discovered by Europeans in 1851, and the reported wonders of the place caused Abraham Lincoln to cede the valley to the state of California with the proviso that it be protected for all time. In 1876, the first official national park was established at Yellowstone, while Sequoia and Yosemite followed in 1890. The 1906 National Antiquities Act gave the president the authority to establish national monuments without the approval of Congress, and in 1916, a government agency, the National Park Service, was established to administer the growing numbers of parks and monuments. The Park Service is celebrating their centennial this year.

Seeing traffic jams in this precious place causes me to worry that we might be loving our parks to death, but in the larger picture, we simply need more parks to accommodate those who want to know what is unique and beautiful about our country. And we need those parks to protect what is left of the natural ecosystems of our land, the patchwork of habitats and migratory paths that protect the animals and plants that are also unique to our country. President Obama will have a significant place in our country's history, having presided over the first true attempt at national health care, and for shepherding our economy through the worst recession since the Great Depression, but he will also be remembered for establishing more land as national monuments than any other president (President George W. Bush declared a larger monument, the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, which is the size of Germany, but it is mostly ocean). The monuments weren't piecemeal random choices. Many of them linked critical ecosystems, such as those in the California desert from the San Bernardino Mountains to Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave National Preserve. In many ways these monuments will be his greatest legacy, and greatest gift to our nation.

Yosemite was crowded on Saturday, even overcrowded. But even on the worst of such days, there are places of serenity and quiet beauty. I sent the students out to explore for a few hours, and walked the north part of the Valley Loop trail and in one mile-long stretch I saw but two hikers and a small party of birders with a Yosemite Conservancy guide. It was lonely enough that I gave thought to how many mountain lions lived in the valley, and where they hung out! But that short hike is only scratching the surface. Yosemite Valley covers about seven square miles, but Yosemite National Park protects more than 1,000. There is a lot of wilderness to be experienced, more than enough for a lifetime. Most of our national parks offer similar experiences.

If you have not made a habit of exploring the lands of our national heritage, I hope you will make it a priority in your life. Your life will be richer for it. If circumstances dictate that you can't spend time in these special places, I hope you will read about them, or watch wonderful documentaries (start with Ken Burns' series The National Parks: America's Best Idea). You could even read geology blogs about such places! It's like learning our country's history; you can't stand with our soldiers at Valley Forge or Gettysburg, you can't step onto the Moon along with Neil Armstrong, and you couldn't march with Martin Luther King, but you can learn from all these historical events, and make better decisions for our country's future.

There were so many forces arrayed against the idea of our national parks, and there still are. If we had let these people use the land for monetary profit, there would be no old-growth rainforests on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, and there might be no Sequoia trees or Coast Redwoods in California (we cut down more than 90% of the original forests anyway). There might have been tramways to the valley rim at Yosemite, and geothermal development causing Old Faithful to no longer erupt. The Grizzly Bears and Bison would be gone, as would the wolves. The ruins of Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon would have been torn down by pothunters. The petrified wood at Petrified Forest would be gone.

Make no mistake. Our lands our still under assault. There is an ongoing effort to build a tramway to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and a huge new city on the South Rim of the same park. There are plans to mine uranium just a short distance from the park boundary. There are people who believe that our national heritage lands should be turned over to the states for private development such as at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Thankfully the worst of them are in jail right now, but there are many more such people out there. Maybe worst of all, there are politicians in Congress bought and paid for who are trying to make these things happen.

And there are vandals. A story has made the rounds this week of several despicable individuals by the name of Staten and Andersen who left massive carvings in one of the most beautiful arches in Arches National Park. One might as well spray-paint Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and carve your name on the Last Supper. Once defiled, these precious places can never be the same, and the vandals have stolen something from all of us.

These places belong to us all. Protect and cherish them. There is no place like them in the world.

Whispers and Echoes from the Past, When Half My DNA Visited Yosemite National Park

While my "Vagabonding on Dangerous Ground" journey took me far north of my usual haunts in the Sierra Nevada, I had an unexpected encounter with Yosemite National Park while I was gone. We had a brief visit with my mom as we drove home from our long trip. While there, I saw an ancient looking leather booklet, one of those little photo/scrapbooks that were popular in the days when pictures were printed on paper. It was full of pictures of half my DNA visiting Yosemite National Park in the early 1940s. My love for Yosemite is literally in my blood!

