Photo from the Hotel New Otani's Web Site

While teaching the history of the American National Parks, I sometimes explore park history and policies in other nations. These journeys abroad with my students at Eastern Washington University (real for me "virtual" for them)  give us engaging ways of exploring parks. When I stayed recently at the Hotel New Otani in Tokyo and explored its famous garden, I knew I had some wonderful material for my students back home. 

Now admittedly, It is a long way from a Japanese garden in Tokyo to, say, Yellowstone or Yosemite.

Or is it?!

Our class is an exercise in what I like to call  "parkology" -- an exploration of  key themes and events in the life of American parks. As we study one park, we discover instances of comparable stories in other parks in the United States and around the world. These can be stories about roads and trails, traffic control, animal management, or more broadly, the challenge of defining "nature." So when I posted my students about the Otani Garden, I told them that the lesson was "about a particular park in Tokyo, but also an exercise in exploring other places and events through the filter of our understanding of  American parks."

Here are the basic facts about the Otani Garden as presented in  the hotel's web site:

"Peace and relaxation in the profound abundance of nature...." The chief apostle of the American park movement, John Muir, might have written those very words himself. They sound like this Muir quotation on a magnet that I keep on my refrigerator door:

The parallel is all well and good, but is it accurate to credit a well-groomed garden with natural "abundance"? In this quotation Muir talks about climbing the mountains -- hardly a description of a well-tended garden. But then again, Muir does talk about nature, peace, and relaxation, qualities to be found in this Japanese garden. Here are some views of the 10-acres:

These and all following photos in this post are by Bill Youngs

I asked my students some questions via the Internet, while I was posting from Tokyo.  They were to review the pictures I've posted above to help them form their opinions. Here are some of the prompts I gave them for considering the garden in the framework of a "parkology" perspective:

• Parkology 1: During the quarter we have noted that there is such a thing as "park-friendly" architecture - "honoring the landscape." But seemingly in painting the garden bridges red, the builders in this case did not follow that principle. Or did they? Is it "all right" sometimes to build structures that contrast sharply with the landscape? Take away the red paint from the bridge, and does it seem more natural? Or, in this case, does the red paint feel appropriate?

• Parkology 2: (a) These are not wildflowers, but they are, obviously, flowers. What American National Parks are especially noteworthy for their flowers? Does a cultivated flower garden retain any elements of a natural setting? (2) Who does not love a waterfall? But does a waterfall lose something in being man-made?

• Parkology 3: The plaque, the statue, and the straw or bamboo tree skirts-were aesthetically pleasing touches, and seemed to me to "honor" this particular landscape. When are such embellishments appropriate? Should we place straw skirts on the redwoods?!

• Parkology 4: You will have to take my word on this... Part of the natural charm of the Otani Gardens is the sounds of nature. The bird sounds were more abundant than on many of my visits to a National Wildlife Refuge near my home, and the sounds of little rivulets and larger falls were omnipresent. Moreover, the human beings there were silent and respectful as in a church.

• Parkology 5: I asked the students to consider the statue of Yonetaro Otani (pictured below) who built the New Hotel Otani, but set aside ten acres of enormously valuable Tokyo real estate to preserve the historic garden. Wasn't he similar to Stephen Mather the wealthy philanthropist who became the first superintendent of the American National Park Syste?. The statue sits in one corner of the garden:

• Parkology Conclusion: Does this garden resonate meaningfully with what we have learned about the values and quality of our American National Parks? Hint: in addition to thinking of this question in relationship to our natural parks, consider also its relation to our historical parks.

Now, I had persuaded myself that much of what we Americans love about wild places can be discovered in a beautiful garden -- the feeling of being in the garden can nurture feelings consistent with those we sometimes feel in the National Parks, but...

I asked my students to post comments on these parkology questions, and they responded with enthusiasm, but not always with approval of my argument that there was indeed full-fledged nature in this garden. The  best way that I can continue this narrative is to copy below the post I wrote for my students and uploaded from Japan. Here it is:

November 20, 2014

My heart was heavy as I walked from the Hotel New Otani lobby down a passage to the hotel's Japanese Garden. I would be communicating to the objects there the honest but dispiriting fact that many of my American students did not feel that the garden was, well -- real. Not real nature anyway. Two students, for example, had quoted from Alolph Murie, "Let us be guardians rather than gardeners."  One continued, "I thought the garden was very nice, beautiful, peaceful, and relaxing. That being said, it is nature without being natural." And another wrote: "When one visits a national park, there is not a feeling of, wow, it's amazing that we humans are such amazing landscape artists, or painters, or architects. No, it is something else that we experience."

Now honestly, I feel the reasonableness of such reservations. And yet I felt reluctant to pass this news on to the flowers. Would they wilt at the news that they were not truly natural?!

 I walked on and looked at the water tumbling over a man-made cliff.

