"For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People:" Simple and direct; that's what the National Park System is about, though I would have to add that it's a great educational experience. How can you not learn earth sciences and history?
1872: Year of the first park anywhere in the world and the park was Yellowstone. This idea blew to the far corners of the earth and seeded parks and reserves for animals and habitats as often as for people. By the way, my friend Jeff Jones, wilderness photographer, is having a book launch for his celebration of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's 50th anniversary on Oct. 23rd at the Corridan Gallerly on Milpas in Santa Barbara. The title of the book is Arctic Sanctuary, a great photo journey through the seasons and ecosystems of the refuge.
Enter through this gate to Yellowstone National Park (N entrance) and begin to doubt the solid ground we take for granted as you contemplate the thin, floating crust over a molten mantle. It's a surprise why plate tectonics theory is such a recent idea, but I am no geologist, simply an admirer.
An aside: Click up these photos to see them large, then you can read the quote on the arch.
The two colorful photos below are from Mammoth Hot Springs. While the moving hot spots left some terraces drying and diminished, there is much beauty in the building step and flow with the original "infinity" pools. On the road-cut cliff approaching our camp is a cross-section of the old accretionary material laid down in a much earlier Mammoth expression of the flowing springs creating a travertine wall.
That's Ralph's salute to Bunsen Peak named after the inventor of the ubiquitous Bunsen burner in all the labs through the period I was in school anyway. I looked, but found no eternal flame in his honor, though it might have blown out this day.
The final photo will reveal itself (click it) to be of the Roosevelt Lodge where Teddy took a a break from trust busting as a Republican....hmmm. He was a great supporter for national parks and was said to enjoy this lodge for it's rustic nature and access to wildlife.
Yellowstone was once again the most visited of all US National Parks this summer. Does that mean there were crowds? Absolutely! Does it mean you can't find solitude and opportunities to explore nature without being elbow to eyebrow? We found it possible to dip into the crowd and then out to the sparsely populated hinterlands to enjoy the peace of nature's song.
2 comments:
What do you smell or taste in your crowded solitude? Oooommmm.
Definitely a photogenic place! The balance between maintaining natural beauty for all of to enjoy and preserving the experience of solitude is the difficulty that the NPS has faced right from the beginning, but as population grows it is now truly a challenge. From your comments it seems they are still able to do it, even at Yellowstone.
Post a Comment