The "half DNA" of course was my mother when she was just a few years old. As I flipped through the photographs, I realized that I have been standing in these same places, snapping pictures of my own. It was possible to put them side by side. I wondered to myself, how has Yosemite changed in those 73 years? And more importantly, how has Yosemite NOT changed?

The most noticeable difference is the vegetation. Trees that are in some pictures aren't in others. That's not much of a surprise, given the fact that many trees can grow to maturity in that time period. The man-made structures underwent changes as well. The Tunnel View Parking Lot (in the top picture) was completely renovated and rebuilt just a few years ago. The "Swinging Bridge" at the Swinging Bridge Picnic Area (below) no longer swings. It was replaced by a more stable pedestrian bridge a couple of years ago. The cute little girl on the left in the picture is mom.

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Other changes are more subtle, at least in slightly fuzzy photographs from nearly three quarters of a century ago. A number of serious geologic events have taken place, including three or four of the biggest rockfalls and debris avalanches ever witnessed in the park. I even witnessed one of them, when a large slab came off the face of El Capitan in 2010. The Ahwiyah Point rock fall in 2009 permanently changed the appearance of Half Dome, and the 1996 Happy Isles rock fall did the same to the cliffs below Glacier Point. Four "hundred-year" floods scoured the river channels in the valley in the last 50 years or so, washing away buildings and camp facilities.

The things that didn't change are the things I realized were important. Yosemite National Park is a treasure, and the idea of preserving it for future generations was America's best idea, as the Ken Burns documentary pointed out in beautiful fashion. In one sense, Yosemite is where it all started. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln gave Yosemite Valley to the state of California, with the idea that it be preserved in perpetuity. Later, in 1872, Yellowstone became the first official national park, and Yosemite followed in 1890. The idea of protection and preservation moved forward in fits and starts, with some failures and other hard fought victories. Hetch Hetchy Valley, the second "Yosemite" in the park, was inundated under the waters of a reservoir in 1923. But the ridiculous idea of building a tramway to Glacier Point was stopped cold in the 1970s. The totally crowd-pleasing, but totally unnatural nightly firefall ended in 1968. As I looked through these ghostly pictures of the past, I realized that I've been able to experience the park much as my family did all those years ago. The park has changed, but for the most part the change as been directed towards an appreciation for the natural environment, and not towards profit-making opportunities (although that happens).

My grandparents took my mother to Yosemite in a time and in circumstances that were difficult. It wasn't that the park was inaccessible. The "All-Weather Highway" (Highway 140) was completed in 1926, and other good routes were available. But with the war going on, resources were limited. In those days it would have been quite the challenge for a family of modest means to find their way to the park from Southern California. Although it costs more these days to enter the park, one can stay in relatively inexpensive campgrounds and still have an affordable experience in one of the most spectacular landscapes on the planet. The park can be very crowded at times, but those who are willing to walk a bit can find absolute solitude in the 95% of the park that is officially wilderness land.

Yosemite National Park remains a wonderful place, despite budget constraints and government neglect. The rangers, park personnel, and volunteers do the best they can with the resources they are given. The idea of national parks is still America's best idea, and the parks deserve our vigilance. Threats from those who would profit from our most beautiful landscapes should be stopped, and that's only going to happen if those of us who love the parks keep the pressure on our political representatives. It's never easy, but it needs to be done. I want my pictures of today to compare favorably with the three dimensional total sense immersion photographs and virtual reality images that will be taken by my grandchildren 75 years from now.

If you want to be involved, join the Yosemite Conservancy. Most national parks have a natural history association that fights for the good of the parklands. They deserve your support as well.

Death Valley Makes Yahoo Travel's Worst National Park List. I Respectfully (sort of) Respond

One of the worst national parks in the United States

Humor is difficult. I'm a teacher and a geologist, so I know. Classrooms are a tough enough audience. I cannot imagine being a comedian, needing to come up with quick zingers, and fast but funny responses to hecklers. But there's a fine line between humor and meanness. Some of the funniest shticks involve bringing pompous asses and arrogant dickheads down a notch or two. It rarely works to make the weak and downtrodden your target. It comes off as nasty and mean-spirited.

The travel editors at Yahoo wanted to be funny. They published their version of "the five worst national parks", and admitted it was based on "minimum of research and a heap of biased analysis". They titled it "Our Tax Dollars paid for What?" The parameters listed for their judgement were listed as "Too many people. Lousy facilities. Ridiculously hostile weather." I think they had a real misfire here. It wasn't funny in the least. Why? Because they were making an unwarranted attack on some of America's most precious and neglected resources, and in so doing made it clear that they do not understand the purpose or value of our national parks.

An awful place. It has sand. And rocks. And scorpions and things.

Our national parks, America's Best Idea, are abused and ignored by congress. They always take the brunt of budget cuts (we MUST have the most modern jet planes for our military, but rangers and trash collection in our parks? Forget it). There is a backlog of maintenance work that will take years to complete. The rangers and other park personnel are told year after year to accomplish more with fewer people. There are fewer park rangers today than there were decades ago despite huge increases in park visitation.

Yahoo broke their own rules and picked some of the least crowded parks, and gave some of the most spurious reasons for hating the particular parks. To wit:

Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota: It doesn't have enough stalactites and stalagmites. A cave with 140 miles of passageways, the sixth longest in the world, and the best they can do is "not enough stalactites and stalagmites"?

Badlands National Park, South Dakota: Why does South Dakota get all the love in this article? They pick on a place that preserves the native prairie and fossil-filled badlands, and complain that it has grass and badlands.

Congaree National Park, South Carolina: Complaining about a park that has the largest preserved hardwood forest floodplain environment left in the eastern United States because it has bugs and snakes? Pretty wimpy if you ask me. It's an International Biosphere Reserve and Globally Important Bird Area.

Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska: Complaining about a park established for it's unspoiled wilderness because it...has no roads? Because it is wild? And has bugs? Again, pretty wimpy.

And then, their biggest cock-up of all. I haven't been to the other four parks, but their pick for number five? Death Valley National Park, California and Nevada: Why was this their choice? Because it gets HOT. In a DESERT! And there is sand. And rocks. In a DESERT. If you've read any of my work on Death Valley, you'll know why it is one of the most precious geologic treasures in North America.

Really, you DON'T want to go here...

The national parks of our country are there in part to preserve unimpaired for future generations the natural diversity of the lands that made up primeval North America. They are SUPPOSED to preserve examples of the badlands, the caves, the floodplains and swamps, the deserts, and the vast Alaskan wilderness. We visit these parks to LEARN about these places and their history. They are not amusement parks, even though many people seem to think so. Hence, the plans and proposals to put gondola rides in the Grand Canyon (currently) and Yosemite Valley (back in the 1970s).

I can understand the role of a travel writer as a critic. There are some pompous hotels, resorts, and restaurants that rip off their visitors who deserve to be skewered in print. But you can keep your ignorant rants about being offended by bugs. The parks need our support, and your criticism devalues them. I couldn't but notice that Gates of the Arctic is right next to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is the next big target of the oil drillers. By denigrating one of the jewels of the park system, they make it easier for those who would destroy them.

In closing, I would like to offer my selection of the worst travel writing web sites. There's just one: Yahoo travel. Why? It has nothing to do with their content, or what we can learn from their articles. It's because they can't edit their own work. They left an entire word out of a sentence in their description of Death Valley. And that completely nullifies anything they have to say. You know...kind of like being bothered by mosquitoes in a national park.

Looking desperately for something of value in a Yahoo article (photo by Mrs. Geotripper)

I missed the article when it first came out in late January. More responses to the article (I guess to Yahoo, negative publicity is good publicity):
From the National Park Service: http://americasgreatoutdoors.tumblr.com/post/109582219004/amazing-pics-yahoo-travel-5-worst-national-parks
From the Wilderness Society: http://wilderness.org/blog/what-yahoo-list-worst-national-parks-makes-no-sense