Click below to hear the sound of flowing water and chirping birds in the garden.

As I looked and listened to the water, it seemed to urge me to remember these words from our friend John Muir: "As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche." 

"Can you not listen and learn here as well," the water seemed to say. "Is my spray a false spray, and is my sound imaginary?"

Before I could answer, I heard the birds, the many birds in the trees, calling out, "What about us? Are you going to ask us what we think about this nature business?"

They were all chattering together in Japanese, and so I had trouble understanding every word, but then one of them -- apparently the wisest, spoke words that I already knew, written by a native son of my own Washington State, Justice William O. Douglas. Improbable as it may seem, the bird quoted:

Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole—a creature of ecclesiastical law—is an acceptable adversary and large fortunes ride on its cases.... So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes—fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it.
 

As this loquacious Wise Bird spoke, the whole forest grew silent, the carp stopped swimming, and the very water of the waterfall ceased falling. At the end of the speech, after a brief silence, all the creatures applauded with wild enthusiasm, as best they could. The birds flapped their wings, the carp flapped their tails, the trees flapped their branches, and the water flopped madly over the rocks. As for me, I jumped up and down on one of the red bridges in a noisy gesture of approval.

When everyone, including me, had settled down, the Wise Bird came close to me and gestured for me to follow into a corner of the garden. In case I had missed the point, he explained to me (in broken English) that if I had taken the time to ask the birds and trees and fish and water if they were free agents they would have responded emphatically,"f course, we are!" 

Then, speaking for himself, he said, "Many of us are birds, for heaven's sake. We don't have to stay here if we don't want to!"

Click here to view a complete list of entries on the American Realities blog...
(You know you want to!)

If you enjoyed this article you may enjoy these other articles about Parks and Mother Nature:

• What's that Motor Scooter Doing on a National Park Trail?!
• New York's Central Park: A Wilderness?
• A Visit to John Muir National Historic Site
•  Danger in the National Parks
• Henry David Thoreau and the Felling of a "Noble Pine"
• On the Road with History 498: "The History of the American National Parks"

This and other photos and films in this post are by Bill Youngs

The history of national parks is frequently a history of compromises. For example, the Organic Act of 1916 creating the National Parks Service for the United States embraces ambiguity from the start. On the one hand the parks will protect historic and natural features, but on the other hand they will make them available for "the enjoyment" of visitors. The result is an ongoing debate about how to make parks accessible without diminishing their natural features with highway or overwhelming them with tourists.

In the United States and throughout the world national parks are facing another dilemma: how to respect the special claim of indigenous peoples on park lands while opening them to all the citizens of the world.

The picture above becomes understandable once we understand its context. The pathway here is the Shakadang Trail in Taiwan's Taroko National Park, one of the most famous park trails in the world, cut in a cliff to allow travelers a superb view of the river below. The man on the motor scooter is a member of the Taroko tribe, one of several indigenous groups in Taiwan. The sign below explains why this particular scooter came motoring down the trail in November, 2014, when I was one of the hikers on the trail. I stepped aside, snapped the picture above, and watched the scooter disappear down the trail.  A sign on the trail explained what I had just seen -- and was a model of compromise: yes we were in a park, but yes also we were passing through "an aborigine reserve land," and the indigenous Tarokos needed to "transport goods" on the trail, but yes again, we walkers also had our rights, and so the Tarokos would do their best to scoot by at designated times.

Like the Taiwanese, American park administrators are engaged in bringing indigenous life into sharper focus in our own parks. In my course at Eastern Washington University on the "History of the American National Parks" my students and I explore a variety of themes in park history including the place, over the years, of indigenous peoples in the parks. As the United States approaches the centennial of the Organic Act (1916), which laid the foundation for the park system, park planners are assessing the history and future of the Native American presence in the parks.

One of the first American parks was intrinsically about indigenous peoples--the ancient Americans who built and then abandoned their dwellings in what is now Mesa Verde National Park.

At Mesa Verde the past of an indigenous people is the essential story -- the park's reason for coming into existence in the first place. That said, the indigenous story continues to unfold. At a site where, in the distant past, unregulated "pot hunters" used dynamite among the ruins, hoping to unearth treasures; in contrast, today the regulations on movement through the park are increasingly strict. Heavy fines are imposed on individuals who wander off trails into sites which might contain more artifacts. I listened to a talk at Mesa Verde in 2012 where the ranger told us that as a boy he (and anyone else) had free access to sites that today -- even as a ranger -- he cannot hike.

At other parks the Indian presence in the parks has usually been more marginal or misunderstood. Take for example this Indian artifact at Lake MacDonald Lodge in Glacier National Park.

The totem pole is picturesque, but the peoples who make totem poles live about 500 miles away on the Pacific Coast. The decoration at the lodge is just that, a decoration. It tells us nothing about the Native Americans in Glacier. 

One of the first national parks, Glacier was famous in the early days for the "Glacier Park Indians." Along with the mountains they were billed as one of the attractions of the National Park: come here and see real Indians. Although they were in actuality local Blackfeet Indians, their regalia and dances were a fantasy version of indigenous culture designed to entertain rather than educate.

That is changing now in Glacier and other national parks. At Glacier Blackfeet Indians tell stories in summer programs. There and elsewhere the national park shops often feature books about Native Americans and the parks, including Robert Keller and Michael Turek's American Indians and National Parks. The park service has created a American Indians Liaison Office whose activities include seeking to "create a process that could enable a Federally-recognized tribe to enter into an agreement with a park regarding the gathering of certain culturally important plants and minerals."

Taroko's Lessons in Embracing Indigenous Peoples in a Park Culture

 While visiting Taroko National Park this fall, I was impressed by the ways that the Taroko people were a part of the park story and the park presence in Taiwan. And more was involved than those motor scooters on the Shakadang trail.

After that motor scooter went by, fellow hiker Jonathan Butler continued along the trail. Jonathan is a professor at Taipei's Soochow University and had sponsored me for a talk I would be giving on "National Parks: The International Experience." On our visit to Taroko I was looking for park features that I could incorporate into my talk in Taiwan. In the park I saw many ways that Taiwan is addressing challenges common to parks in the United States and elsewhere, such as how best to build trails, manage traffic, and provide signage. There was lots to learn, but best of all was Taroko lessons in the way a park can embrace indigenous persons in its culture.

At the point where the Shakadang trail comes down to the river, you arrive at a place where Taroko men and women run several shops selling food and drink as well as native crafts:

The encounter with Maria gave perspective to my fleeting glance of the motor scooter and the sign indicating an indigenous presence in the park. Here was a national park where the tourist could encounter the living presence of a native culture. 

Jonathan Butler and I took another hike in Taroko National Park, this time climbing a trail up the side of the gorge towards a Taroko village. Earlier I had taken this picture of showing a Takoro carrying a basket as a back pack.

On our hike we saw a similar basket serving as a backpack for a Taroko man making his way down the mountain: 

Back in the United States, reflecting on the motor scooter on the trail and other encounters with indigenous Taroko men and women, I sense that there was something special about Taroko National Park: it preserves not only the geology, flora, and fauna of a remarkable setting, but also respects a viable indigenous culture. As I review that motor scooter passing by in this film clip I realized that once you know why that scooter is on the trail, you begin to get a sense of Taiwan's achievement in juxtaposing a national park and a native culture. Here is that scooter in motion:

Click here to view a complete list of entries on the American Realities blog...
(You know you want to!)

If you enjoyed this article you may enjoy these other articles about Parks and Mother Nature:
• A Visit to John Muir National Historic Site
•  Danger in the National 
• Henry David Thoreau and the Felling of a "Noble Pine"
• On the Road with History 498: "The History of the American National Parks"
• New York's Central Park: A Wilderness?

John Muir's most famous memorials are his many contributions to the literature and preservation of American scenic wonders. The image of  "John of the Mountains" is inseparable from the image of Yosemite and other wilderness areas. But John Muir spent much of his adult life in a Victorian mansion in an orchard a few miles from San Francisco -- far from the mountains he celebrated. That house and its surroundings is now a National Historic Park in Martinez, California.

This is the way the house looked in 1900:

Wikipedia Commons

On a bright Autumn day in November, 2014, I visited the park for a look at the landscape and the house and for a conversation with Kelli English, the site's chief of Interpretation. This fall I've been blessed with a teaching schedule at Eastern Washington University that allows me to focus on one course, "The History of the American National Parks." Since the class is on line, I can take my students with me, so to speak, to some of our fabled parks.

My students and I have studied John Muir, naturally, as the person I like to call "The George Washington of American National Parks." We all learned about Muir riding an avalanche down a Sierra mountain slope and clinging to the top of a swaying tree in a windstorm, but I knew less about the Muir who made a fortune in agriculture and hunkered down in a Victorian house to write many of his books and articles.

In the Visitor's Center at the Historic Site a bronze statue of John Muir greets visitors:

Here is what the Muir house looks like today along with a sampling of its contents: 

The high point of the visit for me was a conversation with Kelli English, the Chief of Interpretation at the Historic Site. We talked about John Muir, but also about broader issues surrounding park management and interpretation. Kelli and I sat at a picnic bench with another historic building, the Martinez Adobe, in the background. In a wide-ranging conversation we discussed John Muir and the Muir house and also a number of issues in modern park policy ranging from snowmobiles in Yellowstone to wolves, bears, and coyotes, oh my. I came away feeling that although I had not been able to talk to John Muir himself that day, Ranger English was the next best thing.

Here is the conversation: